“By using the Trolley Problem as a basis, students engage deeply with ethical theories and apply them to both hypothetical scenarios and real-world situations involving AI. This approach not only enhances their understanding of ethical dilemmas but also provides a critical examination of AI’s role in complex decision-making processes.”
Summary
This learning exercise provides a classic ethical dilemma used in teaching Philosophy - The Trolley problem and uses a chatbot to generate variations of this scenario, generating complexity and nuance to the ethical considerations. The use of AI, provides rapid, expansion of ideas, adding complexity and divergence to the learning.
Objectives:
Deepen Ethical Understanding: Apply ethical theories to AI-generated scenarios, enhancing comprehension of moral principles.
Enhance Critical Thinking: Encourage analysis and evaluation of complex moral dilemmas, improving reasoning skills.
Increase AI Literacy: Highlight AI capabilities and ethical implications, fostering understanding of AI in society.
Develop Empathy and Perspective-Taking: Cultivate the ability to consider diverse viewpoints in ethical situations.
Stimulate Intellectual Curiosity: Engage curiosity in philosophical inquiry and technological advancements.
Improve Debate and Communication Skills: Enhance abilities in articulating thoughts and engaging in constructive debates.
Highlight Social Responsibility in Tech Use: Emphasise ethical responsibilities in AI development and deployment.
Prepare for Ethical Decision-Making in Professional Practice: Ready students for informed, ethical choices in their careers.
Key Learnings:
Complexity of Ethical Decision-Making: The scenarios illustrate that ethical dilemmas often involve complex trade-offs and cannot always be reduced to simple binary choices. It challenges students to think beyond straightforward solutions and consider multiple perspectives and outcomes.
Application of Ethical Theories: Students learn to apply various ethical theories (like utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics) to real-world scenarios. This application demonstrates how different ethical frameworks can lead to different conclusions in the same situation.
AI's Role in Ethics: The dilemmas highlight the role of AI in ethical decision-making, raising questions about how AI systems should be programmed to handle complex moral decisions, and whether AI can truly replicate human ethical reasoning.
Critical Thinking and Analysis: Engaging with this dilemma fosters critical thinking and analytical skills. Students must dissect complex situations, identify key variables, and articulate reasoned arguments.
Understanding AI Limitations and Biases: The exercises reveal the limitations and potential biases of AI in handling ethical issues. It emphasises the need for careful consideration in how AI is used and the importance of human oversight.
Ethical Implications of Technology: This exercise brings to the forefront the ethical implications of emerging technologies, particularly how decisions made in programming and AI design can have significant real-world impacts.
Interdisciplinary Learning: The dilemma bridges disciplines, combining philosophy, technology, sociology, and more, showing students the interconnectedness of different fields of study.
Empathy and Moral Reasoning: By considering scenarios involving different people and situations, students develop empathy and a more nuanced understanding of moral reasoning.
Preparation for Real-World Challenges: This exercise prepares students for real-world challenges they might face in their professional lives, especially in fields where technology and ethics intersect.
Discussion and Debate Skills: The exercise enhances students' abilities to engage in productive discussions and debates, articulating and defending their viewpoints while considering opposing arguments.
Overview
Introduce The Trolley Problem as a moral and ethical dilemma. Utilise a GAI chatbot (eg ChatGPT), to generate a diverse range of scenarios around this problem with different ethical dimensions and complexities. The aim is to challenge students to think beyond the binary choice of the original problem and consider a wider array of ethical implications and contexts.
Instructions
Input the basic premise of the Trolley Problem into a chatbot.
Prompt to modify or extend the scenario in various ways. For example, the AI could be asked to create scenarios where more people are on one track, there's a mix of people and animals, or the people on the tracks have different roles (eg doctors, children).
Further prompt to Introduce variables that add moral complexity. These could include personal relationships (a family member vs. a stranger), the age or health status of the individuals involved, or the presence of historical or cultural figures. Each variable alters the ethical considerations and outcomes.
Adapt the problem to different contexts, such as medical ethics (choosing whom to treat with limited resources), business ethics (deciding between profit and social responsibility), or technology ethics (programming decisions for autonomous vehicles).
Prompt the chatbot to randomly generate scenarios, giving students unexpected dilemmas to consider. This unpredictability mirrors real-world complexity where ethical decisions often involve navigating unknowns and uncertainties.
After generating these scenarios, ask students to apply different ethical theories to each scenario. For example, how would a utilitarian approach differ from a deontological approach in each unique situation?
Possible adaptions & variations
This learning exercise could be taught as part of AI Ethics/AI literacy. It does not have to be confined to the discipline of Philosophy.
There are many ways in which this learning exercise can be organised to function. Group work in a physical location (eg classroom) could be used to facilitate debate with each group asked to take different stances around the dilemmas. In this way of working, the teacher or facilitator would likely be using the chatbot from a central display.
A different approach could be for students to use chatbots to come up with varied scenarios that they then have to consider, discuss, write about, present on, etc. This could be extended on to look at different areas where humanity is having to think about morals and ethics eg war/conflict.