Personhood of self-driving cars and autonomouse vehicles might matter much more than we expect for everyone’s safety. By treating them as soulless objects, people are making roads more dangerous.
The other day I was in a dangerous situation. At an intersection I was about to walk through, a Cruise autonomous vehicle was waiting to turn right. A Tesla behind the Cruise got frustrated and went around it by going into the other lane, turning right and cutting off the Cruise. I was in the middle of the crosswalk and I got mad for the Cruise.
I suspect the Tesla driver cut off the Cruise because it was an autonomous vehicle. The annoyance I had was due to the Tesla driver not respecting the personhood of the Cruise.
Clearly this situation was more dangerous because of the interaction of a human and autonomous vehicle. This isn’t the only time this has happened and I’m sure we will see more examples.
See also:
- Am I internalizing an AI’s interiority and does that already indicate self-hood?
- Human intelligence is a special case of artificial intelligence