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> I find this new trend of trying to predict how technology will be used - and presuming its users will either be evil or too stupid to use it responsibly incre

> I find this new trend of trying to predict how technology will be used - and presuming its users will either be evil or too stupid to use it responsibly incredibly patronizing. People who create something, who research something, should by definition have a better grasp on their topic than everyone else. To expect that they are more knowledgeable, and therefore better equipped to see what it means, and therefore also have a civic duty to explain this to less well-informed, not not patronizing. It's acknowledging their expertise. > Engineers are not philosophers and should not be placed in this role. This is an interview in Nature. Academics with the ambition to publish in academic journals, be they prestigious like Nature or Science, or smaller and more niche like <insert your favourite journal here>, are taking on a role of a philosopher. And sure, engineers may "just" apply technology by comparison, but honestly I find that a very dismissive attitude as well. They are the "praxis" to academia's "theory", meaning that what they do actually has consequences in our lives. So if anything, their works comes with even more of a moral obligation to "Do The Right Thing" than that of academics.

slededit 8y ago
> People who create something, who research something, should by definition have a better grasp on their topic than everyone else. To expect that they are more knowledgeable, and therefore better equipped to see what it means, and therefore also have a civic duty to explain this to less well-informed, not not patronizing. It's acknowledging their expertise. They are experts in how the technology works. That doesn't make them an expert in how other humans will take advantage of what they have discovered/created. I've taken the charity of assuming the scientist or engineer themselves had non-evil aims. > This is an interview in Nature. Academics with the ambition to publish in academic journals, be they prestigious like Nature or Science, or smaller and more niche like <insert your favourite journal here>, are taking on a role of a philosopher. Yes, but a philosopher on which topic? A doctorate from an engineering background is not equally as educated as someone with degrees in history or other studies of human nature in regards to the societal effects of technology.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  Doctorate of philosophy. The Ph in PhD actually means something. It's not some kitschy decoration.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - crazygringo 8y ago
    But it has zero to do with philosophy in the modern sense. Wikipedia will easily tell you that "philosophy" in this context refers to an original Greek root and an archaic way of categorizing fields of knowledge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy
    - s-shellfish 8y ago
      Since when did Wikipedia become the authority on what a PhD represents? That's a little freaking ironic if you don't mind me saying. A PhD represents it's own authority by virtue of being awarded by the tiny fraction of people in the world who actually understand the problem space you might be studying enough to say "Research accepted. We trust you can take our place as educators and researchers in the future when we are dead." Also, there's a good reason the Greeks had that archaic way of categorizing knowledge. Hyper-connectivity of all knowledge available at once is a total clusterfuck to deal with from an individual mind perspective. Just because it's old doesn't make it wrong. History repeats itself, etc.
  - wolfgke 8y ago
    > Doctorate of philosophy. > The Ph in PhD actually means something. It's not some kitschy decoration. In Germany, the doctor's degrees are quite different. Typical ones for the HN audience are (for a long list cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liste_akademischer_Grade_(Deutschland)&oldid=179471483#Doktorgrad https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liste_akademische... ): - "Dr.-Ing." for engineering (typically including Computer Science) - "Dr. rer. nat." (doctor rerum naturalium) for natural sciences (typically also including mathematics). Even though the university of Frankfurt am Main issues the "Dr. phil. nat." (doctor philosophiae naturalis) title instead, the "nat." ending for the latter one is very important to distinguish it from the "humanities doctor's degree" "Dr. phil." (doctor philosophiae) TLDR: In Germany, the names of the doctor's degrees make it very clear that they have nothing to do with philosophy.
Bartweiss 8y ago
> To expect that they are more knowledgeable, and therefore better equipped to see what it means... At least in computing, this seems to have been largely false. Whatever my respect for the expertise of creators, their track record on predicting the future uses of their developments has been genuinely bad. I don't think that's an indictment of their skills, just an acknowledgement of how complex and rapidly-changing systems really work. Understanding the future impact of ARPANET was impossible without also anticipating the rise of home computers, but the creators of ARPANET had no special expertise on that point. Computability experts and chip designers got predictions about topics from weather modeling to AI Go play totally wrong because everything from GPU computation to neural network advances have rendered their accurate domain knowledge misleading. And the track records of AI experts predicting the real-world role of AI is so infamous that I don't think I need to elaborate. Honestly, I expect that this would be computer science's Modernist moment. Corbusier and friends were genuinely excellent architects, but the move from "designing on sound principles" to "trusting that we know all the future uses of buildings and designing for those" was disastrous. The result is a legacy of inflexible building design, hostile urban planning, and government-embraced block housing that caused real harm to the people it was inflicted on. "A better grasp on their topic than everyone else" is presumably true, but it's not enough. Complex systems are often beyond what any one person can predict, and that only becomes more true when they're also rapidly changing from many directions. I don't think most creators in computer science can make predictions good enough to act on until their creations have been exposed to the world for a while.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  > Honestly, I expect that this would be computer science's Modernist moment. Corbusier and friends were genuinely excellent architects, but the move from "designing on sound principles" to "trusting that we know all the future uses of buildings and designing for those" was disastrous. First of all, I love me a good Le Corbusier bash, and I totally agree with you here. I also get where you're coming from. However, what the article asks for is the equivalent to demanding that Le Corbusier would have to ask at every step "how could my design, supposedly built on sound principles, have negative consequences?" which isn't something I recall being a thing he used to do. Of course it won't be enough, but one could argue that if the experts don't even bother to try, things will be even worse.
cirgue 8y ago
that would be great if our engineering education system placed any real value on humanities or social sciences. They don’t. Most of the engineers I know aren’t even remotely equipped to work out how their products might impact society, and to be honest even fewer actually care enough to change their behavior or take risky positions in front of their bosses.

