One of the challenges that self-driving vehicles present is not about technology per se, it is about ethics. The typical example scenario is this one: If a pedestrian were to step out in front of an autonomous vehicle illegally, should the car be programmed to hit the pedestrian or veer off the road at the risk of potentially harming its passengers?
I believe that self-driving vehicles will ultimately result in fewer accidents. Statistically they will be safer. But self-driving vehicles, particularly early on, are going to get a lot of attention when they do get into accidents, even if they are still safer as a whole. And that’s because they will make for good headlines.
Safety and statistics aside, in turns out that the answer to the above moral question could depend on where you’re from. Nature recently published what they are calling the largest ever survey of “machine ethics.” And out of this survey they discovered some pretty distinct regional variations across the 130 different countries that responded.
The responses were able to be grouped into 3 main buckets: Western, Eastern, and Southern. Here is the moral compass that was published in Nature:
And here are a few examples. In North America and in some European countries where Christianity has historically dominated, there was a preference to sacrifice older lives for younger ones. So that would guide how one might program the car for the case in which a pedestrian steps out in front.
In countries with strong government institutions, such as Japan and Finland, people were more likely to say that the pedestrian – who, remember, stepped out onto the road illegally – should be hit. Whereas countries with a high level of income inequality, often chose to kill poorer people in order to save richer people. Colombia, for example, responded this way.
Also interesting is the ethical paradox that this discussion raises. Throughout the survey, many people responded by saying that, in our example here, the pedestrian should be saved at the expense of the passengers. But they also responded by saying that they would never ever buy a car that would do this. Their safety comes first in the buying decision. And I can see that.
There’s an argument that these are fairly low probability scenarios. I mean, the last time you swerved your car, you probably weren’t driving on the edge of a cliff where any deviation from the path meant you would tumble to your death. But I still think that these are infinitely interesting questions that will need to be answered. And perhaps the answer will depend on which city you’re in.
There’s an argument going around these days that rural America is the new inner city. That is, rural America has replaced inner cities as the geographies facing the greatest socioeconomic challenges.
In fact, it’s time for the stigma associated with the term “inner city” to disappear – if it hasn’t already. Blight no longer seems to be the concern. Instead, the concern is that our inner cities are becoming exclusive enclaves for the rich.
The United States Department of Agriculture recently published data on educational attainment within rural areas. And since education is one of the biggest drivers of economic prosperity, it’s valuable to look at this data.
The first thing to note is that while educational attainment within rural areas is increasing, it still lags urban areas:
The second thing to note is that even with the same level of higher education, the labor market will generally pay you more if you live in an urban area:
However, the spread between rural-urban increases as you move up the education ladder. With less than a school diploma, there isn’t much difference. But with a graduate or professional degree, there’s about a ~35% increase in earnings, on average, according to the above chart.
So it should come as no surprise that many smart and educated people are choosing to live in urban areas. They should make more money.
All charts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
About 7.5% of American children born into the bottom quintile of the income distribution will eventually make it into the top one fifth. In the UK this number is about 9%. And in Canada and Denmark, the numbers are 13% and 13.5%, respectively. (The upper bound for these numbers is 20% since you can’t have more than 20% in the top 20% of the income distribution.)
Because of stats such as these, Freakeconomics recently asked: Is the American Dream really dead? And if so, should it instead be called the Canadian Dream, seeing how it’s more readily obtained.
Of course, it’s not necessarily as simple as 7.5% vs. 13%. Upward mobility exhibits a lot of regional variation. In the American southeast, the number is closer to 4%. Whereas in the San Francisco Bay Area, the number is up there with Canada and Denmark. However, this phenomenon is so location-specific that even kids growing up in San Francisco are twice as likely to get to the top 20% compared to kids growing up across the bridge in Oakland.
There’s also a question of spread. Canada and Denmark have less income inequality, meaning you don’t have to travel as far to get to the top of the income distribution.
Still, the reality is that it is becoming harder for Americans to climb the socioeconomic ladder. The number of 30-year old Americans who today earn more than their parents is dropping compared to previous decades. So what needs to be done? What is causing this erosion of the American Dream?
It turns out that city builders have an important role to play in solving this problem. Because where you live – and in particular where you grow up as a kid – matters.
The Freakeconomics episode examines a study that was done by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence Katz, called: The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children. And their findings were exactly that. Place matters. The study reexamines the findings of a program that was administered in the mid 1990′s in the US called Moving to Opportunity (MTO). This program randomly offered families living in high-poverty neighborhoods the opportunity to move to neighborhoods with far less poverty.
Upon initial review, the program was seen as a failure. There were some positive health outcomes, but no meaningful changes in income. But when Chetty and company took another look at the data – now with more time and IRS data on their side – they discovered that the impact was in fact dramatic. Relocated families raised children that earned 30% more, were 27% more likely to go to college, and 30% less likely to be a single parent. The key, however, was that the children had to relocate when they were young (< 13 year olds). The older they got, the less benefit they received from moving, eventually reaching a plateau where there was basically no benefit at all.
Here are the 5 things that ended up having significance in their findings:
Residential segregation by income and race is bad. Mixed neighborhoods are good. The southeast is filled with segregated cities and that’s one of the reasons why they underperform in this exercise. San Francisco, on the other hand, was far more mixed in the 80′s and 90′s when the kids belonging to this study were growing up. One could debate whether that’s still the case. I guess we’ll find out in a few decades.
Income inequality negatively impacts upward mobility. See The Great Gatsby Curve.
Single parent households seem to have an impact on upward mobility. However, the data suggests that it’s not just about whether the child in question grew up with married parents. The percentage of single parent households in the neighborhood also matters. Because even children in dual parent households in a neighborhood with lots of single parent households, showed muted upward mobility.
Social fabric. Connections to family and friends matter. It’s about having a support network. (Freakeconomics mentions a book called Bowling Alone that is now on my reading list.)
Not surprisingly, the quality of public schools matters.
All of the stats for this post were taken from this Freakeconomics Radio episode. For me, it is such an important reminder that the way we plan and build our cities can have meaningful and longstanding impacts on the kinds of children we raise.