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Software engineering isn't medicine. It isn't that difficult to learn and you can wield many of the advantages without much training. If software folks refuse

Software engineering isn't medicine. It isn't that difficult to learn and you can wield many of the advantages without much training. If software folks refuse to assist with morally questionable tasks, those tasks will be compartmentalized and the unethical components will be handed off to people willing to do the job. Sadly, just about everyone in ML/AI is contributing to an easily weaponized technology. Every time you make it easier to train a network, every time you make it faster to train a network, every time you improve an image recognition algorithm, every time you improve the latency/jitter of inference... you're contributing to the pile of knowledge which will be leveraged to control populations or enable military action. Most people stay unaware of it and just focus on the benefits. Some of us just grow to accept it.

ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
> Software engineering isn't medicine. It isn't that difficult to learn I would never hire someone that treats software engineering as something easier that medicine or other branches of engineering.
- randomdata 6y ago
  Easy to say when you've never hired anyone. The parent is right. Software engineering is advantaged by a much more simplistic feedback loop. Software's "Hello, World" is validated in milliseconds. Medicine's "Hello, World" could take 30 years of clinical trials to ensure that you haven't killed anyone. It is easy because it is quick, allowing a greater understanding within an equal amount of time. In fact, the adage of years of experience comes from learning that actually take years to encounter different circumstances and see the results play out in order to fully understand what you're dealing with. This is almost never a problem for software engineers, especially in the learning phase. Software engineers can gain "years of experience" each day by seeing the results of what they are doing in practically real-time.
  - ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
    > Easy to say when you've never hired anyone. Funny how you can make that statement.

ex_amazon_sde 6y ago

> Software engineering isn't medicine. It isn't that difficult to learn I would never hire someone that treats software engineering as something easier that medicine or other branches of engineering.

randomdata 6y ago
Easy to say when you've never hired anyone. The parent is right. Software engineering is advantaged by a much more simplistic feedback loop. Software's "Hello, World" is validated in milliseconds. Medicine's "Hello, World" could take 30 years of clinical trials to ensure that you haven't killed anyone. It is easy because it is quick, allowing a greater understanding within an equal amount of time. In fact, the adage of years of experience comes from learning that actually take years to encounter different circumstances and see the results play out in order to fully understand what you're dealing with. This is almost never a problem for software engineers, especially in the learning phase. Software engineers can gain "years of experience" each day by seeing the results of what they are doing in practically real-time.
- ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
  > Easy to say when you've never hired anyone. Funny how you can make that statement.