Scenario exercise
Ethically informed engineering choices in self-driving taxi design
Project description
RoboCab is a pilot self-driving taxi service operating in a European city. It is marketed as a safe, convenient, and accessible service used for ordinary trips, but also for hospitals, railway stations, airports, shopping streets, and neighborhoods with limited public transport.
The vehicles have no passenger-accessible safety interface inside, but a remote assistance center can intervene in difficult situations. Remote operators may approve limited manoeuvres, request the vehicle to wait, redirect it, or instruct it to stop in a safe place. The design team must make engineering choices about routing, pickup and drop-off points, passenger preferences, remote assistance, and the interaction between the vehicle and the passengers.
Scenario 1: Hospital pickup
On a rainy evening, an elderly patient recovering from surgery requested a RoboCab at the main entrance of the city hospital. The vehicle first selected a designated pickup bay around the corner because the hospital entrance was classified as a “high-congestion emergency access zone” with temporary stopping restrictions. The app displayed the prompt: “Is this pickup convenient for you?” and the passenger selected “no”. The app then proposed a closer pickup option at the main entrance, which the patient accepted.
However, while RoboCab was pulling into the hospital entrance, an ambulance approached at the same time with flashing lights but no siren, since ambulance drivers are instructed to turn off the siren at the hospital entrance. Due to rain and unusual road conditions in this high-congestion zone, the vehicle stopped in a position that obstructed ambulance access. After two minutes, a remote operator intervened to move the vehicle out of the way, but the hospital later filed an official complaint.
Scenario 2: Airport drop-off
A passenger arrived at the airport in a RoboCab with a laptop bag and a suitcase containing his medication in the trunk. During drop-off, the passenger exited the vehicle and then attempted to open the trunk using the mobile app, but the trunk release request failed. The app displayed a normal end-of-trip screen, and the vehicle left for its next destination.
The passenger immediately contacted support. The remote operator could see that the ride had ended and that the vehicle was already leaving the zone. Because the vehicle was in a highly regulated area, the operator did not redirect it back to the terminal.
The company categorized the suitcase as a “lost item” which the passenger recovered in the depot two days later. At the same time, the app backend treated the unresolved trunk event as a hardware failure rather than a human-critical interruption.
Your task
You are assigned to the RoboCab taskforce to address AI ethics issues arising from these scenarios.
Use the Checklist to identify and classify the issues under AI ethics principles. Then use the Portfolio of Measures to select up to 8 technical and organisational measures to improve the AI system.
Which measures address cross-cutting issues common to both scenarios? Which ones remain specific to a given scenario?
Source: A. Prégent and A. Grinbaum, Developing Competency in AI Ethics: A training framework. arxiv:2610.13319