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As engineers, we must consider the ethical implications of our work

• pavanky 13y ago
  The problem with statements like this is, whose ethics should one be held against ? The ethics of the majority population are usually more misses than hits. Ethics of the peers will perhaps be better but will still suffer from different kinds of prejudices (for ex. discovery above all else among scientists). This leaves the ethics of self which most people should and will follow. The only thing anyone else can do is make sure people are held accountable for the consequences of their actions.
• rjknight 13y ago
  I think this is a good point, but it runs into some particular problems when dealing with software, in particular open source software, where there is no direct relationship between the person creating the software and the person using it - in fact, it's not automatically true that the person creating the software knows anything at all about who is using it.
  • lowmagnet 13y ago
    We can only make certain that our individual contributions are ethical, correct, and secure. It helps a little to assuage those particular fears, I think.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• TheCapn 13y ago
  Its written into our Code of Ethics in Canada that all Engineers are to put the public good above that of our own personal gain or that of our employer. Our tasks are to be selfless and to the betterment of all mankind but like any difficult subject there's a fog of gray areas and open interpretation to be had. Heck we wear the Iron Ring as a reminder of this sworn duty. However, the role we claim to take on, true "selflessness" is near impossible to reach in practice. Before we are engineers we are people and have basic needs. Without whipping out my Googlefu I would wager there are certainly more cases of people blowing the whistle and seeing their way of life crumble around them than there are who get protected by law. There is massive resistance to change from those who call the shots and if you're to go against the grain you're looking to sacrifice your career, life, health, etc.. The engineer says "you need to say something or people will die" but the person says "your family needs to eat". In the end I think engineers weigh decisions of ethics in the moment. A protocol, security appliance or other technology development isn't bad, its how its governed to say when its harmful and to or how it gets implemented into the bigger picture that starts to cross ethical boundaries. Any engineer sees the good in his/her work and is perhaps aware of its dark side but elects to overlook it for the good it will provide. Asking engineers to hold themselves to this standard is good. A self-governed society with regulation helps everyone for the better but I feel anyone tasked with decisions that effect the public at large should be held to this accountability. I think I'm preaching to the choir at this point though.
  • canistr 13y ago
    While it's true as engineers we must be ethical, try to ask the question of ethics with regards to what we do, and do stand by those ethics in the face of adversity, the reality is that we are but only engineers. Without a historical grasp for lessons learned in the past and training on how specifically to handle ethical situations (and I can attest that the Intro to Engineering Ethics are poor lessons for practical purposes), there truly needs to be people versed in such code of ethics to really do the work (hence the ACLU, EFF, various Privacy Commissioners of Ontario/Canada, etc.) as well as within the organizations doing the work (lawyers, policy analysts, etc.)
  • onebaddude 13y ago
    >"The engineer says "you need to say something or people will die" but the person says "your family needs to eat"." This is the eternal moral conundrum. And the latter justification has led to some historically horrendous events.
    • mikestew 13y ago
      As far as I can tell, it's not a conundrum that many software engineers will face. As for the U. S., the worst that's going to happen is that one goes and finds another job. In the worst imaginable case (that is very unlikely to happen), one begs at an exit ramp off the interstate highway. Oh, you'll sacrifice some pride, but you won't starve. The most likely case is that the person doesn't say "your family needs to eat", but rather "I'll have to explain why we gave up the leased BMW and the kids aren't getting iPads for Christmas" (or pick your own lifestyle impact that doesn't involve going without food). Maybe India is different, Europe I'm inclined to believe not so different. Few of us will have to explain to our children that they are hungry because Mommy didn't take that job at Lockheed Martin.
  • mseebach 13y ago
    > Its written into our Code of Ethics in Canada that all Engineers are to put the public good above that of our own personal gain or that of our employer. That's great. Which part of "protecting the motherland against terrorists" would not satisfy that code? I'd bet that the vast majority of the (necessarily quite competent) engineers that built the NSA infrastructure believed (and possibly still do) that that is what they're doing. It would surprise me severely if a majority of them was making a trade-off between "family eats" and "the right thing to do". We're not talking about people that plausibly do not have alternative employment available. These are highly competent engineers and they could go work for any number of companies with decidedly less evil businesses if they felt their ethics were being compromised.
