Recently, I participated in an activity called Moral Machine. Before doing this activity, I thought that making a decision between two options would be simple if the number of people involved was clearly different. However, when I actually started answering the situations, I realized that moral decisions are not always simple.
The Moral Machine presents different situations involving a self-driving car. In each situation, the car faces an unavoidable accident, and I have to decide what the car should do. Sometimes the choice is between saving the passengers or pedestrians. In other situations, the people involved are different in terms of age, gender, profession, physical fitness, or whether they are humans or animals. The activity is designed to understand how people make judgments in difficult life-and-death situations.
For me, this activity was not just a game. It became a way of looking at my own thinking and asking myself: “Why did I choose this person to survive rather than the other?”
My First Reaction
When I started the activity, I initially looked at the number of people in each situation. My first thought was that if I could save more people, I should choose that option. But as the scenarios continued, the decisions became more complicated.
For example, there were situations where the car could either continue straight or change its direction. Both choices would result in someone's death. In some cases, there were differences between children, adults, elderly people, athletes, executives, homeless people, and animals. This made me think about whether one life can really be considered more valuable than another.
The most difficult part was that there was no completely comfortable answer. Whatever option I selected, I knew that someone else would die. This made me slow down and think about my values rather than simply clicking an option.
How I Made My Decisions
While making my choices, I noticed that saving a larger number of people was one of the strongest factors for me. My final result also shows a very strong preference for saving more lives.
I also noticed that I did not give the same importance to every characteristic. For example, my results show a very strong preference for humans over pets. This made me realize that I naturally place human life above animal life when I am forced to make such a choice.
My result also shows a strong preference for fit people over large people and for people with higher social value over lower social value. These results made me uncomfortable because they forced me to question whether I was unconsciously judging people's worth according to their physical condition or social position.
The Most Difficult Part
The hardest part of the activity was not choosing between two numbers. It was choosing between different kinds of people.
For example, when a situation involved younger and older people, I had to think about whether age should matter. When it involved people following or breaking the law, I had to think about whether someone who breaks a traffic rule deserves less protection.
Similarly, when the activity presented people with different professions or social positions, I had to ask myself whether a person's profession should determine whether they live or die.
These questions are difficult because, in real life, we normally do not decide who deserves to live. We believe that every human life has value. But the Moral Machine deliberately creates situations where I am forced to make such a comparison.
What My Results Revealed About Me
The results were interesting because they showed me some of my own preferences more clearly than I had expected.
My strongest preference was saving more lives. I also gave relatively low importance to protecting the passengers compared with the other possible factors. My result for avoiding intervention was also on the lower side, which suggests that I was more willing to accept an active decision rather than simply avoid intervention.
My gender preference leaned toward males, but my age preference was much less extreme. This made me realize that even when I believe that I am making a logical decision, personal preferences can still influence my judgment.
The most important learning for me was that my moral decisions are influenced by several factors at the same time. I may think that I am simply trying to save the maximum number of people, but the characteristics of those people can also influence my thinking.
Ethics and Technology
The activity also made me think about the relationship between ethics and technology.
A self-driving car is a machine, but it operates in a world where human beings have different values, beliefs and expectations. If such a car faces an unavoidable accident, someone has to decide what principles the machine should follow.
This raises an important question:
If humans themselves cannot agree about the right moral decision, how can we expect technology to make the perfect moral decision for us?
The Moral Machine made me understand that technology is not completely separate from human values. The decisions programmed into technology can reflect the values and assumptions of the people who design it.
The activity itself is a research project concerned with people's judgments about difficult moral dilemmas involving life-and-death situations.
What I Learned from the Activity
There are several important things that I learned from this experience.
First, moral decisions are complicated.
There is not always one correct answer. Two people can look at the same situation and make completely different choices because they have different values.
Second, our decisions reveal our hidden biases.
I did not realize how much factors such as age, gender, physical fitness, social value and species could influence my decisions until I saw my results.
Third, numbers are not everything.
Although I strongly preferred saving more lives, some situations made me think about whether saving a larger number is always morally right.
Fourth, technology needs ethical thinking.
Artificial intelligence and self-driving technology can make decisions that directly affect human beings. Therefore, technical development should also include ethical discussion.
Finally, the activity taught me to question my own thinking.
Instead of asking only, “What did I choose?”, I started asking, “Why did I choose it?” I think this second question is much more important.
My Learning Outcomes
After completing the Moral Machine activity, I can identify the following learning outcomes:
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I developed ethical awareness by thinking about difficult life-and-death situations.
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I became more aware of my own biases and preferences.
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I learned that moral decisions can have multiple perspectives.
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I understood the importance of critical thinking before making a decision.
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I understood the connection between ethics and artificial intelligence.
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I learned to question my own decisions instead of assuming that they are automatically correct.
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I became more aware that technology can reflect human values and social assumptions.
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I learned that there may not always be a perfect solution to an ethical problem.
My Final Reflection
The Moral Machine activity was a short activity, but it made me think much more deeply than I expected. At the beginning, I treated the situations like simple choices. But after answering several questions, I realized that every choice represented a moral position.
The most interesting part was seeing my final results. They showed me patterns in my decisions that I had not consciously noticed while completing the activity. For example, I strongly preferred saving more lives and humans over pets, while some other preferences were less straightforward.
I also realized that making a moral decision is different from making an ordinary decision. In an ordinary decision, I can often choose an option that satisfies me. In these scenarios, however, every option has a negative consequence.
The activity therefore taught me something important about myself: before judging someone else's decision, I should try to understand the values behind that decision. Different people may choose differently not because one person is good and another is bad, but because they may prioritize different moral principles.
In the end, Moral Machine did not give me a simple answer about what is right or wrong. Instead, it gave me something more valuable—a chance to question my own values, understand my decision-making process, and think critically about the ethical challenges that technology may create in the future.
My experience with Moral Machine was both challenging and educational. It showed me that even a simple-looking digital activity can raise serious questions about human life, morality, law, technology and social values.
The biggest lesson I take from this activity is that ethical thinking is not about finding an easy answer; it is about understanding the consequences of our choices and being honest about the values behind them.
That is what made this activity meaningful for me.
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