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If a computer hands out an incorrect prison sentence, we can’t afford to have someone notice it a year later during a routine audit.

Photo by Mike Hensen/Postmedia

The most vexing problem AI presents is that when computers teach themselves to do things using Deep Learning, we lose the ability to understand why they make their decisions.

At the Senate open caucus meeting on the future of artificial intelligence, a few senators zeroed in on the “trolley problem,” which is an age-old thought experiment that takes on a new relevance in a world where computers drive our cars for us. If a trolley is hurtling down the tracks toward five people and you can throw a switch that sends it in the direction of one person, do you do it? Is it worth killing one person to save five? Or should a person refrain from killing no matter what?

You can imagine the trolley problem at the end of a Batman movie, used by the Joker to illuminate society’s hypocrisy and moral failings, but it’s hard to imagine it in real life. Likewise, with self driving cars, Thomasen said it’s hard to imagine a car smart enough to drive itself that couldn’t come up with some alternative to murdering any amount of people.

As the senators examined the theoretical carnage of the trolley problem, no one mentioned estimates of how many lives could be saved each year in a world full of self-driving cars. People are distracted by their cell phones, by a crying baby in the backseat, by their heavy eyelids after staying up too late watching television or, more dangerously, they are under the influence of booze or drugs. One U.S. study estimated 300,000 lives would be saved in that country in a decade with autonomous vehicles.

And, on top of all that, people just aren’t very good at driving. A lot of traffic congestion is caused by the knock-on effect of drivers following each other too closely. Self-driving cars would completely eradicate the stress of driving and you could read a book or style your hair on the commute.