Contemporary Issues in IT: Autonomous Driving - Friend or Foe?

This report delves into the contemporary issue of autonomous driving, examining its social, ethical, and cultural implications. It explores the evolution of self-driving vehicles, from their technological advancements to their potential impact on society. The report discusses the pros and cons of autonomous vehicles, including the elimination of human error, enhanced mobility, and potential job displacement and data security concerns. It further analyzes the ethical frameworks of utilitarianism and deontology in the context of autonomous driving, evaluating the ethical considerations and decision-making processes involved in the technology. The report concludes by addressing the central question of whether autonomous driving is ultimately a friend or a foe, providing a critical analysis based on the presented information and arguments.

Running head: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
“Is autonomous driving friend or foe?”
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Discussion............................................................................................................................2
Pros and Cons of Self Driving Vehicles..........................................................................4
Ethical Framework...........................................................................................................7
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................8
References..........................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
In this modern word, the trend of manufacturing autonomous vehicle has evolved in a
gigantic manner. The production and usages of these vehicle become leading industry globally.
These cars are manufactured to provide relaxation to the driver such that the vehicle can be
operated without the help of any driver (Bonnefon, Shariff and Rahwan 2016). These vehicles
can intellect their surroundings by detecting obstacles and interpreting all sensory information.
These information allow them to detect the navigator directions. However, besides sensing,
interpreting and detecting, these vehicles also follow each and every rules of transportation. All
these factors, allow the industry to develop in the great pace (Fagnant and Kockelman 2015).
Now, these vehicles can also be misused for multiple purpose. Thus, autonomous vehicle has
both positive and negative impacts on the society and culture.
Therefore, this report will describe the social, ethical and cultural implications of
autonomous vehicle in various contexts and then a critical analysis will be conducted to conclude
the report topic. The further sections of the report will describe the negative and positive impacts
of the autonomous vehicle considering the theory of deontological and utilitarian in the
autonomous vehicle industry. Lastly, the report will be ending with a clear conclusion which will
answer the question of the report.
Discussion
The impact of the self - driving vehicles cannot be overstated since last century. The
introduction of the self - driving vehicles in the market has changed the face of autonomous
industry world - wide. The change in moving from a normal vehicle to an autonomous one have
huge impact on the society and its people (Talebpour and Mahmassani 2016). The frequency of

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the organizations operating in the self – driving car industry is continuously increasing day to
day. These organization require high assistance from the technology industry such as Apple and
Google. These self - driving cars are designed on the basis of six level of autonomy. In 0th level,
each and every operations are handled by a driver who controls the vehicle. In this level, the
driver is responsible for every operations and functionalities of the vehicle. In 1st level of
automation, some automated factors are included in the vehicle like autonomous parking and
adaptive cruise control but it also needs to be controlled by an external human being (Rosenblat
and Hwang 2016). In 2nd level of automation, the vehicle is provided with automated pedals and
steering wheel. In this level human intervention is also required if it is necessary. In the third
level, the vehicle can control its functionalities by its own but the driver should operate the
vehicle when the system asks to operate the vehicle. In 4th level of automation, the vehicle can be
fully controlled by the system but in case of any help the vehicle has the ability to endanger the
passengers if there is no response from the driver side. In the 5th level of automation, the vehicle
can be completely controlled by the system itself and does not require any driver assistance
(Lipson and Kurman 2016). Therefore, there is a huge impact of these vehicles in both social and
ethical factors.
Human errors are the root cause of every vehicle accident. The autonomous vehicles are
manufactured to pull out the human error factors from the accident equation such that accidents
can be avoided by allowing the system to control the vehicle by its own. These accidents can be
avoided by monitoring the environments, detecting and reacting the dangerous situations. The
most important phase of these vehicles is the testing phase where the vehicles are required to be
tested. During this testing phase, a pedestrian was killed by the driverless car. Safety is the
higher priority of these vehicles and thus require to secure people from facing brutal accidents.

