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from the Keep-everything-under-digital-lock dept.
Computer Programmers get new Tech Ethics Code
The guidelines come from the Association for Computing Machinery
Technological professionals are the first, and last, lines of defense against the misuse of technology. Nobody else understands the systems as well, and nobody else is in a position to protect specific data elements or ensure the connections between one component and another are appropriate, safe and reliable. As the role of computing continues its decades-long expansion in society, computer scientists are central to what happens next.
Personally, I am quite concerned that our Congress has not attached Responsibility with Rights when it comes to software. If someone is going to claim ownership and rights to a piece of code then protect it with electronic lock or obscurity, why aren't they also held 100% responsible if that code causes mayhem?
We just had a story here about the concerns we have about a hemoglobin based meat substitute ... and what we go through to make damn sure the substance is harmless to life before we introduce it into the food chain... and even *that* has to be completely described and its molecular structure demonstrated.
Can you imagine the uproar if Chemists started releasing anything tasty, that people would eat, and call it "food"? And would our Congress grant them the right to withhold information as to what it was? Then hold them harmless for whatever it did to people?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Monday August 13 2018, @12:36PM (3 children)
Do employers have ethics?
Do companies have ethics?
Does an employee have ethics?
Does a union have ethics?
If the employee has ethics, will they refuse to work for a company or employer that doesn't have ethics?
will they stand up for what is right, even if it costs them their job?
A union or professional association won't help unless all the members are prepared to stand up and be counted.
How does anyone with stong ethics have a job!
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @12:53PM
> How does anyone with stong ethics have a job!
Well, I think I have fairly strong ethics, and I have remorse for the times that I've violated my own standards. In the big picture, these are pretty small violations, no one was injured...
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday August 13 2018, @01:25PM
that's why I'm self-employed.
And in fact I have resigned in ethical protest several times, from W-2 positions.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 13 2018, @04:08PM
It's not so much that the company or employer doesn't have ethics, it's that their ethics are often at odds with my ethics. Most companies are run by the following ethical principles:
* Whoever is richest is the best and thus has earned the right to make all important decisions.
* Caveat emptor.
* mudsill theory [wikipedia.org], which is to say it is perfectly fine to inflict misery and destitution on the lower classes to enable the (supposed) great leaders of society to become fabulously rich and thus be better able to lead.
* In case of crisis or disaster, the lives of the poor and middle classes are completely expendable.
Those are a set of values. They're a set of values I don't agree with, at all, but they are a set of values. All monsters in history have had a set of values driving their actions, and the problem with Soviets and Nazis and such wasn't a lack of ethics but twisted and wrong ethics.
One interesting aspect of this question: How disconnected from the heinous act do you have to be in order to not be ethically culpable for it? To use an example, imagine for the sake of argument that you find drone missile strikes on civilian targets to always be unethical.
* The person who is closest to this, by far, would be the airman who pulls the trigger to fire the missile.
* But what about that person's commanding officers, up to and potentially including the civilian leadership such as the president of the US?
* But what about the company that made the drone? Can you work for them?
* But what about the companies that supply the company that made the drone? And the companies that supplied them? And the companies that supplied them? etc. How far away the supply chain do we need to go?
* But what about anyone involved in the research that made the drones and missiles and such possible? And the institutions they're associated with?
* How about working for organizations that were funded from the profits of being one of the companies in the supply chain? e.g. Is it OK to be working at an art museum if that art museum receives a bunch of funding from Lockheed Martin?
There's no easy answer, but I can't see a way of both being employed and not drawing a line somewhere and saying "this is far enough away". For instance, if you were being super-expansive about this, drones use software, and software needs to be compiled, so anyone working on improving compilers is contributing to drone strikes. Of course, they probably didn't think of their work that way, at all, but you can see the problem.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.