There can be no passing of the buck to AI

Editor's note: Prosecutors in the United States recently announced that Uber will not be held responsible for the world's first fatal accident involving an autonomous car. Jin Zegang, a law professor at Tongji University, in an interview with ThePaper.cn, says:

An autonomous car, newly developed by Uber, still in its testing stage, struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in the US on March 18 last year.

The reason why prosecutors did not hold Uber accountable is that the autonomous driving system designed and developed by the company had detected the victim before the accident, but the car which was in computer-control mode failed to activate the emergency braking which the accompanying driver could also do. The driver who was supposed to be monitoring the car but who was watching TV programs on his smartphone instead may be held responsible for the accident.