Speaking at the Noisebridge hackerspace Tuesday evening, Chelsea Manning implored a crowd of makers, nerds, and developers to be ethical coders.
"As a coder, I know that you can build a system and it works, but you're thinking about the immediate result, you're not thinking about that this particular code could be misused, or it could be used in a different manner," she said, as part of a conversation with Noisebridge co-founder Mitch Altman.
Altman began the conversation by asking about artificial intelligence and underscoring some of the risks in that field.
"We're now using huge datasets with all kinds of personal data, that we don't even know what information we're putting out there and what it's getting collected for," Manning said. "Our AI systems are getting better and better and better, and we don't know what the social consequences of that are. The code that we write, the bias that you see in some of the systems that you see, we don't know if we're causing feedback loops with those kinds of bias."
[...] "The tools that you make for marketing can also be used to kill people," Manning continued. "We have an obligation to think of the tools that we're making and how we're using them and not just churn out code for whatever reason. You want to think about how your end-user could misuse your code."
Guns don't kill people, code kills people.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:31PM (2 children)
We're all nerds here. A little blob of solder or scrape of a path in the right spot can make any IoT device an Internet of Service Not Available.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:51PM (1 child)
You wish! Me too.
But... alas [soylentnews.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:16PM
Arrgh! Recursive comments! Now i can't leave this discussion until I get an error..
On-topic:
Most mass-produced stuff (washing machines, a/c controllers, security cameras) are made from small components, in factories, in different places (often countries) which are then press-fit assembled (as cheaply as possible), so that, when a small component dies on a main board, and the main board is no longer available as a part (5 year old washing machine? Neanderthal!) you get to throw out the whole machine.
Electronics with programming (most new stuff) is even worse. Th right to repairisn't enough. Open source code and visibility of data collection (what data is your IoT thermostat sending "home"?)
We need (Society needs) open design, transparent data (collection, use, correction) AND ee also need security and privacy.
Alas, we are but the disposable commodities for Big Business.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex