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This article is about New Zealand's schools but This is absolutely correct in the US too. We are seeing the results of programmers not understanding or caring a

This article is about New Zealand's schools but This is absolutely correct in the US too. We are seeing the results of programmers not understanding or caring about what their code skills can do. Viruses, black hat hacking and privacy invasion are partly due to people in the computer industry not understanding or caring about ethics. None of my computer courses included ethics as part of the lectures or reading. But I've taken business courses that at least touch on ethics. And if you are planning to get a degree in Law,Medicine,Genetics and business you will be taking courses that teach ethics. You can even take complete courses on the subject to meet requirements but in the computer sciences field it's not standard or required. With the impact computer technology has on our society we definitely need to start teaching it in schools.

jjoonathan 9y ago
Is there any evidence that "teaching ethics" works? I wouldn't expect it to, but I'd be happy to be wrong. > Viruses, black hat hacking and privacy invasion are partly due to people in the computer industry not understanding or caring about ethics. Yes, but the breakdown is .1% not understanding and 99.9% not caring (which typically takes the form of rationalization).
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  You can have effective or ineffective teaching of ethics, but you can teach it. We aren't born ethical creatures, it is a learned behavior.
  - jjoonathan 9y ago
    Kids learn at a very early age to pay attention to what people do over what people say. "Do as I say, not as I do" is always going to be ineffective.
- voidhorse 9y ago
  I'd be skeptical that it can teach you a moral reaction in the sense that after taking this course you'll leap at any injustice, but what it can do, and what is important, is furnish you with an ethical vocabulary and number of frameworks of thought to consider when a potential ethics issue crops up and stir that discussion/consider the situation from multiple angles--yes it won't force you to do that, but it will give you the tools you need to do so should you encounter that situation rather than leaving you a sitting duck while your superiors or whomever decide it's okay for you not to fix that bug in your self driving car code that you're aware could prevent the car from ever ceasing to accelerate (or some equivalently ridiculous and dangerous issue).
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  There's no evidence that teaching ethics makes one more ethical. Professional ethicists are no more moral than other philosophy professors or other professors. http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/EthSelfRep.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/EthSelfRep.h... The Self-Reported Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors (in draft) Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust Abstract: We examine the self-reported moral attitudes and moral behavior of 198 ethics professors, 208 non-ethicist philosophers, and 167 professors in departments other than philosophy on eight moral issues: academic society membership, voting, staying in touch with one's mother, vegetarianism, organ and blood donation, responsiveness to student emails, charitable giving, and honesty in responding to survey questionnaires. On some issues we also had direct behavioral measures that we could compare with self-report. Ethicists expressed somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as vegetarianism and charitable donation. However, on no issue did ethicists show significantly better behavior than the two comparison groups. Our findings on attitude-behavior consistency were mixed: Ethicists showed the strongest relationship between behavior and expressed moral attitude regarding voting but the weakest regarding charitable donation.
com2kid 9y ago
> None of my computer courses included ethics as part of the lectures or reading. Ethics was a required course for me back in 2005. Looking at ABET requirements[0] for 2016-2017, ethics is still a requirement. I'll admit that more than 1 course would've been nice, but it is part of the required curriculum in the US. (Also required was a course in doing presentations, which was actually quite helpful!) [0]http://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditation-criteria/criteria-for-accrediting-computing-programs-2016-2017/ http://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditation-criteria/cri...
- rsj_hn 9y ago
  There is no such thing as a "required curriculum in the U.S." Each university has their own requirements for each degree, and you can pick your major/degree. In my university, since I was in the college of liberal arts and sciences and tested out of English, I had to take basically 4 semesters of any class that had a "literacy" label. I choose Chinese History (2 classes), Chaucer (1 class), and Post Impressionist Art (1 class). That fulfilled the liberal arts portion of my graduation requirement. In no universe was there a requirement to take an "ethics" class -- that's way too specific and most ethics classes are rare in today's college curriculum. I just needed 4 classes with an "L" next to their class description in the syllabus, and there were a wide variety -- literally hundreds -- to choose from. I think, in general, a humanities education has real benefits. Ethics, well, it depends on the course and person taking it. Unfortunately a lot of the humanities courses are in some strange "hate the patriarchy" mode where you are taught to hate white people, and this isn't really something conducive to building products with mass appeal in a nation with a white majority. Having said that, there are many great opportunities to learn more about the humanities just by reading the classics or taking some online courses. You have to pick and choose. I actually think most programmers are much better people -- much more honest and ethical people -- than the humanities graduates I know, and that this is primarily due to their avoidance of humanities classes as currently taught in american universities. Also, there is something about studying the humanities that tends to make you look down on people, which is something I didn't see when I interacted with mathematicians or engineers.
- rsj_hn 9y ago
  I've never heard of Abet. The U.S. higher education accreditation system is decentralized. Schools can pick which (if any) they want to accredit them, but the real schools pick regional bodies: For instance, University of Texas at Austin is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges. MIT is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Caltech is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) -- see a pattern? None of them are accredited by Abet.
ajarmst 9y ago
"Ethics" when taught as part of a professional education usually relates to professional ethics as encoded by codes of practice. While certainly related to morality, legality, religious ethos, humanism, etc. professional ethics shouldn't be conflated with them. As a case in point, I doubt that many would argue that American lawyers and businesspeople are, as a group, noticeably more moral actors than computer programmers, despite the benefit of that additional training. Moral behaviour is the concern of a society, not merely of a profession. If we are concerned that actors in important sectors of our economy are behaving immorally, our first thought shouldn't be to blame the CS curriculum, as though three credits of pondering "Eve knows they're faking the test results for QA, but her shares vest in 30 days" would fix the problem. Rather, I think what might be needed is the development of a stronger sense that IT development should be a professional pursuit, in the sense of a community of practice that holds itself to a high standard, and has governing bodies that will enforce that standard. That is, it may be time to treat developers the way we treat doctors, lawyers and engineers. (Of course, many already are engineers, and thus already have a code of practice and the requisite three credits of "dilemma of the week" studies.)
- rocqua 9y ago
  The profession is currently growing too quickly for any such community to form. Any such community is going to exclude some people (the immoral ones). As morality and competency at programming aren't that strongly correlated, those people are still going to be able to find work. Attempts to limit this by regulation will constrict supply of labour so much it'll never pass. Arguably, it should never pass.
  - ajarmst 9y ago
    There's probably a tighter labour market for physicians, yet no one claims we should de-regulate their standards of professional practice. And, while morality and competency may not be correlated, ethics and quality certainly are. Codes of practice invariably include clauses around providing quality work, guarding the best interests of your client, avoiding conflicts of interest, obeying pertinent regulations and laws, etc. And it need not be the entire profession: in Engineering, technicians and technologists often do much of the work, but the product cannot ship without an Engineer (who is governed by a code of practice and faces a variety of sanctions for violating it) signing off on it. Simply adding that sort of requirement for public contracts, FCC sign off, etc. would go a long way to enforcing a code. Advancement beyond a certain level would require that you meet the training and experience standards of the profession. Again, we already do this with lots of professions (including Software Engineering in some jurisdictions)---pretending that it somehow couldn't be done for developers needs better evidence than anything I've yet seen. Of course you can always buy cheaper products from non-professionals. You can do that with medicine and product safety already. And you get precisely what you pay for.

