4 ms·

Integrating social responsibility into core CS

22 points by luu 3y ago

turtleyacht 3y ago
Is there room for education on when things go south? Effective Whistleblowing Privacy-Preserving Patterns Ethical SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs Ethical SRE in the Time of AI Core Protest Principles Nonviolent Resistance Change from Within: Studies in Commerce Fundamentally, even if we know it to be wrong, and a market exists for it, what is the game-theoretic, optimal strategy? What is the ethical choice?
poorbutdebtfree 3y ago
Leave DIE to the humanities and arts majors please.
- MattRix 3y ago
  Why? It seems like something more CS students could learn about.
  - mattanimal 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - the_third_wave 3y ago
    The should learn about it in the same way that they should learn about other ideologies: not to make them their own but to be aware of their existence and their goals. History is there to be learnt from so as to avoid making the same mistake twice or more often so it is important for anyone to realise that DEI [1,2,3] is another term for critical social justice which is derived from critical theory [4] which is an expansion of Marxism meant to address the "faults" of the ideology which had kept the predicted revolutions from occurring in the early 1900's. Learn about it by all means, the more people learn about it the better they will be prepared when they are confronted by one if its many offshoots. [1] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-diversity/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-diversity/ [2] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-equity/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-equity/ [3] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-inclusion/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-inclusion/ [4] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-theory/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-theory/
- josephg 3y ago
  Ethics isn’t part of DEI. Ethics is a subject that humanity has been pondering over for thousands of years - it’s way older than the modern trends of focusing on diversity and inclusion. At my university ethics was a required subject for all engineering students. (And this is long before DEI was a thing). We had a special ethics course with a CS focus and CS TAs. The content included looking at lots of ethical frameworks (eg Kant, rule utilitarianism, etc) and analysing different choices or actions through those lenses. There’s lots of examples from CS history where software (intentionally or otherwise) has caused human suffering or deaths. We talked about them, not prescriptively but to help decide for ourselves what we would want to do if we are ever placed in a similar situation as those engineers. It’s good stuff. I’m not sure if it’s a direct result of that course, but I’ve been horrified over the years by some of the opinions I’ve seen here on HN when ethics comes up. Stuff like “well yes lying directly to your customers and chronically underinvesting in information security is unfortunate, but would you really want to risk your job over it? They’d fire you and get someone else!”. Argh yes! Kick up a fuss! You probably won’t lose your job. You will probably get more respect in your organisation, from the right people. In my opinion, you are responsible for the outcomes of your work. As a software engineer on the ground, the computer is literally doing your bidding. Would you personally lie to the face of thousands of your customers? If no, why are ok with telling the computer to do it on your behalf? We have power in society as engineers. Ethics asks us the question of how we want to wield that power. It’s much deeper question than preachy DEI stuff.
  - chjj 3y ago
    Not sure what you're on about. The linked page specifically references another page which mentions DEI by name: https://identity.cs.duke.edu/ https://identity.cs.duke.edu/ "Both computing departments and tech organizations have long struggled with issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion." It looks to me like you're using ethics as the motte.
    - cxr 3y ago
      DEI concerns comprise a subset of ethics, not the other way around. This isn't hard.
diebeforei485 3y ago
It's important that this sort of thing stick to general principles and not pander to the popular topics of the day.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cxr 3y ago
Social responsibility is about more than newly mainstream DEI programs. ACM and IEEE have promulgated professional codes of ethics for a while. Social responsibility can involve questions about everything from AI concerns (which HN has no qualms talking about) to whether to add a stored payment option (credit card numbers) on a POS terminal that you know will be deployed with no protections to saying "no" when a client that's an insurance carrier says they want their self-service online claims system to refuse to accept a submission unless a checkbox is ticked that explicitly opts the submitter in to forms of correspondence that work to the submitter's disadvantage (e.g. non-written), including overriding what preferences/demands they've communicated to the carrier in the past. I think every course I took that was offered under the umbrella of the college of engineering at my school had a mandate that the instructor spend one week (2–3 classes) out of the semester on professional ethics, complete with HBS-style case studies. And this wasn't recently. Related: this month's issue of Communications of the ACM also has an obvious focus. <https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/5 https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/5>
- askvictor 3y ago
  It would be nice if there were some sort of industry protection for engineers who do refuse unethical tasks. At present, I'd expect you'd get fired pretty quickly if you said no (at a lot of companies).
  - cxr 3y ago
    Most "software engineers" don't have licenses/credentials backing up their job title, anyway. Compared to other industries, it's lightly regulated at best. So long as that's the case, I think the current balance, which includes the possibility that a programmer will be dismissed for failure to comply, is reasonable. From an HR and PR standpoint, companies who do so will be facing the threat of blowback related to disclosure that a programmer was fired for using their judgment on an ethics question rather than taking orders. That's not nothing.
    - derivagral 3y ago
      > That's not nothing Any thoughts on how most ignored the "software engineer" from Google and his thoughts on their AI? [0] I know personally I tended to ignore it and let it get buried. However, in this sort of context I do wonder what would make something like that actually effective in persuading others. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-engineer-ai-bot-sentient-blake-lemoine https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-en...
ralusek 3y ago
Social responsibility in CS, in my experience, means that if a given function doesn't produce equal outputs for two given inputs, all it takes to suggest that the function is biased is an assertion that the outputs should have been the same if the function weren't biased. How different the inputs were, even along the criteria that the function actually uses in order to produce its output, is completely irrelevant.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Functions are tools for humans to cause the computer to achieve a desired output. If the function isn't generating the desired output, change the function. We can talk all day about how the history of facial recognition has used things like the eye-nose-mouth T-shape or high-contrast contours to lock in on the target, but if at the end of the day the solution works for people with light skin and not people with dark skin, "HP computers are racist" for every meaningful (i.e. user-experienced) definition of the concept. (reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM)
  - ralusek 3y ago
    > How different the inputs were, even along the criteria that the function actually uses in order to produce its output, is completely irrelevant This is why I said this. The example you gave, where software was trained on people with lighter skin and therefore doesn't produce the intended results on people with darker skin, is noncontroversially racially biased. As in, control for everything but skin color, and the color of someone's skin is actually a parameter that the function "uses" in order to produce its output. For this reason, people tend to agree that this is an actual problem with the program that needs fixing.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      I follow. Can you give a concrete example of what you mean? "How different the inputs were, even along the criteria that the function actually uses in order to produce its output, is completely irrelevant..." In what context did this come up?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
beardedwizard 3y ago
You get responsibility with skin in the game. Software engineers should be liable for the software they produce.
kurtoid 3y ago
Do it for the business majors first
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fwlr 3y ago
During your career as a software developer, it is inevitable that you will have to interact with social scientists and other activists who care a lot about investigating your work for potential biases. It’s normal to have an initial reaction to this curriculum suggestion along the lines of “this is irrelevant, teach me about data structures and control flow instead”, but I would encourage you to view it useful practice for challenges you will likely encounter. After all, a bad answer to these challenges is much more likely to get you fired than other mistakes like causing an outage or pushing inefficient code to production.
neilv 3y ago
This would've been easier to institute in the '90s. For around 20 years, CS departments have been pipelines to "greed is good" careers. It'll be interesting to see whether it gets genuine traction, and what will have to happen before then.