• dreamdu5t 13y ago
  Americans think working for the NSA is ethical. Everyone I've met who has worked for the NSA or their contractors believes in the surveillance state. Even the Guardian is not clear on this. Does the Guardian support the existence of the NSA, or not? You can't have your cake and eat it too.
  • pingswept 13y ago
    Some Americans think working for the NSA is ethical. I'm an American engineer, and I would not work for them, given their recent history. I would be surprised if you found an American working for the NSA who didn't do so willingly-- people in that position can easily find other jobs, so they do.
  • tobiasu 13y ago
    It's pretty easy to divide the world in black and white, but rarely helps anyone.
  • wavefunction 13y ago
    You don't think you're biasing your analysis by concluding that every NSA related person believes in what they're doing? People that don't believe in what the NSA is doing wouldn't work there. Its going to be very hard to find someone who doesn't believe, since adults that change their long-held opinions are pretty rare. To name one that did change his opinion of his "mission," Edward Snowden.
  • xradionut 13y ago
    People think working for Goldman Sachs is ethical. People participating in the Summer Olympics think Russia is ethical. People buying Nikes and Fuji water think they are ethical. Where do you stop?
• rm999 13y ago
  > Engineers have, in many ways, built the modern world and helped improve the lives of many. Of this, we are rightfully proud. What's more, only a very small minority of engineers is in the business of making weapons or privacy-invading algorithms. Morality is relative - by defining what is and isn't moral the article loses the opportunity to make a bigger, more inclusive point. While some people may think spying is wrong, others, like the Economist (http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588861-america-will-not-and-should-not-stop-spying-clearer-focus-and-better-oversight-are-needed http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588861-america-will-...) have argued that it's not a bad thing. Similarly, building weapons isn't bad (per se); as the ancient adage goes: "if you want peace, prepare for war". My point isn't to start an off-topic debate, it's to point out that morality is complex and subjective, and it's up to the individual to make their own decisions. Personally I would never work for the NSA or a defense contractor, but I understand why some people do. I think building a strong moral code is very important, and it's a bad idea to let other people do it for you.
  • pingswept 13y ago
    I don't know that I would agree with you that morality is relative, but I strongly agree with your larger point that you shouldn't let other people build your moral code for you. I also would never[1] work for the NSA or a defense contractor. [1] By "never," I mean that I cannot imagine a realistic scenario in which I would accept such a job. I can imagine an unrealistic scenario in which the head of the NSA has kidnapped my child and is holding New York hostage with a ticking time bomb in which I would accept such a job gladly.
    • Ensorceled 13y ago
      That is the best "HN Disclaimer", I have seen on a comment.
    • blister 13y ago
      As someone who has done both of those things, the pay is great and the work is interesting. The only thing that sucks is the work environment. SCIFs are a terrible place to be a programmer.
• kabdib 13y ago
  I've had Richard Stallman personally lambaste me for unethical behavior, namely by not quitting my job at Apple because he disagreed with Apple's behavior. While I agree that ethics are important, there are people who will use ethics-like arguments to manipulate you. I make shooter video games. Is that a bad thing? According to some people I'm evil. I've written software that people used to write software that people used to kill people, is that okay? Saying, "We gotta follow ethics" is great stuff, but I'm unwilling to be used.
  • icambron 13y ago
    I'm sympathetic to the broad point your making, but your example isn't very good: > I make shooter video games. Is that a bad thing? According to some people I'm evil. If you thought that shooter video games were bad and you built them anyway, that would be poor ethics. That other people think shooter video games are evil isn't what matters; it's what you think that matters.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • mseebach 13y ago
      The essence is that the people who built the unethical NSA tools most likely did not consider the things they did unethical, so calling on people to be ethical as a response to the NSA leaks only work if "ethical" is understood as "you can't build surveillance tools for the NSA even if you personally believe it's ethical".
