It was all fun and games pondering with ridiculous unrealistic trolley problem until we started to think about the self-driving cars.
Now the trolley dilemma forcing us to kill either 1 or 3 people is not so unrealistic and far-fetched anymore. Imagine a car driving itself along the road and sensing three people crossing the road – it quickly calculates that accident is unavoidable: the car has to decide in split-second – either to drive forward and likely kill three pedestrians or swerve and likely kill the driver.
We can debate about the insufficiency of the information available, but ultimately the car has to decide. Will it go for utility? Does it have to consider number of people inside the car then?