I’m a huge movie buff. On my talk show on News 95.5 and AM 750 WSB I spend every Monday night talking about movies. Often during my traffic reports I will try to slip in movie quotes or references. I especially love comedies. Old and new, I appreciate movies that can make me laugh.
One of my favorite funny films is the 1998 classic “There’s Something About Mary.”
The sometimes raunchy comedy was about Ted, played by Ben Stiller trying to track down his long lost high school love Mary (Cameron Diaz) later in life. In his quest to reunite with Mary he hires Healy, a private investigator, to find where Mary lives.
Healy, played by Matt Dillon is an unscrupulous individual and when he finds Mary living in Florida he begins to spy on her.
During once scene, Healy is parked outside of Mary’s apartment using a pair of binoculars to look through her window. Up to this point in the film, Mary seems perfect. Beautiful, successful and very charitable. Healy sees Mary start to undress and when he grabs his binoculars he mistakenly sees Mary’s neighbor, Magda, topless. Magda is a much older woman and she has been weathered and aged by the Florida sun.
When Healy sees this he exclaims “First chink in the armor, Ted!”
It’s a small line, but it’s one of my favorites. I often quote it when discussing something that before that moment seemed perfect. I used it the other day when researching driverless cars. You might remember my column two weeks ago discussing the likelihood that driverless cars are the future of commuting.
Well Ted, I found the first chink in the armor: driverless cars might have to be programmed to hurt people.
A piece I read in the MIT Technology Review posed an interesting question when it comes to autonomous cars.
Imagine this scenario. You are cruising along in your driverless car on Interstate 75 in Cobb County. All of a sudden, 10 pedestrians run out into the interstate in front of you. The computer in the driverless car you are driving must be programmed to make a decision: continue to drive into the pedestrians causing them harm or death, or swerve left into the median wall causing you and the occupants of your driverless car harm or death?
What should the driverless car do in an unavoidable accident? Save the most lives, or save the lives of it’s occupants?
It’s a big ethical dilemma and one that needs to be addressed before driverless cars become common place. Think about it. What do you think the computer should do? Would you change your mind if you were either the pedestrian in the scenario or in the driverless car?
One study indicates that most people would choose that the car drives itself into the wall harming it’s occupants and minimizing the number of people hurt. People want driverless cars to sacrifice it’s passengers to save more lives, unless they are in the driverless car.
I think we’ve found the first chink in the armor of driverless cars, Ted.
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