Connecting with Nature — Literature Review

Overview

A graduate research paper (FSE 598, Ethics in Tech Entrepreneurship, Arizona State University) examining how autonomous vehicles should be programmed to make life-and-death decisions in unavoidable crash scenarios. Framed around the 2018 Uber autonomous-vehicle pedestrian fatality in Arizona and the classic 'trolley problem,' it weighs utilitarian ethics against rights-based ethics and argues for a hybrid framework that balances collective safety with individual human dignity and public acceptance.

Key Achievements

• Developed a full thesis: utilitarian programming maximizes collective safety, but AV decision-making must incorporate rights-based principles to protect individual dignity and ensure public acceptance
• Synthesized key AV-ethics literature including Bonnefon, Shariff & Rahwan (2016) on the social dilemma of AVs, Awad et al. (2018) Moral Machine experiment, Gogoll & Müller (2017) on mandatory ethics settings, and Evans et al. (2020) Ethical Valence Theory
• Proposed a concrete hybrid implementation: primary utilitarian calculation for clear-cut scenarios, rights-based constraints preventing demographic targeting, regional customization within universal rights, and transparent, accountable decision-making
• Delivered the complete academic writing pipeline as separate graded artifacts: topic proposal, introductory paragraph/thesis, annotated bibliography, full essay outline, rough draft, and final paper

Approach

Built iteratively through the course's staged assignment sequence, moving from a topic proposal and thesis statement to an annotated bibliography of peer-reviewed sources (Science, Nature, Science and Engineering Ethics), then a detailed outline, a rough draft, and a polished final paper. The argument applies competing moral frameworks (Bentham/Mill utilitarianism, Kant/Rawls rights-based ethics) to AV crash dilemmas and resolves the tension with a balanced hybrid model.

Tools & Technologies

Results

The paper concludes that a hybrid framework, combining utilitarian optimization with rights-based protections and democratic oversight, best balances collective safety and individual rights for publicly acceptable AV deployment. See docs/Final_Paper_Elsaady.docx for the full argument and conclusions; no quantitative experimental metrics are reported.