A lot of “weird¹ stuff” happens while driving, says Stanford University professor Chris Gerdes. His assertion goes to the heart of one of the problems associated with driverless cars. How can we expect a robot to deal with all the eventualities humans encounter on the road — whether unpredictable pedestrians², rogue³ traffic cones⁴, or even dead plants blowing in the wind?

斯坦福大学(Standford University)教授克里斯格迪斯(Chris Gerdes)表示，开车的时候会发生许多“奇奇怪怪的事”。他的说法触及了与无人驾驶汽车有关的一个问题的核心。我们怎么能够期望机器人处理人类在路上会遭遇的所有突发事件——无论是无法预测的行人、胡乱摆放的交通锥，还是随风乱舞的枯死树枝？

And what about so-called “algorithms of death”: can robots be trusted to choose the least bad outcome in the event of an unavoidable crash?

还有就是所谓的“死亡算法”：面临不可避免的碰撞，我们能信任机器人选择最不坏的结果么？

Autonomous⁵ cars are not only pushing a century-old industry to the forefront of innovation. They are also forcing us to face crucial questions about how much control we are willing to hand over to machines.

自动汽车不仅把一个百年历史的产业推上了创新的前沿。它们还迫使我们面对至关重要的问题：我们愿意把多大的控制权交给机器？

Cars that drive themselves may fundamentally reshape the way we view devices — from things that work or fail to a more nuanced picture of machines that can reason but also make mistakes.

能够自动驾驶的汽车，也许会从根本上改变我们对设备的看法——从要么工作要么坏掉的东西，变成一种更细腻的情景：能推理也会犯错的机器。

“I don’t think we’ve seen a technology quite like this that mirrors what humans do in such an open-ended task,” says Prof Gerdes, director of Stanford’s automotive research laboratory. “It really is a place where we have a robot doing something which, up to this point, has been exclusively human.”When it comes to automated⁶ transport, the ethical⁷ questions are high stakes and fiendishly complicated.

格迪斯教授是斯坦福大学汽车研究实验室的主任，他说：“我认为我们还没有见过类似这样的技术，重现人类在这种开放式任务中的所作所为。真的是让机器人做某种目前完全由人类做的事。”就自动化交通运输而言，伦理问题既事关重大，也极为复杂。

Established manufacturers including Daimler and BMW, as well as tech upstarts such as Tesla and Google, are known to have engaged experts such as Prof Gerdes to discuss ethical questions. Others, such as Fiat⁸ Chrysler, say they have engineers “exploring” the implications of autonomous driving.

戴姆勒(Daimler)和宝马(BMW)等老牌制造商，以及特斯拉(Tesla)和谷歌(Google)等高科技新贵，据悉都已请了格迪斯教授这样的专家探讨伦理问题。而菲亚特-克莱斯勒(Fiat Chrysler)等其他厂商表示，他们的工程技术人员在“探索”自动驾驶的潜在影响。

General Motors says “an autonomous system for production is not close enough today to have answers to these questions, or even to know all the questions”. But Nissan, the Japanese group that with partner Renault is the world’s fourth-largest carmaker, has gone further, appointing a researcher at its Silicon⁹ Valley office dedicated¹⁰ to looking at these ethical issues. Melissa Cefkin, an anthropologist¹¹, is researching the interaction between autonomously¹² driven vehicles and pedestrians and cyclists.

通用汽车(General Motors)表示：“当今生产的自动系统远远不足以掌握这些问题的答案，甚至还不了解所有问题。”不过，日产(Nissan)——与它的合作伙伴雷诺(Renault)合起来是全球第四大汽车制造商——走得比较远，这家日资企业在其硅谷分公司任命了一名专职研究这些伦理问题的研究人员。人类学家梅利莎嬠夫金(Melissa Cefkin)正在研究自动驾驶汽车与行人和骑自行车的人之间的互动。

One layer of ethical questions for driverless cars involves scenarios¹³ and thought experiments. Daniel Hirsch, an automotive expert at PA Consulting, poses one: “A child runs on the street and the car has only two options — killing¹⁴ the child or killing the old, cancer-suffering driver.” The “correct” response to this situation in one country or culture might be different in another. It might even be illegal — both German and Swiss law say human lives cannot be weighed against one another.