slededit 8y ago

> People who create something, who research something, should by definition have a better grasp on their topic than everyone else. To expect that they are more knowledgeable, and therefore better equipped to see what it means, and therefore also have a civic duty to explain this to less well-informed, not not patronizing. It's acknowledging their expertise. They are experts in how the technology works. That doesn't make them an expert in how other humans will take advantage of what they have discovered/created. I've taken the charity of assuming the scientist or engineer themselves had non-evil aims. > This is an interview in Nature. Academics with the ambition to publish in academic journals, be they prestigious like Nature or Science, or smaller and more niche like <insert your favourite journal here>, are taking on a role of a philosopher. Yes, but a philosopher on which topic? A doctorate from an engineering background is not equally as educated as someone with degrees in history or other studies of human nature in regards to the societal effects of technology.

s-shellfish 8y ago
Doctorate of philosophy. The Ph in PhD actually means something. It's not some kitschy decoration.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- crazygringo 8y ago
  But it has zero to do with philosophy in the modern sense. Wikipedia will easily tell you that "philosophy" in this context refers to an original Greek root and an archaic way of categorizing fields of knowledge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    Since when did Wikipedia become the authority on what a PhD represents? That's a little freaking ironic if you don't mind me saying. A PhD represents it's own authority by virtue of being awarded by the tiny fraction of people in the world who actually understand the problem space you might be studying enough to say "Research accepted. We trust you can take our place as educators and researchers in the future when we are dead." Also, there's a good reason the Greeks had that archaic way of categorizing knowledge. Hyper-connectivity of all knowledge available at once is a total clusterfuck to deal with from an individual mind perspective. Just because it's old doesn't make it wrong. History repeats itself, etc.
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > Doctorate of philosophy. > The Ph in PhD actually means something. It's not some kitschy decoration. In Germany, the doctor's degrees are quite different. Typical ones for the HN audience are (for a long list cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liste_akademischer_Grade_(Deutschland)&oldid=179471483#Doktorgrad https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liste_akademische... ): - "Dr.-Ing." for engineering (typically including Computer Science) - "Dr. rer. nat." (doctor rerum naturalium) for natural sciences (typically also including mathematics). Even though the university of Frankfurt am Main issues the "Dr. phil. nat." (doctor philosophiae naturalis) title instead, the "nat." ending for the latter one is very important to distinguish it from the "humanities doctor's degree" "Dr. phil." (doctor philosophiae) TLDR: In Germany, the names of the doctor's degrees make it very clear that they have nothing to do with philosophy.

Bartweiss 8y ago

> To expect that they are more knowledgeable, and therefore better equipped to see what it means... At least in computing, this seems to have been largely false. Whatever my respect for the expertise of creators, their track record on predicting the future uses of their developments has been genuinely bad. I don't think that's an indictment of their skills, just an acknowledgement of how complex and rapidly-changing systems really work. Understanding the future impact of ARPANET was impossible without also anticipating the rise of home computers, but the creators of ARPANET had no special expertise on that point. Computability experts and chip designers got predictions about topics from weather modeling to AI Go play totally wrong because everything from GPU computation to neural network advances have rendered their accurate domain knowledge misleading. And the track records of AI experts predicting the real-world role of AI is so infamous that I don't think I need to elaborate. Honestly, I expect that this would be computer science's Modernist moment. Corbusier and friends were genuinely excellent architects, but the move from "designing on sound principles" to "trusting that we know all the future uses of buildings and designing for those" was disastrous. The result is a legacy of inflexible building design, hostile urban planning, and government-embraced block housing that caused real harm to the people it was inflicted on. "A better grasp on their topic than everyone else" is presumably true, but it's not enough. Complex systems are often beyond what any one person can predict, and that only becomes more true when they're also rapidly changing from many directions. I don't think most creators in computer science can make predictions good enough to act on until their creations have been exposed to the world for a while.

vanderZwan 8y ago
> Honestly, I expect that this would be computer science's Modernist moment. Corbusier and friends were genuinely excellent architects, but the move from "designing on sound principles" to "trusting that we know all the future uses of buildings and designing for those" was disastrous. First of all, I love me a good Le Corbusier bash, and I totally agree with you here. I also get where you're coming from. However, what the article asks for is the equivalent to demanding that Le Corbusier would have to ask at every step "how could my design, supposedly built on sound principles, have negative consequences?" which isn't something I recall being a thing he used to do. Of course it won't be enough, but one could argue that if the experts don't even bother to try, things will be even worse.

cirgue 8y ago

that would be great if our engineering education system placed any real value on humanities or social sciences. They don’t. Most of the engineers I know aren’t even remotely equipped to work out how their products might impact society, and to be honest even fewer actually care enough to change their behavior or take risky positions in front of their bosses.