      • melling 13y ago
        var allHackersHaveSamePoliticalBeliefs=FALSE; while (! allHackersHaveSamePoliticalBeliefs) { // Should randomize topics NSA, Snowden, Wikileaks, US Govt, US Military postPoliticalStoryToHackerNews(); sleep(1_DAY); }
      • Crito 13y ago
        There are roughly two sorts of people to consider here. The people who agree that the project they are working on is unethical (or would agree if they stopped to think about it), and the people who honestly believe that their work is ethical. Obviously when we tell engineers to consider the ethical implications of the project that they are working on, we are talking to the first group (particularly the parenthesized subgroup). The people who believe their work is unethical won't stop working on it just because we disagree, but that should not discourage us from encouraging people to grow a spine and not work on projects that they have ethical objections to. For people in the second group, we can work with alternative techniques. One possibility is socially ostracizing and blacklisting people who continue to work on unethical projects. (As discussed at some length on HN three or so weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6714585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6714585)
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• bredman 13y ago
  > When doctors or nurses use their knowledge of anatomy in order to torture or conduct medical experiments on helpless subjects, we are rightly outraged. Why doesn't society seem to apply the same standards to engineers? I think the difference we draw between the two is that an engineer builds things that can be used for many purposes (defense or offense for example) and we as a society generally agree with one of those two uses. When a doctor abuses their knowledge to cause pain they are the ones making a choice we disagree with. Anyways, yes engineers should think about how their work can (and will) be used but I think it's disingenuous to compare them to patient torturing doctors.
• laveur 13y ago
  Am I the only one that is disappointed that there was no image from the Movie "Real Genius"?
• icegreentea 13y ago
  Your morality and ethics are your own. How you choose to align your beliefs with those around you is up to you. Just be aware the non-alignment will cause friction and conflict, and that that choice was yours. But more seriously, regardless of your ethical views, we should be more mindful of the effects of our work cause it's often pretty clear that those effects aren't actually thought through. Understand that what negative impacts may have from your frame of reference, and figure out if they are acceptable for you before hand. Case in point, say you can develop a system that will 100% secure the communication and organization of resistance groups in countries with oppressive government. There is no guarantee that the end result of that is something you want. Maybe it'll lead to genocide of the once ruling tribe once the government is overthrown. Maybe it gets replaced with something worse. And certainly, "bad people" at home will get their hands on it. Can you deal with that? Gotta make up your mind. No action takes place in a vacuum.
  • enraged_camel 13y ago
    >>Your morality and ethics are your own. No. Only morality is defined by the individual. Ethics are defined by groups and societies. http://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethics_vs_Morals http://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethics_vs_Morals
    • dragonwriter 13y ago
      The distinction you (and the site you link) propose between "morals" and "ethics" is far from universally used, even in the domain of philosophy which concerns morals/ethics. Notably, its not even consistent with the definitions given in the "references" provided on the linked site, which seems to adopt the principle that if you assert something boldly and provided references to "support" it, it doesn't matter if the references actually support it, people will just assume your description is authoritative because you gave references.
  • nickff 13y ago
    Ethics are not necessarily your own, and can take the form of an enforceable code in a number of professional organizations. Some sources define ethics as being a set of normative values common to a group of people, and morals as being subset of the individual's normative values.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• leeoniya 13y ago
  it would be a strange feeling indeed working on surveillance code that could (and almost inevitability will) be deployed against me.
  • angersock 13y ago
    Lucky for you just today Grouper has decided to give you that opportunity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6855114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6855114
• Theodores 13y ago
  Quite a few of my university friends went off to join the military-industrial-circus and I saw their rationale for doing so change over time. Initially something like having learned the ADA programming language coupled with a poor degree result meant that 'defence' was the only option open to them unless they wanted to stack shelves at a supermarket. Then the family came along, with the mortgage and the responsibilities of being a mature adult. The rationale shifted, working for the military machine was now just a means to an end, for bread on the table, where there are bills to pay. This is what happens.
