[komodo]

a genie offers you a deal. "I will prevent all car accidents that cause death for an entire year. In exchange, at the end of that year, I will randomly kill people, one by one, until as many as XX% of the prevented deaths are 'repaid'.

The 1% safety people would take the deal at 99% repaid deaths. But I think most people would only be comfortable with a number much lower.

[aaron695]

Do you get the bodies that are left over from the genie?

Are their organs usable?

Sounds like a no brainer if they are?

Or does the genie reduce the people killed by the ones no longer saved by organ donations from car accidents?

The genie might have to bring people back to life.

This might make people uncomfortable.

[XorNot]

I take the deal, then try and find a way to kill the genie.

Also try and make it target the purveyors of stupid hypothetical arguments.

This example is not in even remotely close to any situation autonomous vehicles can present.

[loafa]

Well, it's not that equivalent a situation. I'd feel personally responsible for the particular set of individuals killed by the genie rather than some other set of individuals. That's too much responsibility for me, I didn't ask for this crap, I should know better than to trust random genie bargains.

[taneq]

In the least convenient universe (and therefore the most useful for examining this moral quandary), you don't have the luxury of dodging the question. If you choose to tell the genie to do nothing, then you're choosing for X people to die to save Y.

(The scenario needs work, though - it should be Y people chosen from the road users in question, not just Y random humans.)