Autonomous vehicles and the ethical tension between occupant and non-occupant safety

Given that the creation and deployment of autonomous vehicles is likely to continue, it is important to explore the ethical responsibilities of designers, manufacturers, operators, and regulators of the technology. We specifically focus on the ethical responsibilities surrounding autonomous vehicles that these stakeholders have to protect the safety of non-occupants, meaning individuals who are around the vehicles while they are operating. The term “non-occupants” includes, but is not limited to, pedestrians and cyclists. We are particularly interested in how to assign moral responsibility for the safety of non-occupants when autonomous vehicles are deployed in a complex, land-based transportation system

Recurrence of the Same? Intelligent Design and the Biology Classroom

As the complex and heated debates between evolution's supporters and its critics continue, teachers and school boards are struggling to figure out how to handle the issue of the origin of human life within biology classrooms. Controversy circulating around evolution had caused some states, including Georgia, to remove the word "evolution" from the science curriculum and evade teaching about the subject matter. Recently, critics have offered forward a view called intelligent design (ID), which purports to illustrate conceptual and empirical shortcomings in evolutionary theory. Intelligent design supporters argue that students should be made aware of these shortcomings and suggest that alternatives to evolution need to be taught, which may include intelligent design. Yet a key issue that needs to be resolved is whether it is a sound pedagogical approach to teach intelligent design alongside evolution, which may in part be figured out by determining whether it is a true rival (or perhaps compliment) to evolutionary theory. In this article, my primary aim is not to proclaim that the theory of intelligent design is false. Rather, it is to argue that intelligent design does not belong in high school biology classrooms at this point in time

Autonomous Vehicles and the Ethical Tension Between Occupant and Non-Occupant Safety

Autonomous vehicle manufacturers, people inside an autonomous vehicle (occupants), and people outside the vehicle (non-occupants) are among the distinct stakeholders when addressing ethical issues inherent in systems that include autonomous vehicles. As responses to recent tragic cases illustrate, advocates for autonomous vehicles tend to focus on occupant safety, sometimes to the exclusion of non-occupant safety. Thus, we aim to examine ethical issues associated with non-occupant safety, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and riders of motorized scooters. We also explore the ethical implications of technical and policy ideas that some might propose to improve non-occupant safety. In addition, if safety (writ large) is truly the paramount priority for autonomous vehicle advocates, we contend that autonomous public transportation should be considered as a more effective and less expensive way to improve public safety

Robotic Nudges: The Ethics of Engineering a More Socially Just Human Being

Copyright © 2015 Springer-VerlagThe time is nearing when robots are going to become a pervasive feature of our personal lives. They are already continuously operating in industrial, domestic, and military sectors. But a facet of their operation that has not quite reached its full potential is their involvement in our day-to-day routines as servants, caregivers, companions, and perhaps friends. It is clear that the multiple forms of robots already in existence and in the process of being designed will have a profound impact on human life. In fact, the motivation for their creation is largely shaped by their ability to do so. Encouraging patients to take medications, enabling children to socialize, and protecting the elderly from hazards within a living space is only a small sampling of how they could interact with humans. Their seemingly boundless potential stems in part from the possibility of their omnipresence but also because they can be physically instantiated, i.e., they are embodied in the real world, unlike many other devices. The extent of a robot’s influence on our lives hinges in large part on which design pathway the robot’s creator decides to pursue . The principal focus of this article is to generate discussion about the ethical acceptability of allowing designers to construct companion robots that nudge a user in a particular behavioral direction (and if so, under which circumstances). More specifically, we will delineate key issues related to the ethics of designing robots whose deliberate purpose is to nudge human users towards displaying greater concern for their fellow human beings, including by becoming more socially just. Important facets of this discussion include whether a robot’s “nudging ” behavior should occur with or without the user’s awareness and how much control the user should exert over it

The Impact of Community Engagement on Undergraduate Social Responsibility Attitudes

