Moral Machine (MIT Media Lab)

What can I learn?

Trolley-problem ethics tool for self-driving cars — you make a series of decisions about who an autonomous vehicle should harm in unavoidable accidents. Available in 10 languages including French and Dutch. Used in academic research on moral intuitions.

Core insight

Designing an AI system always requires encoding moral choices — and those choices are not universal, they vary by culture, context, and values. Pretending AI is 'value-neutral' ignores this.

How to use it in daily work

Good discussion-starter for groups exploring AI ethics — raises the question of who decides the values built into AI systems.

• Use it as a 10-minute activity at the start of an AI ethics discussion to make the 'value-encoding' problem concrete and personal.