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Decreasing the rate of accidents, self - driving cars allow the people to increase their savings
such that they can use it for other purposes. Security is another critical factor for every
individuals. Thus, the self - driving vehicle should also take care of their security. In this modern
world, using various technologies a hacker can easily phish all information from the system and
can misuse it. The sensory data is strictly detected and privacy of these data are taken into
consideration for avoiding vulnerable road accident (Richtel and Dougherty 2015). The
reliability factor is also a significant factor for these vehicles where the vehicles have to consider
every levels like proper diagnosis of the vehicle, proper sensing of its surroundings and then the
incoming of the data from the external entities.
Pros and Cons of Self Driving Vehicles
As mentioned earlier, autonomous vehicles have both positive and negative impact on the
society. The impacts are mentioned below:
Positive impact of Autonomous vehicles:
 Elimination of Human Error: As each and every operations are controlled in an
autonomous form, the human interruption or human assistance is completely excluded
from the core system which also eliminates the human error. With the elimination of the
human error, the system reduces the accident rate globally (Etzioni and Etzioni 2017).
Therefore, the introduction of these vehicles save hundreds of lives.
 Quicker and Safer Transportation: These vehicles avoid congestion as well as traffic
jams as they have huge speed limits and have the ability of sensing other vehicles that are
nearby to it (Andrew 2018). The decrease in congestion has also decreased the emission
of CO2 which provide pollution free environment.

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 Easy Parking: As the autonomous vehicle are driven without the assistance of human, it
can alleviate the parking mechanism in highly congested area. This is a useful impact on
the urban areas where traffic jams are high and frequent.
 Enhanced Mobility for every generation: Multiple individuals are unable to drive
vehicles for which they avoid travel in vehicle. With the evolution of the autonomous
vehicle, self – driving cars allow each and every individuals to travel from one place to
another which also develops their travelling experience.
Irrespective of the positive impacts, self – driving vehicles also have negative impacts on
society:
 Unemployment: With the evolvement of the autonomous vehicle, drivers are completely
excluded from their services as the vehicle can be operated in an autonomous way
(McChesney and Nichols 2016). Many people lose their jobs due to the introduction of
the autonomous vehicle. People were hired as truck driver. Now, with the introduction of
the autonomous vehicles, the truck drivers lost their jobs. Thus, in these recent days, the
autonomous vehicle steal many jobs from the society and replace human labor by
intelligent systems and ability (Rathore 2016). There were many low skilled workers in a
society. They feel complexities in finding a job as per their skills and capability. The
drivers are unskilled and thus when these vehicles steal their jobs, they often face issues
in searching appropriate job for them. There it become quite difficult the unskilled labor
to earn money.
 Data Security: As the autonomous vehicles deal with huge amount of data and these data
are highly sensible for both the individuals and the business. Therefore, the data should
be secured from external environment such that any attacker cannot easily misuse those

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information (Kitchin 2016). All operations are performed on the basis of the processed
data. Therefore, uninformed alteration of these data can led huge loss for the passengers.
Changes is always done by informing higher authority. The system cannot generate
wrong output, it generates the output based on the input data (Singla and Singh 2013).
Thus, any small change in the computer system of the vehicle can led to dangerous
accident in which multiple people can lose their lives. The attacker always uses highly
defined technology to phish the information of both the passenger and the system. The
hackers always try to exploit the complete system. Moreover, the vehicles are connected
with multiple networks which are used for communication among the sensors and other
external data sources. The hacker can also misuse these network to interrupt the
communication (Pakshir and Hinz 2018). Miscommunication in this network can also
lead to dangerous accident. The data transmitted in the network should be carefully and
completely transferred to the receiver side. It is ensured the receiver side receives the
fresh data that is transmitted by the transmitter side. Proper communication is a vital
factor in these autonomous vehicle. The operations are performed on the basis of the
received data and therefore, it is to be ensured that the transmitter side transmits
appropriate data and it is also ensured while travelling through the network, the data is
not altered.
 Expensive: As these vehicles are operated with the help of multiple technologies,
therefore the vehicles are highly expensive for common people. The vehicles are
therefore not affordable for every individuals. The presence of highly defined
technologies ad networks increases the overall manufacturing cost of the vehicle

