5 ms·

Disgusting development and a horrible example of how destructive technology can be. This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through m

by cup 9y ago

Disgusting development and a horrible example of how destructive technology can be. This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through mandatory ethics classes throughout their education.

EduardoBautista 9y ago
Who gets to determine what is considered ethical?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 9y ago
  In general, the individual engineers do. The point of ethics training is to recognize that you have ethical obligations that extend past your job responsibilities, and that when your ethics conflict with your work tasks, it's not your ethics that should compromise. For some of us, that might mean not working on a project that we could reasonably foresee would result in the deportation of children who don't speak Spanish and have only ever known this country to some foreign country. For others, it might mean not working on projects that assist women in obtaining an abortion. Obviously, there's no "class" that settles the differing ethical boundaries we all have (though better ethics education would allow us to recognize the huge subset of ethics that we tend to share). The point is to tune in to our own ethics and not let the noise of professional life occlude them. As a field, I think we've allowed ourselves to simultaneously believe that we're doing the most important work that's being done this century, while at the same time believing that we're powerless to shape the outcomes of our labor. But that's not true at all: if you believe the former, then it's likely that we have immense power over the latter! So, I think the point of the root comment on this thread is well taken.
  - userbinator 9y ago
    For some of us, that might mean not working on a project that we could reasonably foresee would result in the deportation of children who don't speak Spanish and have only ever known this country to some foreign country. For others, it might mean not working on projects that assist women in obtaining an abortion. Unfortunately it seems a lot of engineers either don't have much in the way of ethics, or truly believe what they're doing is good. See all those willing to implement things like invasive telemetry, DRM, and walled gardens, for example. The "security" argument is pervasive and very convincing to those who don't realise that it's also a way for companies to enforce more control over its users. This also brings up another point: if you had to choose between not working on a project that goes against your ethics (leaving others to drive it toward its undesirable-to-you goal), or work on it but silently subvert it (as in subtly break it or otherwise impede its progress), which one would be the more ethical thing to do? In other words, "do everything you're told, just some things better than others"? Maybe I'm just optimistic, but the existence of jailbreaks, rooting, and flaws discovered in DRM schemes really make me want to believe that the latter exist.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      People have different morals and ethics. I don't have a problem with DRM, for instance, and even if we debated to the point where I had to concede some theoretical problem with it, it'd be pretty far down my list of ethical priorities. I'm not commenting to advocate for the notion that people should get an ethics education so they'll all turn out to be good Democratic Socialists. I'm saying, our field would be better off if people recognized that their ethics intersect with the field heavily, and they should do this work mindfully.
  - refurb 9y ago
    Ok, so if I'm an engineer and I think the ethical thing to do is help build a better license plate scanning technology to protect everyone from terrorism, then what?
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Then I guess you build better license plate scanning technology. That isn't obvious?
      - refurb 9y ago
        So being ethical doesn't really change anything?
        tptacek 9y ago
        No, that doesn't follow at all.
        refurb 9y ago
        Ok, maybe I'm misunderstanding. Problem: engineers working on things like license plate scanning Your solution: engineers should be ethical My comment: engineers can be ethical and still do things like license plate scanning Your comment: you agree From my vantage point it doesn't look like your recommendation changes anything.
        tptacek 9y ago
        I think if you re-read my comments, you'll see that you've left a bit out of that summary.
        tedunangst 9y ago
        Problem: engineers who think license plate scanners are unethical but build them anyway because "I'm not actually the person pulling the trigger".
- matt4077 9y ago
  As a first approximation, it would be beneficial to convince people of the concept‘s existence, and to get them to start questioning the implications of the work they do. As it is, too many in the tech community are willing to defend anything with arguments such as „if I don’t, someone else will“ or „technology is ethically neutral, it is the use...“.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Someone who is very good at it. There's a process for coming to group concensus on contended questions, in which individual volition and choice isn't possible. It's called "politics". It's messy, but I'm unaware of any better options.
quasse 9y ago
That was actually a part of my mechanical engineering degree. We had almost a half semester spent in one class on engineering ethics. Definitely no such thing covered during my master's degree in computer science.
maxxxxx 9y ago
I am sure a lot of people working on this stuff think they are doing something to secure their country and this is the ethical thing to do.
- ams6110 9y ago
  For that matter (and not to equate the two) people working in concentration camps thought they were serving their country and doing the right thing also. The point is we cannot rely on the ethics of the people doing it to stop it.
  - dang 9y ago
    Please don't do this here.
lend000 9y ago
While I agree this is horrible, mandatory ethics would have zero effect because: 1. Some people will need jobs. 2. Ethics are subjective. 3. Some people won't care. The correct solution would be in trying to vote in less authoritarian politicians. Americans haven't done a very good job of that over the last century.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  >1. Some people will need jobs. People are probably less likely to stand up when economic inequality widens and they have a cozy software engineer position.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > The correct solution would be in trying to vote in less authoritarian politicians. That requires a system where people actually have a meaningful vote... e.g. it's impossible in China, and for what its worth Chinese ethics are way, way different than typical Western-sourced ethics. In the US, the ability of people to have a meaningful vote has been largely dismantled by a number of bad factors: 1) gerrymandering leading to situations where a Democrat won't run in a Republican stronghold (or, less often, the other way around) 2) the Electoral College leading to a situation where despite losing the popular vote, the respective candidate does win the presidency (as happened with Trump and I believe also with George W) 3) states with "fixed" political leanings get largely ignored and campaigning largely takes place in contested/swing states. 4) voter disenfranchisement: in Germany, voting is generally on Sundays as most people do not have to work on weekends, thus improving turnout compared to the US where voting is on a Tuesday for whatever reason; also in the US there are all sorts of measures to make it harder for poor or minority people to vote, including weird arbitrary ID requirements.
  - lend000 9y ago
    Numbers 1, 2, and 3 can all be fixed, and fixing those fix number 4. For gerrymandering, there are plenty of proposals around requiring districts conform to some set of geometric rules. The electoral college issue gets a lot of attention, but the more fundamental problem is first-past-the-post voting. What we really need is approval-based voting (i.e. I approve of candidates A and B; whoever has the most approvals wins). Such would eliminate the incentive to solely vote for the lesser of two evils. The electoral college has a bigger influence than when the Constitution was written due to the even higher concentrations of people in urban centers -- the idea makes sense though, perhaps with some math we can find a compromise. Regardless, FPTP is much more serious. Easy to pass any legislation that changes voting and threatens all the incumbents? Not without a HUGE push, which I don't see happening anytime soon but why not try?
CoryG89 9y ago
For the record, I did have to take two ethics classes to get my BS in software engineering. One was an introductory ethics class mostly focusing on philosophy and ethical theories, the other was a class focusing on ethics as pertaining specifically to technology.

