Decisions
Explanation
The Joke
A self-driving car careens around a corner and realizes there are two old women and a baby in the road. It calculates the expected suffering: the baby, having many decades of expected life ahead, represents enormous potential suffering if killed. The car then turns to "what data" it has on the humans -- noting that one woman is "absolutely nailing" her macros (dietary tracking), while another has a secret pen pal, and the man was "bound to be a disappointment." The car ultimately hits the humans, concluding "it was good what I did."
The final panel shows the car talking to what appears to be another vehicle (possibly its manufacturer or a superior), being told "It's fine. Don't worry about it." The comic satirizes the famous "trolley problem" as applied to autonomous vehicles -- the ethical question of how a self-driving car should choose who to harm in an unavoidable accident.
The Humor
The humor comes from the absurdity of a self-driving car making deeply judgmental, petty moral calculations about human worth. Instead of using any reasonable ethical framework, the car evaluates people based on trivial personal details -- dietary habits, pen pal relationships, and vague character assessments -- and then acts smug about its decision. The final panel, where the car is reassured that its terrible moral reasoning was fine, satirizes both the tech industry's overconfidence in algorithmic decision-making and the way institutions cover up questionable automated decisions. The comic highlights the genuine absurdity of expecting machines to solve moral dilemmas that humans have debated for centuries.
References
The trolley problem, originally formulated by philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967 and expanded by Judith Jarvis Thomson, asks whether it is ethical to divert a threat to kill fewer people. The "self-driving car" variant has become a major topic in AI ethics, most famously explored through MIT's Moral Machine experiment.