无人驾驶汽车伦理问题的一个层面涉及不同情景和思想实验。博安咨询(PA Consulting)汽车专家丹尼尔欠希(Daniel Hirsch)提出了一个情景：“一个孩子在街上跑动，汽车只有两个选项：撞死这名儿童，或者使车上的老年癌症患者丧生。”对这个情景，某一国家或文化的“正确”回答在另一个国家或文化也许会不同。这个问题本身可能是非法的——德国和瑞士的法律都规定，不能比较人命孰轻孰重。

And what about the position of big business, such as insurers? “There’s a significant number of these cases in which the insurance company would decide differently — for instance, to them a handicapped child is more expensive than a handicapped elderly person due to remaining lifespan,” says Mr Hirsch.

那么，保险公司等大企业的立场又如何？赫希表示：“在许多此类案例中，保险公司会做出不同决定——比如，由于剩余的生命期不同，对它们来说残障儿童比残障的老年人更昂贵。”

While fully driverless cars remain some years away, highly automated cars with sophisticated crash-prevention technology are on the road today.Toyota wants to build cars that cannot be responsible for a crash, but most modern vehicles have some sort of active safety features. Such considerations are making carmakers take ethical questions seriously.

尽管完全无人驾驶的汽车仍是多年以后的事，但是具备先进防撞技术的高度自动化汽车如今已上路行驶。丰田(Toyota)希望打造不可能为车祸负责的汽车，然而多数现代汽车都有某种主动安全功能。这方面的考虑令汽车制造商认真考虑伦理问题。

“There is an increasing awareness¹⁵ across all automakers that they have to deal with the psychological issues of these vehicles,” says Hans-Werner Kaas, senior partner at McKinsey, a consultancy. “They’re beefing up their skillset.”

咨询公司麦肯锡(McKinsey)高级合伙人汉斯-维尔纳愠斯(Hans-Werner Kaas)表示：“在所有汽车制造商中，越来越多的制造商认识到，它们必须处理与这些汽车有关的心理问题。它们正在充实各自的技能。”

These moves underline that the industry is hypersensitive to safety following a series of high-profile recalls of millions of vehicles, meaning the race to adopt new technologies must be approached with caution.

这些举措凸显出，在涉及数百万辆汽车的一系列备受关注的召回后——这些事件意味着必须谨慎处理对新技术的竞相采用——汽车业对安全问题极为敏感。

Volvo, which has built its brand around safety, typifies that approach. Erik Coelingh, a senior technical leader for safety at the Swedish carmaker, says: “In practice, we have to make sure a car never gets into a situation where it has to make an impossible choice.”

围绕安全性打造其品牌的沃尔沃(Volvo)是这一方式的典型。埃里克克林(Erik Coelingh)是这家瑞典汽车制造商主管安全的资深技术主管，他说：“在实践中，我们必须确保汽车永远不会陷入必须做出不可能选择的境地。”

That means driving conservatively and observing traffic rules. To underscore the point, Volvo said in October it would accept full civil liability for accidents caused by its self-driving technology. But that is not the same as saying drivers can enter what one BMW executive calls “brain off” mode.

这就意味着要保守地驾驶汽车并遵守交通规则。为强调这一点，去年10月沃尔沃表示，将为其自动驾驶技术导致的事故承担全部民事赔偿责任。不过，这与说驾驶员可以进入宝马一名高管所称的“大脑关闭”状态并不是一回事。

Facing the full ethical dilemma¹⁶ of autonomous cars is still some years away. California — one of the most forward-looking transport regulators — last month adopted draft rules that would require humans to stay in control of a vehicle at all times, as is written in the Vienna Convention observed by many European countries.

人类要到好几年后才会面对自动汽车的全部道德困境。上月，最具前瞻性的交通监管机构之一加利福尼亚州通过了要求人类全程控制汽车的规则草案——就像许多欧洲国家遵守的《维也纳公约》(Vienna Convention)那样。

This means fully driverless cars would be “initially¹⁷ excluded from deployment¹⁸” in California.

这意味着完全无人驾驶的汽车最初将不会在加州上路。

“We as a society have to decide whether we’re ready for a machine, with no driver intervention¹⁹, to decide what should happen in a critical situation,” says Ian Robertson, BMW’s board member for sales and marketing²⁰. “And I’m not sure that we are yet ready for that.”

宝马主管销售和市场营销的董事会成员伊恩圠伯逊(Ian Robertson)表示：“作为一个社会，我们必须决定我们是否准备让机器在没有驾驶员干预的情况下，在危急关头决定该怎么做。我不肯定我们已做好准备。”