  • gjm11 13y ago
    I don't understand what change you're describing. Initially they went to work in the defence industry because it was their only option unless they wanted to stack shelves. Later they continued working in the defence industry because it was their only option to put bread on the table and pay the mortgage. Those both look to me like "I'm doing it because it's the only option I have that uses my skills to do something that pays decently". What I'd find more interesting would be if people tended to shift (1) from "I do this because I think it is a noble way to serve my country" to "I do this even though it's horrible because the alternative is poverty" or (2) from "I do this because the alternative is poverty" to "actually it turns out that this is a noble way to serve my country".
• whiddershins 13y ago
  I could write music for commercials, it pays very well. I choose not to on ethical grounds. If it were my only choice to feed my family, I would change my mind. But it is hard to truly terrorize people with music, although I've been accused of it. ;) Should personal ethics factor in to what we do as work? Absolutely. More than most ethical decisions, what we do as work can profoundly affect the world around us. Are these distinctions easy and clear? No. Is that a reason to stop thinking about it and just do whatever is most fun and pays best? In my opinion, no. This is one of the greatest questions we all face, how our daily actions affect others, and I no longer expect quick and definitive answers. But it means a lot just to keep looking.
• anonee 13y ago
  Posting this anonymously for obvious reasons. I've worked in the defence sector with embedded systems. Some engineers do work ethically within unethical companies, particularly defence companies. There are lots of people working out how best to fuck up the delivery and implementation of the latest and greatest killing machines and surveillance technologies. Skilled engineers can also skillfully make total lemons too. Some high profile projects that failed were pretty much sabotaged by the staff on ethical grounds. This is not discussed outside of the organisations, nor is it discussed inside the organisations in detail but if something is designed to wage war, it might not get there in the end.
• jpk 13y ago
  This reminds me of Mike Monteiro's talk, "How Designers Destroyed the World". http://vimeo.com/68470326 http://vimeo.com/68470326 He was talking about web/industrial/etc designers, and this is talking about engineers. It doesn't matter what field you're in, the moral of the story is: Be cognizant of how your work affects the world, and be prepared to say "no" to requirements that will likely affect others negatively.
• ctdonath 13y ago
  For my B.S.C.E., we were required to take an ethics course. By the end, everyone was convinced being ethical was a fast track to job loss & blacklisting.
  • RodericDay 13y ago
    same. I still don't know whether the university was deliberately trying to teach the kids to be obedient by shoving Boisjoly down their throats, or whether it was merely a side-effect.
• theg2 13y ago
  Your profession doesn't define your ethics, you should define your own. Anyone telling you that you have to be ethical because of your profession is trying to coerce you to their way of thinking.
• plinkplonk 13y ago
  This might not be the norm here, but give me enough money and challenging work, great working conditions, and I'll work for any legal company or organization, though some organizations would have to put out a great deal of money vs others! Given that like most decent programmers here, I can work more or less anywhere, given equal amounts of money etc, I'd probably go work for Google than the CIA. But if the job choice is between fiddling with javascript on some ancient offshored CRUD codebase(say, been there done that), vs building robots for the American Army, or the Indian army - [I live in India]), no contest at all. In other words I won't work for the mafia or child pornographers or anything illegal, but the CIA/NSA/whoever? In a heartbeat. Drone targeting software? sure thing. A drone is just the weapon of the day and not any more illegal than say a smoothbore musket in its day. Should all the engineers/metallurgists have stuck to making trinkets for the nobility vs cannons for their army? You are working for the same people in any case. Every algorithm known to man has both good and bad uses. Not developing algorithms because they might be harmful is insane. On a less hyperbolic plane, I like Richard Stallman but would easily work for Apple or Goldman Sachs (for e.g, given enough money and good work and good working conditions and coworkers). The software you'd write for SpaceX isn't that far different from the software you'd write to control an ICBM. Salarymen who think they can control what the software they write will be used for by their employers are just deluding themselves. Do you think the people who built Watson have any control on what IBM will do with the tech? And this is a company that used computing to help the Nazis. Should the engineers at IBM not have worked on computers? Work is just work, a means to exchange your talents for money. Keep it legal, do good work. Go home and play with the kids. The way to stop the NSA from doing distasteful things is, in my opinion, to work to elect people/hold your legislators feet to the fire, and get good legislation passed not refuse to research/deploy cryptographic/cryptanalysis algorithms. I just wanted a little balance to this discussion. Not everyone buys into the political correctnesses of the day. Sorry for the rant, but the article is nonsensical, trying to guilt trip algorithm developers. yes so "People should think about it. But I'm just an engineer, basically."