by cup 9y ago

EduardoBautista 9y ago

Who gets to determine what is considered ethical?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 9y ago
In general, the individual engineers do. The point of ethics training is to recognize that you have ethical obligations that extend past your job responsibilities, and that when your ethics conflict with your work tasks, it's not your ethics that should compromise. For some of us, that might mean not working on a project that we could reasonably foresee would result in the deportation of children who don't speak Spanish and have only ever known this country to some foreign country. For others, it might mean not working on projects that assist women in obtaining an abortion. Obviously, there's no "class" that settles the differing ethical boundaries we all have (though better ethics education would allow us to recognize the huge subset of ethics that we tend to share). The point is to tune in to our own ethics and not let the noise of professional life occlude them. As a field, I think we've allowed ourselves to simultaneously believe that we're doing the most important work that's being done this century, while at the same time believing that we're powerless to shape the outcomes of our labor. But that's not true at all: if you believe the former, then it's likely that we have immense power over the latter! So, I think the point of the root comment on this thread is well taken.
- userbinator 9y ago
  For some of us, that might mean not working on a project that we could reasonably foresee would result in the deportation of children who don't speak Spanish and have only ever known this country to some foreign country. For others, it might mean not working on projects that assist women in obtaining an abortion. Unfortunately it seems a lot of engineers either don't have much in the way of ethics, or truly believe what they're doing is good. See all those willing to implement things like invasive telemetry, DRM, and walled gardens, for example. The "security" argument is pervasive and very convincing to those who don't realise that it's also a way for companies to enforce more control over its users. This also brings up another point: if you had to choose between not working on a project that goes against your ethics (leaving others to drive it toward its undesirable-to-you goal), or work on it but silently subvert it (as in subtly break it or otherwise impede its progress), which one would be the more ethical thing to do? In other words, "do everything you're told, just some things better than others"? Maybe I'm just optimistic, but the existence of jailbreaks, rooting, and flaws discovered in DRM schemes really make me want to believe that the latter exist.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    People have different morals and ethics. I don't have a problem with DRM, for instance, and even if we debated to the point where I had to concede some theoretical problem with it, it'd be pretty far down my list of ethical priorities. I'm not commenting to advocate for the notion that people should get an ethics education so they'll all turn out to be good Democratic Socialists. I'm saying, our field would be better off if people recognized that their ethics intersect with the field heavily, and they should do this work mindfully.
- refurb 9y ago
  Ok, so if I'm an engineer and I think the ethical thing to do is help build a better license plate scanning technology to protect everyone from terrorism, then what?
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Then I guess you build better license plate scanning technology. That isn't obvious?
    - refurb 9y ago
      So being ethical doesn't really change anything?
      - tptacek 9y ago
        No, that doesn't follow at all.
        refurb 9y ago
        Ok, maybe I'm misunderstanding. Problem: engineers working on things like license plate scanning Your solution: engineers should be ethical My comment: engineers can be ethical and still do things like license plate scanning Your comment: you agree From my vantage point it doesn't look like your recommendation changes anything.
        tptacek 9y ago
        I think if you re-read my comments, you'll see that you've left a bit out of that summary.
        tedunangst 9y ago
        Problem: engineers who think license plate scanners are unethical but build them anyway because "I'm not actually the person pulling the trigger".
matt4077 9y ago
As a first approximation, it would be beneficial to convince people of the concept‘s existence, and to get them to start questioning the implications of the work they do. As it is, too many in the tech community are willing to defend anything with arguments such as „if I don’t, someone else will“ or „technology is ethically neutral, it is the use...“.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Someone who is very good at it. There's a process for coming to group concensus on contended questions, in which individual volition and choice isn't possible. It's called "politics". It's messy, but I'm unaware of any better options.