jjoonathan 9y ago

Is there any evidence that "teaching ethics" works? I wouldn't expect it to, but I'd be happy to be wrong. > Viruses, black hat hacking and privacy invasion are partly due to people in the computer industry not understanding or caring about ethics. Yes, but the breakdown is .1% not understanding and 99.9% not caring (which typically takes the form of rationalization).

WillPostForFood 9y ago
You can have effective or ineffective teaching of ethics, but you can teach it. We aren't born ethical creatures, it is a learned behavior.
- jjoonathan 9y ago
  Kids learn at a very early age to pay attention to what people do over what people say. "Do as I say, not as I do" is always going to be ineffective.
voidhorse 9y ago
I'd be skeptical that it can teach you a moral reaction in the sense that after taking this course you'll leap at any injustice, but what it can do, and what is important, is furnish you with an ethical vocabulary and number of frameworks of thought to consider when a potential ethics issue crops up and stir that discussion/consider the situation from multiple angles--yes it won't force you to do that, but it will give you the tools you need to do so should you encounter that situation rather than leaving you a sitting duck while your superiors or whomever decide it's okay for you not to fix that bug in your self driving car code that you're aware could prevent the car from ever ceasing to accelerate (or some equivalently ridiculous and dangerous issue).
barry-cotter 9y ago
There's no evidence that teaching ethics makes one more ethical. Professional ethicists are no more moral than other philosophy professors or other professors. http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/EthSelfRep.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/EthSelfRep.h... The Self-Reported Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors (in draft) Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust Abstract: We examine the self-reported moral attitudes and moral behavior of 198 ethics professors, 208 non-ethicist philosophers, and 167 professors in departments other than philosophy on eight moral issues: academic society membership, voting, staying in touch with one's mother, vegetarianism, organ and blood donation, responsiveness to student emails, charitable giving, and honesty in responding to survey questionnaires. On some issues we also had direct behavioral measures that we could compare with self-report. Ethicists expressed somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as vegetarianism and charitable donation. However, on no issue did ethicists show significantly better behavior than the two comparison groups. Our findings on attitude-behavior consistency were mixed: Ethicists showed the strongest relationship between behavior and expressed moral attitude regarding voting but the weakest regarding charitable donation.