The literature on student development cautions that social responsibility attitudes may stagnate or decline as students proceed through college. Given the importance of students’ future professional obligations to society, identifying ways to reverse this trend is crucial. In turn, an important aim of this study, situated at a large public university, is to evaluate the prospects of community engagement as a strategy to foster professional social responsibility development. The study uses longitudinal results from an instrument known as the Generalized Professional Responsibility Assessment (GPRA) to assess personal and professional social responsibility attitudes. The study’s sample includes 128 students who completed a survey both in 2017, when entering college, and in 2019, when near the midpoint of college. Findings indicate that social responsibility attitudes remain stagnant, and that students over that time period attach more importance to salary as compared to helping people when considering job priorities. Yet, results reveal that increased community engagement predicts growth in social responsibility attitudes, even when controlling for students’ pre-college social responsibility attitudes and demographic characteristics. Further, a novel contribution of this study is a focus on two sub-categories of community engagement: discipline-based and peer-based. Discipline-based community engagement appears to foster professional aspects of social responsibility, while community engagement experiences tied to peer interaction appear to exert greater impacts for non-White students. An observation derived from the study is that community engagement, particularly when it connects to a student’s discipline or draws on peer influences, could be an effective strategy to promote social responsibility development

Graph-based analysis of the metabolic exchanges between two co-resident intracellular symbionts, baumannia cicadellinicola and sulcia muelleri with their insect host, homalodisca coagulata

International audienceEndosymbiotic bacteria from different species can live inside cells of the same eukaryotic organism. Metabolic exchanges occur between host and bacteria but also between different endocytobionts. Since a complete genome annotation is available for both, we built the metabolic network of two endosymbiotic bacteria, Sulcia muelleri and Baumannia cicadellinicola, that live inside specific cells of the sharpshooter Homalodisca coagulata and studied the metabolic exchanges involving transfers of carbon atoms between the three. We automatically determined the set of metabolites potentially exogenously acquired (seeds) for both metabolic networks. We show that the number of seeds needed by both bacteria in the carbon metabolism is extremely reduced. Moreover, only three seeds are common to both metabolic networks, indicating that the complementarity of the two metabolisms is not only manifested in the metabolic capabilities of each bacterium, but also by their different use of the same environment. Furthermore, our results show that the carbon metabolism of S. muelleri may be completely independent of the metabolic network of B. cicadellinicola. On the contrary, the carbon metabolism of the latter appears dependent on the metabolism of S. muelleri, at least for two essential amino acids, threonine and lysine. Next, in order to define which subsets of seeds (precursor sets) are sufficient to produce the metabolites involved in a symbiotic function, we used a graph-based method, PITUFO, that we recently developed. Our results highly refine our knowledge about the complementarity between the metabolisms of the two bacteria and their host. We thus indicate seeds that appear obligatory in the synthesis of metabolites are involved in the symbiotic function. Our results suggest both B. cicadellinicola and S. muelleri may be completely independent of the metabolites provided by the co-resident endocytobiont to produce the carbon backbone of the metabolites provided to the symbiotic system (., thr and lys are only exploited by B. cicadellinicola to produce its proteins)

Responsible Conduct of Research: An Overview

Presented on October 26, 2010 from 5:00 pm-6:00 pm in the Skiles Building room 343 on the Georgia Tech campus.Runtime: 54:49 minute

Intelligent Design in the Classroom?

Presentation given in the Library and Information Center's Neely Gallery.Runtime: 86:01 minutesControversy continues to circulate about evolution, raising the issue of whether public schools are the appropriate forum for teaching about the subject matter. In recent years, critics have offered forward a view called intelligent design, which seeks to illustrate alleged shortcomings in evolutionary theory. Intelligent design supporters argue that students should be made aware of evolution’s failings and suggest that alternatives to evolution need to be taught, which may include intelligent design. Yet a key issue that must be resolved is whether a proper educational approach in the biology classroom includes teaching intelligent design alongside evolution