Colloquium Philosophicum: Zvolenszky Zsófia előadása

2026. február 18-án (szerdán) Zvolenszky Zsófia előadásával folytatódik a Colloquium Philosophicum című előadás-sorozat, az ELTE BTK i épületének 113-as termében. Az előadás absztraktja itt olvasható:

MIT’s Moral Machine Experiment: A cautionary tale about foreseeable societal impact

Zsófia Zvolenszky

Department of Logic, Institute of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities,

Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary

zvolenszky.zsofia@btk.elte.hu

Automated vehicles – self-driving cars – have been forecast to be around-the-corner technology for over a decade. They have been receiving much attention – hype even – in media reporting as well as in academic debates on AI ethics. How have such discussions been conducted? And why is it key that we understand them better? I explore answers to these language-related questions through a case study.

Active between 2016 and 2020, the MIT Media Lab’s Moral Machine online research platform went viral, gathering moral judgments across the globe from 4 million respondents in 10 languages from 233 countries. Respondents considered, in various moral dilemma contexts, the question: “What should the self-driving car do?” (Awad, E., Dsouza, S, Kim, R., Schulz, J., Heinrich, J. Shariff, A., Bonnefon, J-F., Rahwan, I. The Moral Machine experiment. Nature 563, 59–64). The online platform is still available for the interested public to submit their judgments at http://moralmachine.mit.edu.

In my talk I will critically examine various features — the approach, language, methodology — of the Moral Machine experiment (MM), and their foreseeable societal impact. I will argue that these features call for considerably more hindsight, foresight as well as ethical guidelines when conducting research that polls prospective users of AI-systems. Specifically, an exploration of various policy recommendations in the European Union for automated vehicles were, through 2016-2020 negatively impacted by discussion focus shifting to moral dilemma cases – like those made viral by MM – and away from key ethical issues meriting consideration.

Az előadás online, Zoomon is követhető, ezen a linken érik el.