A self-driving car has a split second to decide whether to drive into an oncoming car or hit a child who has lost control of her bike. An autonomous drone must decide whether to risk the lives of a bus full of civilians or lose a long-awaited terrorist. How does a machine make an ethical decision? Can it “learn” to choose in situations that challenge human decision-making? Can morality be programmed? We will tackle these questions and more as leading AI experts, roboticists, neuroscientists, and legal experts debate the ethics and morality of thinking machines.

This program is part of the Big Ideas Series, made possible with support from the John Templeton Foundation.

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Original program date: June 4, 2016
MODERATOR: Bill Blakemore
PARTICIPANTS: Fernando Diaz, Colonel Linell Letendre, Gary Marcus, Matthias Scheutz, Wendell Wallach

Can life and death decisions be coded? 00:00

Siri…What's the meaning of life? 1:49

Participant Introductions 4:01

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics 6:22

In 1966, ELIZA was one of the first systems with artificial intelligence. 10:20

What is ALPHAGO? 15:43

TAY tweets the first AI twitter bot. 19:25

Can you test learning systems? 26:31

Robots and automatic reasoning demonstration 30:31

How do self-driving cars work? 39:32

What is the trolley problem? 49:00

What is autonomy in military terms? 56:40

Are Landmines the First Automated Weapon? 1:10:30

Defining How Artificial Intelligence Learns 1:16:03

Using Minecraft to Teach AI About People and Their Interactions 1:22:27

Should we fear AI taking over the world? 1:25:08

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