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This brings up a bit of a "trolley problem" of an ethical dilemma. Say you're asked to create a machine learning system, but you know that the data quality is s
by btown 7y ago
This brings up a bit of a "trolley problem" of an ethical dilemma. Say you're asked to create a machine learning system, but you know that the data quality is so poor that you're very likely to overfit in a way that will deny economic opportunities to underserved communities that currently have them. But if you don't create that system, you're denying economic opportunities to other underserved communities that currently do NOT have them. Do you take the job? Moreover, if you'll do less harm than someone else who might be hired, does that make a difference?
There's no Hippocratic oath for our profession, and in many ways that's important, because we create systems whose impact may very well outlive us and out-scale anything that a single medical professional could do. But that also doesn't mean we should operate in a utilitarian environment without constraints.
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago>>> no Hippocratic oath for our profession Sadly there is no profession for our profession. I often think the model for any software profession (if we can create that - something I doubt) is railway engineer - where the professional signs off on the safety / completeness of work done on the railway - and that no train can travel without it. It leads to plenty of uncompetitive practises - but also to ... y'know ... people not dying in crashes. How we start that is hard (probably something to do with safety critical software systems) because we aren't too sure what is the right way to build software. And then we have the fun problem of the members of the profession trying to decide the answer to your trolley problem. Sorry scratch that. The various legislatures proscribing the answer and the profession trying to implement the conflicting results !