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Proposals like this demonstrate the utter failure of our ethics education in computer science. In a field facing increasingly harder ethical questions every da
by sergiomattei 3y ago
Proposals like this demonstrate the utter failure of our ethics education in computer science.
In a field facing increasingly harder ethical questions every day, it’s important to start empowering our engineers to say “no” to ethically bankrupt things like this.
- wmf 3y agoYou might be disappointed. Ethics training can't force people with different political viewpoints to conform to yours; in fact it gives them better tools to explain their views.
- enumjorge 3y agoI don't understand why ethics in engineering has to be framed as a political discussion.
- wmf 3y agoYou can call it values if you want.
- Klonoar 3y agoI would take being disappointed over our current situation, which is effectively little to no focus on teaching the ethics at all.
- dgb23 3y agoYou mean rhetoric?
- Anvoker 3y agoI don't think any amount of ethics education will matter in the end in the face of the incentive structure that appeared in the industry. Strong cultural norms (e.g. hacker culture) might help for a while. But incentive structures eternally erode opposition. It could make it easier for developers to band together and try to collectively veto things like this. But corporations with money can always buy the expertise of people, have them undermine the community, create their own parallel communities and influence public opinion and legislators. FAANG salaries supercharge people's cognitive dissonance. They will find ways to excuse, minimize and ignore their contribution to the current situation. Even HackerNews developed a sub-subculture of people that were constantly going on threads and calling remote attestation worries as "FUD". It's unclear how to preserve cultural norms that stand in the way of market dominance. The only thing I can think of is having competing interests in the market. But whenever these align -- hell breaks loose.