22 points by luu 3y ago

Is there room for education on when things go south? Effective Whistleblowing Privacy-Preserving Patterns Ethical SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs Ethical SRE in the Time of AI Core Protest Principles Nonviolent Resistance Change from Within: Studies in Commerce Fundamentally, even if we know it to be wrong, and a market exists for it, what is the game-theoretic, optimal strategy? What is the ethical choice?

poorbutdebtfree 3y ago

Leave DIE to the humanities and arts majors please.

MattRix 3y ago
Why? It seems like something more CS students could learn about.
- mattanimal 3y ago
  [flagged]
- the_third_wave 3y ago
  The should learn about it in the same way that they should learn about other ideologies: not to make them their own but to be aware of their existence and their goals. History is there to be learnt from so as to avoid making the same mistake twice or more often so it is important for anyone to realise that DEI [1,2,3] is another term for critical social justice which is derived from critical theory [4] which is an expansion of Marxism meant to address the "faults" of the ideology which had kept the predicted revolutions from occurring in the early 1900's. Learn about it by all means, the more people learn about it the better they will be prepared when they are confronted by one if its many offshoots. [1] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-diversity/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-diversity/ [2] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-equity/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-equity/ [3] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-inclusion/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-inclusion/ [4] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-theory/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-theory/
josephg 3y ago
Ethics isn’t part of DEI. Ethics is a subject that humanity has been pondering over for thousands of years - it’s way older than the modern trends of focusing on diversity and inclusion. At my university ethics was a required subject for all engineering students. (And this is long before DEI was a thing). We had a special ethics course with a CS focus and CS TAs. The content included looking at lots of ethical frameworks (eg Kant, rule utilitarianism, etc) and analysing different choices or actions through those lenses. There’s lots of examples from CS history where software (intentionally or otherwise) has caused human suffering or deaths. We talked about them, not prescriptively but to help decide for ourselves what we would want to do if we are ever placed in a similar situation as those engineers. It’s good stuff. I’m not sure if it’s a direct result of that course, but I’ve been horrified over the years by some of the opinions I’ve seen here on HN when ethics comes up. Stuff like “well yes lying directly to your customers and chronically underinvesting in information security is unfortunate, but would you really want to risk your job over it? They’d fire you and get someone else!”. Argh yes! Kick up a fuss! You probably won’t lose your job. You will probably get more respect in your organisation, from the right people. In my opinion, you are responsible for the outcomes of your work. As a software engineer on the ground, the computer is literally doing your bidding. Would you personally lie to the face of thousands of your customers? If no, why are ok with telling the computer to do it on your behalf? We have power in society as engineers. Ethics asks us the question of how we want to wield that power. It’s much deeper question than preachy DEI stuff.
- chjj 3y ago
  Not sure what you're on about. The linked page specifically references another page which mentions DEI by name: https://identity.cs.duke.edu/ https://identity.cs.duke.edu/ "Both computing departments and tech organizations have long struggled with issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion." It looks to me like you're using ethics as the motte.
  - cxr 3y ago
    DEI concerns comprise a subset of ethics, not the other way around. This isn't hard.