  • zzzeek 13y ago
    when you say "keep it legal" it sounds like you only mean, "so I don't get arrested". That is, you would not work on something very ethical, but illegal (like some system of assisting in the production of medical marijuana in a state where it's illegal) but you would work on something unethical but legal (NSA spying). So really, saying anything legal is not saying much - essentially ethics don't come into question. I know for a fact that I'm very uncomfortable working on something that I find to be obviously unethical. Though NSA stuff, I'd not work on that just because I'd hate keeping everything I do a secret.
• 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
  People will use good software, and they'll use it for good and evil. Think of how nginx is used. Software isn't like an article for theguardian.com, which can take an ethical position. Paralyzing engineers by demanding they consider social complexities seems like a bad strategy for getting things done.
• ivanca 13y ago
  Bullshit; it would be like pretending that tires shouldn't have been created because someday those could be used on war jeeps. It's not possible to predict the uses of one's work and therefor is impossible to comprehend its ethical implications. And if you add capitalism to the equation it means that someone else is going to create the technology even if you don't just if there is a direct -or even indirect- profit from it regardless of ethics. So the "problem" is not a burden on individuals of certain professions (e.g. engineers) but on basic social structures.
  • shabble 13y ago
    > It's not possible to predict the uses of one's work Probably not in all cases, but you can often make an educated guess. You could at least consider classes of activity, ranging from: Primary, sole purpose is to cause direct harm. You'd have to be dumb or willfully ignorant not to realise. "This BabyFaceMelter technology will be so amazingly terrible nobody will ever want to fight us again!" High likelihood of indirect harm - nominally for other purposes, but trivial to see simple ways in which it can be weaponised/made harmful. "Our Public Order Droid platforms are all equipped only with non-lethal electro-tickle cannons, and it'd be really hard to put actual bullets in there" Moderate likelihood of indirect harm. Fairly compelling "good" uses, but still possible to think of ways it could go bad. Less toxic or higher power explosives intended for mining, perhaps. Too generic to really know - finally, the weakest level that you present, something like better off-road vehicle tyres. Quite a lot of fundamental science (ie: not the "we hypothesise that X will make the Anthrax really angry" sort) has such wide application that you can't really guess. Ditto basic algorithms in maths & CS, or software libraries (is OpenSSL evil?) I don't totally disagree with you, but you might want to try painting with a slightly smaller brush to make your argument more compelling.
• john_b 13y ago
  I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Assuming that an engineer is aware of the eventual applications for his or her work and is ethically mature enough to recognize that some of those applications are evil, destructive, or violate the rights of others, it doesn't necessarily follow that this engineer should refuse to do the work. For one, just recognizing that a technology has harmful applications--even only harmful applications--and refusing to build it doesn't mean that the technology will not come about anyway. If you find the applications harmful and refuse to work on it, others may--and likely will--step in and build it instead. So there is a game theory issue that the article ignores. If many people can profit (financially, professionally, learning) from building technology that eventually becomes harmful, then a sufficient number of those people need to refuse to work on the technology in order for it to not be developed. But decreasing the scarcity of labor will increase the value of it, and thus the rewards for developing this harmful technology will be increased, which creates a more powerful incentive for engineers to "defect" (in the prisoner's dilemma sense) and work on the harmful tech. There are also objectively good benefits to doing work that is eventually harmful. If you have a family, you can feed and clothe them. You can learn skills and that will help with non-harmful work in the future, and you will meet people who may help you do non-harmful work later. Being intimately familiar with this technology, you will be able to warn others of the dangers of it. Whether these objective goods outweigh the potential bads of a technology is difficult to determine during its development. And where the balance is difficult to determine, engineers, being practical and conservative by nature, will tend to side with the tangible benefits they can get today over the intangible costs that others may incur in the future. I agree with the article's point that engineers need to develop a broader societal focus[1] and be mindful of the potential uses, especially the unintended ones, of their work. The problem is that awareness alone isn't going to accomplish much because a world full of aware engineers doesn't change the existing incentives. [1] A good book on this topic is "The Civilized Engineer" by Samuel Florman: http://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Engineer-Samuel-C-Florman/dp/0312025599/ http://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Engineer-Samuel-C-Florman/dp...
  • JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Moral behavior is not a 'game theory' concept. It is what you do even when you don't 'win'. At its heart, moral behavior is NOT doing whatever it takes to benefit yourself, which is the sum of game theory. So yes, if your project has only harmful application then you shouldn't work on it. Even if someone else most assuredly will (I'm guessing that could be you). Because its wrong, hypocritical.
• worldvoyageur 13y ago
  Since 1925, in a voluntary ritual near the end of a Canadian engineering degree, almost-graduates swear an oath and, upon doing so, are given a small card and a ring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_of_the_Calling_of_an_Engineer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_of_the_Calling_of_an_Eng... I swore my oath more than 25 years ago and I still have the card in my wallet and the iron ring on the smallest finger of my working hand. A couple times a year, I pull out the card and read it. The oath reads: " I [worldvoyageur], in the presence of these my betters and my equals in my Calling, bind myself upon my Honour and Cold Iron, that, to the best of my knowledge and power, I will not henceforth suffer or pass, or be privy to the passing of, Bad Workmanship or Faulty Material in aught that concerns my works before mankind as an Engineer, or in my dealings with my own Soul before my Maker. MY TIME I will not refuse; my Thought I will not grudge; my Care I will not deny towards the honour, use, stability and perfection of any works to which I may be called to set my hand. MY FAIR WAGES for that work I will openly take. My Reputation in my Calling I will honourably guard; but I will in no way go about to compass or wrest judgement or gratification from any one with whom I may deal. And Further, I will early and warily strive my uttermost against professional jealousy or the belittling of my working colleagues in any field of their labour. FOR MY ASSURED FAILURES and derelictions, I ask pardon beforehand of my betters and my equals in my Calling here assembled; praying that in the hour of my temptations, weakness and weariness, the memory of this my Obligation and of the company before whom it was entered into, may return to aid, comfort and restrain. "
  • AsymetricCom 13y ago
    tl;dr: how to be a good robot.
    • bqe 13y ago
      You really think that taking an oath to be morally responsible for what you create and how you create it is being a robot? What a ridiculous thing to say.
      • AsymetricCom 13y ago
• sigil 13y ago
  "Do you regret building the internet because of surveillance?" is the new "Do you regret discovering fission because of the bomb?" Now, as a technologist I'd never directly contribute to a project whose intent was to kill or surveil people. (I turned down that cushy DoD contract job straight out of college.) But this whole "as engineers we need to consider the ethical implications" argument is deeply flawed. First, it assumes we can predict how the technology we build will be used. Second, even if we could predict all the uses, should we refrain from building something that has some good uses, just because it has some bad ones? Third...what about the people actually using the thing for evil? We might as well drop the "as engineers" part and just have a discussion about not doing evil things in general.
  • dllthomas 13y ago
    Obviously we are limited by our predictive capacity, but I don't think "there might be bad and good uses" is really a strong argument. Like anything else, you weigh the good against the bad in making your decision.
    • sigil 13y ago
      That's the thing though. How does one weigh the good against the bad in these cases? If you're building stuff at the application layer, maybe the use is obvious, but if you're writing a library or a service, how can you know how it will be used? Should you expend time enumerating and assigning probabilistic weights to all the good and evil that could come from it? Far simpler proscription: as a human using a tool, don't do evil with the tool.
      • dllthomas 13y ago
        You do your best, along whatever axes are situationally appropriate. For what it's worth, a sufficiently generic tool I think tends to balance toward morally positive, because there is more intent to do good than intent to do harm out there. But of course, helping to grow that disparity is still important, which is why you should be looking to see if there's ways in which your tool radically, disproportionately facilitates harm.
