Alan Turing’s “Heads in the Sand” Objection as a Strategic Move: Case Study of Autonomous Vehicles Debate

WAPNIARSKI, Karol; Paweł ŁUPKOWSKI a Tomáš ONDRÁČEK. Alan Turing’s “Heads in the Sand” Objection as a Strategic Move: Case Study of Autonomous Vehicles Debate. In The Ninth International Conference on Philosophy of Language and Linguistics (PhiLang 2025) & Philosophy of Argumentation (PhilArg 2025) Department of Linguistics and Communication University of Lodz (Poland). 2025.

Základní údaje

Originální název

Alan Turing’s “Heads in the Sand” Objection as a Strategic Move: Case Study of Autonomous Vehicles Debate

Autoři

WAPNIARSKI, Karol; Paweł ŁUPKOWSKI a Tomáš ONDRÁČEK ORCID

Vydání

The Ninth International Conference on Philosophy of Language and Linguistics (PhiLang 2025) & Philosophy of Argumentation (PhilArg 2025) Department of Linguistics and Communication University of Lodz (Poland), 2025

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Další údaje

Typ výsledku

Prezentace na konferencích

Utajení

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

Označené pro přenos do RIV

Ne

Organizační jednotka

Ekonomicko-správní fakulta

Klíčová slova anglicky

Autonomous (Automated) Vehicles; Alan Turing; Argumentation; Artificial Intelligence; Ethics

Příznaky

Mezinárodní význam, Recenzováno

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Anotace

V originále

In his seminal 1950 paper, Alan Turing discusses several counter arguments for the idea of thinking machines. We believe that the “Heads in the Sand” Objection (hereafter HSO) is especially interesting. HSO claims that the consequences of having machine thinking would be too dreadful, and thus it is better for us to believe it to be impossible. Turing’s response to the objection is short and to the point – the argument needs not to be refuted, as it is based on and appeals to emotions. The role of this argument however is important, since it points out some dangers behind the idea of thinking machines and the emotional reactions that it provokes. In our talk, we will provide an account of the debate concerning Automated Vehicles (Autonomous Vehicles, AV), which has been active in the years 2016 to 2018 as seen through the lenses of HSO. AV have raised many concerns both on the part of academics and the greater public, most of those concerns being related to the question of what the car should do in the case of an unavoidable accident, and various ethical considerations around it. Based on the sources’ analysis we conclude that both academic and popular discourse cannot grasp the ethical problems around AV through a rational discussion. In both cases, at some point, it becomes obvious that rational discussion will not be the way to solve the issue, and different means will be employed. The claim of inherent emotionality can be further justified by looking at the historical development of the discussion, or rather lack thereof. We argue that - as in the aforementioned objection - the fundamental nature of those discussions is not rational, but emotional. We also claim that the HSO scheme may serve as a handful tool for recognising irrational discussion types (also the current ones concerning LLMs).