diebeforei485 3y ago

It's important that this sort of thing stick to general principles and not pander to the popular topics of the day.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cxr 3y ago

Social responsibility is about more than newly mainstream DEI programs. ACM and IEEE have promulgated professional codes of ethics for a while. Social responsibility can involve questions about everything from AI concerns (which HN has no qualms talking about) to whether to add a stored payment option (credit card numbers) on a POS terminal that you know will be deployed with no protections to saying "no" when a client that's an insurance carrier says they want their self-service online claims system to refuse to accept a submission unless a checkbox is ticked that explicitly opts the submitter in to forms of correspondence that work to the submitter's disadvantage (e.g. non-written), including overriding what preferences/demands they've communicated to the carrier in the past. I think every course I took that was offered under the umbrella of the college of engineering at my school had a mandate that the instructor spend one week (2–3 classes) out of the semester on professional ethics, complete with HBS-style case studies. And this wasn't recently. Related: this month's issue of Communications of the ACM also has an obvious focus. <https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/5 https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/5>

askvictor 3y ago
It would be nice if there were some sort of industry protection for engineers who do refuse unethical tasks. At present, I'd expect you'd get fired pretty quickly if you said no (at a lot of companies).
- cxr 3y ago
  Most "software engineers" don't have licenses/credentials backing up their job title, anyway. Compared to other industries, it's lightly regulated at best. So long as that's the case, I think the current balance, which includes the possibility that a programmer will be dismissed for failure to comply, is reasonable. From an HR and PR standpoint, companies who do so will be facing the threat of blowback related to disclosure that a programmer was fired for using their judgment on an ethics question rather than taking orders. That's not nothing.
  - derivagral 3y ago
    > That's not nothing Any thoughts on how most ignored the "software engineer" from Google and his thoughts on their AI? [0] I know personally I tended to ignore it and let it get buried. However, in this sort of context I do wonder what would make something like that actually effective in persuading others. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-engineer-ai-bot-sentient-blake-lemoine https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-en...

ralusek 3y ago

Social responsibility in CS, in my experience, means that if a given function doesn't produce equal outputs for two given inputs, all it takes to suggest that the function is biased is an assertion that the outputs should have been the same if the function weren't biased. How different the inputs were, even along the criteria that the function actually uses in order to produce its output, is completely irrelevant.

shadowgovt 3y ago
Functions are tools for humans to cause the computer to achieve a desired output. If the function isn't generating the desired output, change the function. We can talk all day about how the history of facial recognition has used things like the eye-nose-mouth T-shape or high-contrast contours to lock in on the target, but if at the end of the day the solution works for people with light skin and not people with dark skin, "HP computers are racist" for every meaningful (i.e. user-experienced) definition of the concept. (reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM)
- ralusek 3y ago
  > How different the inputs were, even along the criteria that the function actually uses in order to produce its output, is completely irrelevant This is why I said this. The example you gave, where software was trained on people with lighter skin and therefore doesn't produce the intended results on people with darker skin, is noncontroversially racially biased. As in, control for everything but skin color, and the color of someone's skin is actually a parameter that the function "uses" in order to produce its output. For this reason, people tend to agree that this is an actual problem with the program that needs fixing.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    I follow. Can you give a concrete example of what you mean? "How different the inputs were, even along the criteria that the function actually uses in order to produce its output, is completely irrelevant..." In what context did this come up?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

beardedwizard 3y ago

You get responsibility with skin in the game. Software engineers should be liable for the software they produce.

kurtoid 3y ago

Do it for the business majors first

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fwlr 3y ago

During your career as a software developer, it is inevitable that you will have to interact with social scientists and other activists who care a lot about investigating your work for potential biases. It’s normal to have an initial reaction to this curriculum suggestion along the lines of “this is irrelevant, teach me about data structures and control flow instead”, but I would encourage you to view it useful practice for challenges you will likely encounter. After all, a bad answer to these challenges is much more likely to get you fired than other mistakes like causing an outage or pushing inefficient code to production.

neilv 3y ago

This would've been easier to institute in the '90s. For around 20 years, CS departments have been pipelines to "greed is good" careers. It'll be interesting to see whether it gets genuine traction, and what will have to happen before then.