• grellas 13y ago
  Evil behavior, however precisely defined, has been and always will be with us. Technology enhances what we do as human beings and, hence, always has the potential to be applied to ill uses. If someone, then, takes what you develop and applies it for a purpose you never intended in creating it, that is an item beyond your control. Alan Turing - who applied his genius to confer what can only be called immeasurable benefits on society and who used his skills to crack Nazi codes to help end a terrible war - is not ethically responsible for the many consequences inevitably brought into the world simply because computing power can be used to magnify the effects of human evil. Was he (or is any other engineer whose technology is misused) a causal agent in the various bad outcomes we can identify in, for example, the enhanced lethality of weaponry or in the massive spying by governments on their citizenry? In a narrow sense, perhaps yes. When one traces things back up a causal chain, one can theoretically identify every individual actor who made technical innovations that culminated ultimately in a particular bad use of whatever type that afflicts us today. But, though a cause-in-fact, Mr. Turing (and the many engineers who followed him respecting any given facet of computing technology) is not what the lawyers call the "proximate cause" - that is, the immediately enabling agent - of the outcome. Meaning, if you deem it unethical to build bombs, then don't do work for a defense contractor helping to build bombs because your every innovation will be immediately applied to a use you deem unethical. The same for working for NSA in developing sophisticated spying technology. Or for whatever other ill use you can identify in society. But, beyond avoiding direct conduct by which you are proximately helping to cause an outcome you deem wrong, you as a technologist basically have no control over how your work may be applied by others and, as the collective results of such work eventually permeate society, your moral responsibility for the indirect results of your work effectively stand at zero. If the operative standard were otherwise, then all innovation would stand frozen altogether because it is always possible to conceive of an ill use for any technology that makes things faster, more powerful, more efficient, etc. Put any such thing into the hands of human actors and some bad results are guaranteed to follow given enough time and opportunity. Thus, unless one is to freeze all productive activity or is to go insane second-guessing how others might pervert that which is being done for good, engineers must perforce ignore tangential ethical implications over which they have no effective control. I think it is fair to say that each of us in our given professions (mine being law) ought to avoid being a proximate cause of something deemed wrong even though technically legal (for example, I would not be a "mob lawyer" even though there are some technically very good lawyers who do that work). But even here that is an individual choice for each actor to make. For engineers, some may see it as a great opportunity to do advanced work in some of the social media companies while others may regard such companies as being engaged in unethical conduct as they at least sometimes use dubious techniques to try corral us as consumers into their tight little worlds. For any given engineer, working for such a company doing such things is a matter of conscience. Some may say yes, others no. The same is true in working for a defense contractor or for the government. Or for any other work that is legal but ethically suspect in the eyes of some but not others. It is your choice and it is your conscience. The author of this piece reflects what I call the bane of associational thinking. He uses the royal "we" to define a group (here, engineers) and then prescribes very broad goals for what "we" "ought" to do. Since all the things described now stand as a matter of private choice over which the "we" group as a whole has no say, then the only way to translate this sort of thing into practical action is to form formal associations, assign things to committees, and then issue a series of prescriptions on what the group members ought to do. That may be fine in terms of the association giving rules that amount to exhortations to do good (who would disagree with that). But, beyond that, do you really want an organized association dictating what today stand as your private choices for your career? Or, worse, do you want such an association to lobby governments to adopt their strictures and give them the force of law? I would think not. How, then, can "we" do better? Of course, the question is always described as difficult and is left for further discussion precisely because it has no real answer apart from acting on individual conscience or apart from the potentially coercive ones of letting some association or government dictate your career choices and opportunities. Perhaps this sort of reasoning is justified as encouraging people to have a heightened conscience about what they do, and in that respect it is fine. But that is really as far as it goes before veering into unacceptable alternatives. Our capacity to do wrong is innate to our nature, as is our capacity to do good. We should not stop trying to do good through our creativity just because others can take what we do and commit wrongs with it. Nor should we feel guilty about what we do as long as we in good conscience can say to ourselves that we are doing something productive and worthwhile and not directly causing harm to others. The "we" issue is in reality much more of an "I" issue and, for that, you should examine what you do carefully and strive for the good regardless of what others may do with it. If you want to exhort others to do better by your standards, then all the better. Just don't dictate to them on matters over which people in good conscience may disagree.
