AI systems are no longer just hypothetical tools —they’re making decisions in healthcare, finance, transportation, and law enforcement. But what happens when these systems must make choices with real ethical consequences? This talk dives into the “Trolley Problem,” a famous philosophical dilemma, to explore how ethical reasoning plays out when machines must make morally loaded decisions.

In this session, I’ll unpack how developers and open-source contributors can think critically about the ethical foundations we encode into AI models — particularly in environments where lives, rights, or opportunities are at stake. We'll explore real-world examples (like autonomous vehicles and content moderation systems), the tension between fairness and utility, and how open-source contributors play a role in shaping AI’s moral compass.