quasse 9y ago

That was actually a part of my mechanical engineering degree. We had almost a half semester spent in one class on engineering ethics. Definitely no such thing covered during my master's degree in computer science.

maxxxxx 9y ago

I am sure a lot of people working on this stuff think they are doing something to secure their country and this is the ethical thing to do.

ams6110 9y ago
For that matter (and not to equate the two) people working in concentration camps thought they were serving their country and doing the right thing also. The point is we cannot rely on the ethics of the people doing it to stop it.
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't do this here.

lend000 9y ago

While I agree this is horrible, mandatory ethics would have zero effect because: 1. Some people will need jobs. 2. Ethics are subjective. 3. Some people won't care. The correct solution would be in trying to vote in less authoritarian politicians. Americans haven't done a very good job of that over the last century.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>1. Some people will need jobs. People are probably less likely to stand up when economic inequality widens and they have a cozy software engineer position.
mschuster91 9y ago
> The correct solution would be in trying to vote in less authoritarian politicians. That requires a system where people actually have a meaningful vote... e.g. it's impossible in China, and for what its worth Chinese ethics are way, way different than typical Western-sourced ethics. In the US, the ability of people to have a meaningful vote has been largely dismantled by a number of bad factors: 1) gerrymandering leading to situations where a Democrat won't run in a Republican stronghold (or, less often, the other way around) 2) the Electoral College leading to a situation where despite losing the popular vote, the respective candidate does win the presidency (as happened with Trump and I believe also with George W) 3) states with "fixed" political leanings get largely ignored and campaigning largely takes place in contested/swing states. 4) voter disenfranchisement: in Germany, voting is generally on Sundays as most people do not have to work on weekends, thus improving turnout compared to the US where voting is on a Tuesday for whatever reason; also in the US there are all sorts of measures to make it harder for poor or minority people to vote, including weird arbitrary ID requirements.
- lend000 9y ago
  Numbers 1, 2, and 3 can all be fixed, and fixing those fix number 4. For gerrymandering, there are plenty of proposals around requiring districts conform to some set of geometric rules. The electoral college issue gets a lot of attention, but the more fundamental problem is first-past-the-post voting. What we really need is approval-based voting (i.e. I approve of candidates A and B; whoever has the most approvals wins). Such would eliminate the incentive to solely vote for the lesser of two evils. The electoral college has a bigger influence than when the Constitution was written due to the even higher concentrations of people in urban centers -- the idea makes sense though, perhaps with some math we can find a compromise. Regardless, FPTP is much more serious. Easy to pass any legislation that changes voting and threatens all the incumbents? Not without a HUGE push, which I don't see happening anytime soon but why not try?

CoryG89 9y ago

For the record, I did have to take two ethics classes to get my BS in software engineering. One was an introductory ethics class mostly focusing on philosophy and ethical theories, the other was a class focusing on ethics as pertaining specifically to technology.