AI is proving that it can do more than just take people’s jobs and contribute to global warming. It’s also capable of solving complicated ethical hypotheticals — and getting a laugh.
On Jan. 7, X user @fofrAI posted a meme demonstrating how an AI platform reacted to the trolley problem. The trolley problem — an ethical dilemma in which a person is given the option of saving multiple people from a runaway streetcar by sacrificing a single person in their place — has long since devolved from an academic thought experiment into a series of increasingly unhinged memes.
In the video posted on @fofrAI’s X account, AI’s proposed solution to the trolley problem is to reverse course and back away slowly from the potential victims, thus sparing itself the work of having to choose at all.
In a DM message to the Daily Dot, @fofrAI said they had “no preconceptions” about what the AI would do when presented with the trolley problem, “but I laughed when it went backwards instead.”
Described by X user @DilettanteryPod as the “first good ai joke,” the video is garnering appreciation from commenters for its unique response to the predicament.
@fofrAI works in the field for the AI infrastructure provider Replicate and says “I’ve found AI funny before, but usually when it’s being accidentally absurd.” They started their X account in 2022 as a way of showcasing the things they were making and building at work, but they were surprised by Kling 1.6’s response to their prompt:” > a man decides whether the trolley runs over one person or many people.”
I tried to see how Kling v1.6 would handle the trolley problem.
— fofr (@fofrAI) January 7, 2025
But it just backed away slowly. pic.twitter.com/EMIHsbTykZ
As @JoeDotAverage put it, “Ai is already solving problems in ways we couldn’t imagine were possible.”
A study published in 2010 reports that people presented with the trolley problem will choose to save multiple lives unless the other option is a relative, romantic partner, or young person.” But now that we’ve seen AI’s take on the issue, it’s obvious humanity has been approaching the problem wrong this whole time.
Artificial intelligence may still be in its infancy, but users joked that AI is already demonstrating solid common sense by staying out of humanity’s moral conundrums. Or, as X user @RonnyBruknapp put it, “AI knowing when to step away shows better judgment than most humans.”
“Good work AI,” wrote @CampbellJAustin, above a trolley problem meme alongside an anthropomorphized AI declaring, “I reject your premise.”
AI’s hands-off approach to the trolley problem also offered commenters the opportunity to bust out their dusty references to the 1983 techno-thriller, WarGames. The film stars Matthew Broderick as a high-school student whose quest for new video games ends with him accidentally hacking into a military supercomputer.
At one point, the supercomputer analyzes a series of nuclear war scenarios and discovers that all of them end with humanity’s annihilation. “The only winning move,” the supercomputer concludes, “is not to play.”
The year is still young, but when it comes to who has the most pragmatic approach to surviving 2025, it would appear the robots are winning.
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