com2kid 9y ago

> None of my computer courses included ethics as part of the lectures or reading. Ethics was a required course for me back in 2005. Looking at ABET requirements[0] for 2016-2017, ethics is still a requirement. I'll admit that more than 1 course would've been nice, but it is part of the required curriculum in the US. (Also required was a course in doing presentations, which was actually quite helpful!) [0]http://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditation-criteria/criteria-for-accrediting-computing-programs-2016-2017/ http://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditation-criteria/cri...

rsj_hn 9y ago
There is no such thing as a "required curriculum in the U.S." Each university has their own requirements for each degree, and you can pick your major/degree. In my university, since I was in the college of liberal arts and sciences and tested out of English, I had to take basically 4 semesters of any class that had a "literacy" label. I choose Chinese History (2 classes), Chaucer (1 class), and Post Impressionist Art (1 class). That fulfilled the liberal arts portion of my graduation requirement. In no universe was there a requirement to take an "ethics" class -- that's way too specific and most ethics classes are rare in today's college curriculum. I just needed 4 classes with an "L" next to their class description in the syllabus, and there were a wide variety -- literally hundreds -- to choose from. I think, in general, a humanities education has real benefits. Ethics, well, it depends on the course and person taking it. Unfortunately a lot of the humanities courses are in some strange "hate the patriarchy" mode where you are taught to hate white people, and this isn't really something conducive to building products with mass appeal in a nation with a white majority. Having said that, there are many great opportunities to learn more about the humanities just by reading the classics or taking some online courses. You have to pick and choose. I actually think most programmers are much better people -- much more honest and ethical people -- than the humanities graduates I know, and that this is primarily due to their avoidance of humanities classes as currently taught in american universities. Also, there is something about studying the humanities that tends to make you look down on people, which is something I didn't see when I interacted with mathematicians or engineers.
rsj_hn 9y ago
I've never heard of Abet. The U.S. higher education accreditation system is decentralized. Schools can pick which (if any) they want to accredit them, but the real schools pick regional bodies: For instance, University of Texas at Austin is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges. MIT is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Caltech is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) -- see a pattern? None of them are accredited by Abet.

ajarmst 9y ago

"Ethics" when taught as part of a professional education usually relates to professional ethics as encoded by codes of practice. While certainly related to morality, legality, religious ethos, humanism, etc. professional ethics shouldn't be conflated with them. As a case in point, I doubt that many would argue that American lawyers and businesspeople are, as a group, noticeably more moral actors than computer programmers, despite the benefit of that additional training. Moral behaviour is the concern of a society, not merely of a profession. If we are concerned that actors in important sectors of our economy are behaving immorally, our first thought shouldn't be to blame the CS curriculum, as though three credits of pondering "Eve knows they're faking the test results for QA, but her shares vest in 30 days" would fix the problem. Rather, I think what might be needed is the development of a stronger sense that IT development should be a professional pursuit, in the sense of a community of practice that holds itself to a high standard, and has governing bodies that will enforce that standard. That is, it may be time to treat developers the way we treat doctors, lawyers and engineers. (Of course, many already are engineers, and thus already have a code of practice and the requisite three credits of "dilemma of the week" studies.)

rocqua 9y ago
The profession is currently growing too quickly for any such community to form. Any such community is going to exclude some people (the immoral ones). As morality and competency at programming aren't that strongly correlated, those people are still going to be able to find work. Attempts to limit this by regulation will constrict supply of labour so much it'll never pass. Arguably, it should never pass.
- ajarmst 9y ago
  There's probably a tighter labour market for physicians, yet no one claims we should de-regulate their standards of professional practice. And, while morality and competency may not be correlated, ethics and quality certainly are. Codes of practice invariably include clauses around providing quality work, guarding the best interests of your client, avoiding conflicts of interest, obeying pertinent regulations and laws, etc. And it need not be the entire profession: in Engineering, technicians and technologists often do much of the work, but the product cannot ship without an Engineer (who is governed by a code of practice and faces a variety of sanctions for violating it) signing off on it. Simply adding that sort of requirement for public contracts, FCC sign off, etc. would go a long way to enforcing a code. Advancement beyond a certain level would require that you meet the training and experience standards of the profession. Again, we already do this with lots of professions (including Software Engineering in some jurisdictions)---pretending that it somehow couldn't be done for developers needs better evidence than anything I've yet seen. Of course you can always buy cheaper products from non-professionals. You can do that with medicine and product safety already. And you get precisely what you pay for.