re: Self-driving cars: ethics and economic concerns

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What if you could buy a "parent bot" that was tasked nominally with taking care of your children and it had to run into a burning daycare center. It can prioritize rescuing YOUR child or it can prioritize rescuing the most children possible. Would you really buy a parent bot with the setting of the pure moral utility of possibly letting your child burn?

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That is different than the car example though. For the cars choose the lowest impact like most humans would if they were even capable of doing those calculations, problem solved. For the Nannybot, I think "joining the pack" of the family that buys it and therefor prioritizing it's own family members will be a natural way to program it.

The moral dilemma comes not for the personal Nannybot but the Daycarebot. Babies are dead weight, you can probably save more children by herding the walkers and crawlers out first. That wouldn't be the human reaction, most people would save the helpless babies, but saving more kids would be the utilitarian thing to do. And that's where the questions get interesting, is the choice they would make stripped of human emotion and instinct a better choice?