Ok, consider this for a second. You're a director of a hospital that owns a Therac radiotherapy machine for treating cancer. The machine is without any shadow of a doubt saving lives. People without access to it would die or have their prognosis worsen. Yet one day you get a report saying that the machine might sometimes, extremely rarely, accidentally deliver a lethal dose of radiation instead of the therapeutic one.
Do you decide to keep using the machine, or do you order it turned off until that defect can be fixed? Why yes or why not? Why does the same argument apply/not apply in the discussion about self driving cars?
(And in case you haven't heard about it - the Therac radiotherapy machine fault was a real thing, it's being used as a cautionary tell for software development but I sometimes wonder if it should be used in philosophy classes too)
Do you decide to keep using the machine, or do you order it turned off until that defect can be fixed? Why yes or why not? Why does the same argument apply/not apply in the discussion about self driving cars?
(And in case you haven't heard about it - the Therac radiotherapy machine fault was a real thing, it's being used as a cautionary tell for software development but I sometimes wonder if it should be used in philosophy classes too)