• pointernil 13y ago
  .) German speaking engineers can validate/reevaluate their "position" by checking out: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesinnungsethik http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesinnungsethik http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verantwortungsethik http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verantwortungsethik It's strange to see those wikipedia topics don't have an English translations (yet). .) It's certainly interesting to see in which ways engineers who chose to follow "Gesinnungsethik" justify their "choice"... interesting, in the sense of: not differently at all compared to any other profession. I think this is the result of last decade(s) or so of overdone and misunderstood "individualism" culture. .) IF software eats the world - and it certainly looks like this right now - we better make the human beings who wield and create these very powerful tools more sensitive to the responsibilities and consequences of their works. .) I'm sure true treasures can be found regarding this topic in similar discussions which took place in the non-software engineering community decades ago and I guess the statements and positions used there are applicable in the software world.
• lettergram 13y ago
  "I don't intend to build in order to have clients; I intend to have clients in order to build."
• tehwalrus 13y ago
  I don't think anyone actively works to do evil things in engineering. However, it is possible/easy to end up making something that is used for evil by someone else later - and justifying making weapons through notions of "defense" has been commonplace for years (although I don't agree with the justifications, generally). I've never quite been happy with open source licenses for this reason - and I've considered writing a pacifists' OSS license with a clause along the lines of: "No license is granted for any purpose of deliberate harm or death to humans [and other intelligent species]; whether in a deliberate weapon or implement of torture, or whether in a targeting or guidance system for any such device. Missile 'sheild's, designed and only usable for blocking incoming weapons are excluded from this category." You could hypothetically write additional clauses for other objectionable things, pornography and fossil fuel drilling/mining come to mind. It wouldn't stop people reimplementing your code from a specification/summary, as many companies do with OSS that they need to use but can't re-release, but it does make making weapons and such more expensive to make (which will decrease supply, assuming your code was ever in contention for use in such a system.)
• logfromblammo 13y ago
  Do not call upon engineers to reject unethical projects. There is always the danger that they will redesign the society's ethics instead of the work!
• crazygringo 13y ago
  > Engineers are behind government spying tools and military weapons. We should be conscious of how our designs are used Except that it's not always clear whether something is ethically good/bad. If you're working on a system for tracking cell phone calls, this can be used to protect against terrorism for public safety (good) or discovering mob or child porn networks (good) or for targeted blackmail (bad) or a surveillance state (bad) -- and the engineer working on it not only has no guarantees on what it is being planned for, but also has no crystal ball to know how its use might change in the future. And different peoples' ethics are different. So while saying we should consider the ethical implications of our work sounds nice... it sounds awfully simplistic.
• crazy1van 13y ago
  Shouldn't everyone consider the ethical implications of their work? I don't see anything unique to engineers in this regard.
• ahomescu1 13y ago
  I find it heavily disturbing to blame engineers for something they had no part in deciding. If a politician/general/manager decides to use some technology for "evil" purposes (for whatever definition of evil), the responsibility should fall primarily on whoever makes that decision. Engineers who are unhappy with how their work is used are free to quit their jobs and work on something else (in most cases). However, since they get little say in how their work is used, they should also get little responsibility over it.
• kevinchen 13y ago
  I take issue with the photo caption, which is repeated in the article: > Engineering ethics are mostly technical: how to design properly, how to not cut corners, and how to serve our clients well. The first thing in the ACM code of ethics talks about protecting "fundamental human rights." http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics Same deal with the IEEE: the first item talks about the "welfare of the public." http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html The issue is not that engineering ethics is too technical. It stems from the fact that everybody defines what is ethical for themselves -- there are few universal opinions on ethics, just as with political opinions.
• toblender 13y ago
  In Ontario, and much of Canada, to call yourself an Engineer you must pass an exam and meet the requirements. Part of this exam is about ethics. In Canada, Engineers have an iron ring to remind them of their duty to society. The issue is the term "duty" and "public" can get tricky. How far does duty go? Does it include compromising morals? Does the "public" include the enemy that we would deploy the technology against? There is no answer that is without some shortcoming.
• deleted 13y ago
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