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It's things like this that make me think all engineers need more training on the social consequences of the tools they build. This is an extreme case and I hop
by bem94 7y ago
It's things like this that make me think all engineers need more training on the social consequences of the tools they build.
This is an extreme case and I hope most engineers would look at this and understand how awful & damaging it could be; but given our influence on the world nowadays (as a class, if not always as individuals) we really need to be much more aware of what we're doing and how it affects people.
- otabdeveloper1 7y agoWhat's "awful" and "damaging" about outing whores? Or is this a case where a random shitty woman gets a free pass on acting antisocially and sociopathically just because she happens to be a woman? Protip: she's a sociopath and not going to be grateful or reward you for your altruism. You're just gonna be used.
- dang 7y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- xwdv 7y agoThe problem is that engineers are not always the ones in charge of the entire end result. If you want to do something unethical you can just split it up into harmless individual tasks and give it to a dozen engineers and then put it all together. It’s obfuscation. Some of the greatest atrocities we will see in tech (and we will see them) in the coming century will be the result of combining things created with good intentions. Not much we can do I’m afraid except endure.
- whenchamenia 7y agoAn engineer can quit if the project is unethical. Just 'enduring' is harmful to yourself, and others. Don't be a coward, at least stand up for your values.
- ravenstine 7y agoI agree with that sentiment a lot, but that's also easier said than done when one has a family, a mortgage, etc. Standing up for principles might seem worth it when losing a home and potentially screwing up one's family might since, if one quits, there are hordes of young sociopathic engineers who will continue the "disrupting" without you. That said, a lot of engineers actually are in the position to make demands. The chances of getting fired for saying "I'm not going to do that because it's wrong" are probably very low. Most managers would rather not feel bad, and hiring someone new is usually touted as being a pain in the ass.
- close04 7y agoBut doesn’t this apply to a doctor or lawyer who also have an ethics code to follow? Or basically any other line of work. The difference being that even a single software engineer’s work has a huge impact on society these days. More than any one doctor or lawyer. There may be some very good reasons that I haven’t thought of not to support this ethics idea. But putting food on the table shouldn’t be it because this one reason applies to any activity that could ever put food on the table, no matter how illegal, immoral, etc.
- phkahler 7y ago>> An engineer can quit if the project is unethical. Is creating face recognition software unethical? Your answer is not really important, just the fact that different people will classify this differently. I thought it was creepy as f* when facebook started wanting to automatically tag people in photos. But if that's all the tech was for it may well be ethical, if creepy to some. And yet, face recognition is really all that was used in this case - matching up porn images with social media ones.
- close04 7y agoA while ago I suggested that engineers could have an ethics code just like lawyers or doctors and the opinion wasn’t very popular (although with no explicitly stated reason). I still don’t see a reason not to have one. If your company is selling your code and software to abusive states and it’s used to persecute journalists (for example) continuing to do that work there is no different than any unethical work from a doctor or lawyer. And software developers have a huge impact on our life these days With their work. It’s reasonable to hold them to higher standards than in the past.
- todd8 7y agoI agree, but I don’t think education will end up solving the problem. Somewhere out there, there is a sociopathic engineer that will make antisocial choices anyway. Software is so easy to copy that it proliferates too easily. If a mechanical engineer creates some evil weapon, say a gun that shoots frozen mercury slugs (just to make up a ridiculous example), we don’t really have to worry about the proliferation of cryogenic weapons. When a software engineer pushes some questionable program’s source to github it’s game over.
- internet_user 7y agoYou do realize that morality and ethics can be drastically different from yours, and what you are proposing really amounts to "let's civilize those savages" ?
- listenallyall 7y agoWhat if a convenience store had security video of a clerk being shot and killed. Nobody recognizes the suspect's face in the video, so they want to use this tool to bring the killer to justice. Is that legal? Is it GPDR-complant? Clearly, the killer is not consenting. Another scenario: a neo-Nazi protest rally occurs, and counter-protesters use this tool to determine who the Nazis are, in order to publicly shame them. Is this OK? Again, the Nazis have not consented to the use of their images to shame or "out" them. You could go on and on... a vigilant neighbor filming a "porch pirate" stealing packages... someone filming people leaving a gay bar, an abortion clinic, a "massage parlor". Someone constantly running red lights. Who decides what is shaming vs what is "protecting people"?