Business Ethics current event
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example.docxArticle: “SoftBank and Toyota Want Driverless Cars to Change the World.” Published on October 4, 2018 and written by Sherisse Pham via CNN Business.
Softbank is one of Japan's largest companies providing mobile communications, designs and creates robots, and is known for investing in small business start-ups. CEO of Softbank Masayoshi Son describes himself as “the crazy guy who bet on future.” He has a 300 year plan for Softbank and wants to increase life expectancy by 200 years and believes that artificial intelligence, such as the making of driverless vehicles, is the key to human civilization (Pham).
“The high-profile Japanese companies are forming a joint venture called Monet to develop businesses that will use driverless-car technology to offer new services, such as mobile convenience stores and delivery vehicles in which food is prepared en route” (Pham).
The project name is not intended a reference to Claude Monet, the famous French painter, but actually a shortened version of the words "mobility network"(Pham).
Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Masayoshi announced the project in Tokyo at a rare joint appearance by the two companies; they are Japan's two biggest global companies (Pham). The project Monet began when Toyota first approached Softbank with the idea of coming together to form some sort of alliance to try and decrease global rivals that the technology of auto driving cars is creating (Pham).
One of the most important aspects and conclusions of the article is that the plan for Monet is that throughout the next decade, Monet will start providing services such as self-driving buses, hospital shuttles in which medical check-ups can be done inside the shuttle, and even mobile offices (Pham.) The initial geographical range will be primarily in Japan but the President and CEOs of both companies have plans to expand globally (Sham).
The key concepts that is driving the CEOs to introduce this new technology is maximizing the overall good for the largest number of people (utilitarianism). Since Japan is a highly technologically innovative country, this may be true for the individuals living there. Here in the United States however, that may not be the case. Using the deontological/principle based method, the CEOs of Toyota and Softbank believe that as a highly innovative country, they have a responsibility to their society to create such technology that will make their live more convenient and help products and services become more accessible to people in which they were not previously such as the handicap and elderly. This also ties into virtue ethics because the CEOs believe that the technology will help people live their lives in a way that exercises them making choices they are satisfied with. The CEOs are demonstrating the classical model of corporate social responsibility because competition is driving this new project, they want to be ahead of the game when it comes to self-driving cars.
There are more than one Ethical Dilemmas of the advancement of self driving cars. Safety is a main dilemma because technology is not a foolproof system. Self-driving cars operate by creating and maintaining an internal map of their surroundings, based on a wide array of sensors. These sensors and technology can have a glitch anytime and in that instance, lives are at stake. Even though it may seem good to have programed driving paths and reaction to accident scenarios, this makes it so the cars need to be programed pre‐programmed for how to respond to different types of accident scenarios and the possibilities for prediction of every single type of accident that could happen let alone program the vehicle for every single one, seems almost impossible. People respond differently in dangerous situation and who's to say what the car is programmed to do is the safest option? Another dilemma is environmental factors because if cars were self-driving it may significantly impact the amount of miles driven which would add to the problem of pollution the already exists. Also, equity can be a factor because the technology could displace public transportation and even companies like Uber and Lyft, taking away millions of Jobs.
Softbank and Toyota are violating the basic human right of privacy to individuals. They are also violating the moral ethic of safety. The programming in these vehicles will be responsible for a high-speed moving object that can put people lives at risk. Toyota's moto is “Let's Go Places, Safely” (Toyota.com). If one instance were to go wrong and someone died because of a programming failure, there could be a lawsuit for one or both the companies.
The companies are are also violating cultural, environmental, and professional values.
In my judgment, the controversy of self-driving vehicles has a lot to do with moral theory. The ethics to how vehicles could be programmed differs within each theory. The Kantian approach would be of value because it would help set an ethics base through establishing a set of rules of how crash-scenarios should be handled through the technology. These rules would need to apply equally to each vehicle. The question would be, Should all cars should have the same “ethics settings?” Or should people should therefore be able to choose their own ethics settings? The ideal outcome would be some sort of middle ground.
Utilitarianism approach would be to take into consideration and really reason is this the best decision for the greater of society? What are the important human values to the people who will use this technology? Safety is one of the most important values to these consumers. In accident scenarios, should the technology try to minimize overall harm or programmed to other sets of principles?
My recommendation for virtue ethics relates to how people usually react in traffic. Generally, people are considerate and responsible and carry a fairly respectful demeanor in traffic situations but with the technology of vehicles controlling the vehicles movement, I believe many people would feel responsible and more at-risk in these types of situations. Hypothetically, if all cars on the road were self-driven, the fact that they will be driving at high speeds it cannot be guaranteed that they will simply always be able to stop.
https://www.toyota.com/usa/environment/index.html
https://group.softbank/en/corp/about/philosophy/value/
