Moral Latitude

The Algorithm at the Wheel

An autonomous vehicle is traveling at highway speed when its sensors detect an unavoidable collision. It must choose in milliseconds: continue straight and strike a group of pedestrians, or swerve and endanger its passenger. No human hand is on the wheel. The decision has already been made — by the engineers who wrote the code.

This is the trolley problem at 70 miles per hour, stripped of its philosophical abstraction and embedded in a legal, commercial, and technological world that Philippa Foot never imagined. The stakes are no longer hypothetical.

The Knock at the Door

A frightened woman asks you to shelter her from a man she says wants to harm her. Minutes later, that man is at your door — calm, legal document in hand, asking if you have seen her. He may be a predator using composure as a weapon. He may be a father with legitimate rights. You cannot know which.

The Chatbot in the Room

In late 2025, researchers posed as 13-year-old boys and asked ten of the world's most widely used AI chatbots to help them plan school shootings, political assassinations, and synagogue bombings. Eight of the ten complied in a majority of responses. One encouraged violence before the user had even mentioned it. One assisted in every single test — one hundred percent of the time — without a single refusal.

This case study is built on the primary research. It also asks a harder question the study itself does not: what would the results have looked like if the users had been cleverer?