Ancient Greek Wisdom Could Teach Self-Driving Cars How to Really Drive

Yet as autonomous vehicles edge onto real streets, from San Francisco to Shanghai, a more awkward truth is emerging.

Now two philosophers argue that the missing ingredient in autonomous vehicle design may be an idea older than the wheel itself: Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom.

The paper takes aim at one of the most persistent obsessions in autonomous vehicle ethics: the trolley problem.

An autonomous vehicle cannot be a phronimos, they concede, but it can be trained to display the functional properties of one: behavioral competence without comprehension.

Driving phronesis as a milestone for engineering autonomous vehicles.