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this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
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I was involved in discussions 20-some years ago when we were first exploring the idea of autonomous and semiautonomous weapons systems. The question that really brought it home to me was “When an autonomous weapon targets a school and kills 50 kids, who gets charged with the war crime? The soldier who sent the weapon in, the commander who was responsible for the op, the company who wrote the software, or the programmer who actually coded it up?” That really felt like a grounding question.
As we now know, the actual answer is “Nobody.”
That's also a legal issue with autonomous cars.
Autonomous cars can also get into basically the trolley problem. If an accident is unavoidable, but the car can swerve and kill its own passenger to avoid killing more people in a larger wreck, should it? And would that end up as more liability for whoever takes the blame?
The owner or lesse of the car is responsible. Think of the car as a dog that bit a child.
Are we talking truly autonomous vehicles with no driver, or today's "self-driving-but-keep-your-hands-on-the-wheel" type cars?
In the case of the former, it should be absolutely the fault of the manufacturer.
You could definitely put some blame on the manufacturer, but in legalize you "knew or should have known" that there was a possiblity that your vehicle could hurt or kill someone. You sent it out into the world without a driver in it, not the manufacturer. I wouldn't be surprised to see warnings and agreements attached to autonomous vehicles telling people that there is risk.
Say there is a car with no human driver, that is being sold as requiring "no human input other than set destination, stop, and go".
If that vehicle crashes, you think the person who bought the car (the passenger) has legal liability, and not the manufacturer?
That's like being a passenger on a bus and getting sued if the bus driver hits a parked car.
The bus company gets sued because they own the bus, not the driver. Same as if you lend your car to someone, you're at least partially responsible.