Karl Iagnemma Quotes

Even if trolley problems were a realistic concern for AVs, it is not clear what, if anything, regulators or companies developing AVs should do about them. The trolley problem is an intensely debated thought experiment precisely because there isn't a consensus on what should be done.

Conflating thought experiments with reality could slow the deployment of AVs that are reliably safer than human drivers.

Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.

Very ancient parts of the brain are involved in moral decision making.

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

Ethical and questions of philosophy interest me a great deal.

Those ethical choices often are made every day at a time, minute by minute in ways that you may not even relate to ethics, so I'm going to walk them through the whole story from that perspective and hopefully they'll be able to walk away with something good from it.

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.

I follow my conscience - and this is upsetting to some people, but I maintain the conscience is going to be the only thing between us and communication in the future.

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

A satellite has no conscience.

I think ethics is always there; it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics.

With a lot of things in life, it's hard to do the right thing.

We cannot blindly pursue the goal of machine intelligence without pondering its consequences.

Mankind's greatest gift... is that we have free choice.

But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.

Each decision - to kill, to sign a petition, to write a letter, to make a speech, to attack, to lie, to surrender - was made at some point in somebody's day.

...the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.

Choice, I've always believed, is all that separates us from animals.

The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.

What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

Most of the ethical dilemmas that I have faced have all been in the category of, you know, I know something and what's my obligation to disclose it. So, for example, you see people make a mistake in the contract that you're making between the businesses and do you disclose it or do you reveal it? And generally speaking, the way that I solve these is I kind of go through a list of, you know, what's the most, what are the obligations and constituencies and in what order?

You can't be neutral on a moving train.