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(Mustajoki 2013). However, multiple organizations do not reveal the prices of their
driverless vehicles.
 Technology can go wrong for many businesses: In these recent days, successful
programming allows many users to perform their operations easily but sometime these
programming codes can glitch and can produce incorrect output (Bina et al. 2014). This
glitch can lead to dangerous accidents and can harm multiple lives at one extent. The
program code is required to be monitored and updated on a regular basis. The technology
driven operations are highly vulnerable in these contexts where the developers are unable
to control the vehicle from their side.
 Deficiency of licensing infrastructure: The driver less cars are still a huge challenge for
some country where the nations face deficiency on the federal and state licensing
information (Bertino 2016). The audiences are required to approve the vehicles before
using them in the road. This will again reduce the accident frequency. The audience
approval is also a critical factor for driverless cars.
Ethical Framework
Ethical framework for driverless cars is also an important factor which can be used to
conclude the report topic.
Utilitarianism: This ethical framework presents the correct and incorrect actions conducted to
achieve the outcomes. It helps in relocating the perspective of one individual while considering
the interest of other individuals (Mulgan 2014). The driverless car identifies the pain and
pleasure of human life by avoiding road crash. Each and every action is approve or disapproved
on the basis of the outcome and its impact on an individual (Mill, 2016). During the testing
phase, the operations are approved or disapproved on the basis of outcomes and their effects on

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the drivers, passengers and people present outside the vehicle. The pleasure and pain is measured
on the basis of the quantification. In Utilitarianism concept, the driverless car can be considered
as friend as it is highly useful for many people. Therefore, using the Act Utilitarian, the
driverless car can be considered as friend globally.
Deontology: Deontology is a Greek word which is the normative ethical layout which considers
rules which have a specific quality and cannot be overridden. Some typical instance is in the
religious pacifists violence is strictly avoided and life is considered as sacred one (Mandal,
Ponnambath and Parija 2016). Therefore, an individual from pacific religion cannot allow an
individual to kill other people. No matter whatever the reason or motive is, a person cannot kill
other person. The deontological rule set can be applied in the driverless car for the rule set can be
described as:
 The vehicle should not harm the passengers and drivers who are present in the
vehicle.
 The vehicle should not harm any individuals who are present outside the vehicle.
 The vehicle should not destroy other’s property.
 The vehicle should strictly follow all legal rules of transportation.
Safety of people is the greatest driving laws that are in place. Moreover, with these laws, there
are traffic signal which is to be strictly followed by the autonomous vehicle. Therefore, safety of
people is the highest priority and should be primarily focused by the automobile industry
(Paquette, Sommerfeldt and Kent 2015). Based on the deontological aspects, four scenarios can
be presented to illustrate the deontological framework concerning the driverless vehicles:

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Scenario 1: The vehicle is designed with huge programs and every program code has an
individual activity to perform. For example: the program of limiting the speed can be used to
secure the passengers and the drivers by avoiding accidents. The jaywalkers considered the risk
through entering to the road. Now, the vehicle is designed to go straight by following its noble
path. Therefore, in such cases the car will simple hit the jaywalkers and will not save the
jaywalkers.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above report, it can be said that, in future driverless vehicles will be
highly used by people for their self-protection relief. People will easily embrace these vehicle
because of the machine driven decision making process. The argument of this report was “Are
Driverless cars are friends or foes?” With respect to this argument, it can be said that these
autonomous vehicles can be easily be used in the road considering all concerns and factors of
them. The main issue concerning the driverless vehicles is the data security. By strengthening the
security of the data, the vehicles can be easily be operated and used. Moreover, all the ethical
frameworks can be maintained easily.

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