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New ethics courses in computer science

nytimes.com

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Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#121

Post by wfo »

purple-again wrote: post #4

Always a losers game. You implement it with ethics in mind, I do not. I win and you fall into obscurity. The law is all that matters. If I can not lose what I take, there is no reason for me not to take it (so long as I'm still chasing the 'fuck you money', morals are great after you have it). I understand it, lots of people have dreamed big dreams of how great the world would be if everyone else was just like them t…

Sure this is true if we just let the market do as it wills.

But we have many tools to deal with this problem in our historical toolbox that we have mostly left behind as we hard embrace neoliberal ideology: regulation with fines, regulatory bodies (that can make judgements on unethical behavior not explicitly written into law and mete out serious punishment), a criminal justice system that could be applied to executives, a troubling but powerful system of asset forfeiture designed to seize "ill-gotten gains" (and what is money gained from unethical business practices but ill-gotten?), nationalizing or breaking up companies to prevent concentration of power that can be abused, organized labor and collective bargaining. If e.g. CEOs who ran unethical enterprises were afraid of their assets being seized and being jailed the fairly accurate picture you paint of our current reality -- the unethical businessman who crushes anyone with an ounce of human dignity, worker and competitor alike -- looks a little different.

I think it's pretty clear that voting with your dollar will never and has never worked, but some of the above tools might. Though they all of course come with their downsides.

>I understand it, lots of people have dreamed big dreams of how great the world would be if everyone else was just like them too.

Actually nearly everyone already is like me in this way: nearly every human being has a sense of ethics and sees a pretty clear difference between right and wrong that transcends a profit motive. It's just that it's not so easy to turn that ethical and moral sense we all share into actual power to change things, especially when power is concentrated in the hands of the unethical (for exactly the reasons you describe above). But that's the task before us, and that's why universities are making computer scientists take ethics.

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#123

Post by Balgair »

kbenson wrote: post #71
ChuckMcM wrote: post #49

I grew tired of arguments supporting fleecing the users that were basically "We aren't making them do this, they choose to do it." I have heard them put forward at nearly every company I've worked at, at various levels and through various departments. At Google it was always "We don't take an editorial stand, this might be just what some of our customers want." That has been the most interesting aspect of their recen…

> At Google it was always "We don't take an editorial stand, this might be just what some of our customers want." It's an interesting choice for companies, and Google in particular. Either be proactive and get accused of forcing your customers behavior or having ulterior motives based on money (e.g. Google's ad blocking program), or let them do what they want and get accused of turning a blind eye because it makes mo…

Google can't take an editorial position, they are forbidden (sort-of) from doing so by law: 47 U.S.C. § 230, Communication Decency Act (1996).

Per the recent Wired article on FB: "This is the section of US law that shelters internet intermediaries from liability for the content their users post. If Facebook were to start creating or editing content on its platform, it would risk losing that immunity"[0]

The EFF has a good piece on the importance that this law be upheld[1]. Basically, from ISPs to Craigslist, the internet can repost/report on potentially horrific stuff without being in trouble themselves as the 'host'.

If Google were to take an editorial position, they are afraid they will run afoul of this law and be held liable.

[0]https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-...

[1]https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#124

Post by woodruffw »

I'm teaching a 1-credit class on ethical hacking[1] this semester at my university, and I'm really glad to see this issue gain serious traction in major CS departments.

I only wish it happened earlier -- I wanted to help develop a (more general) CS ethics class around a year ago[2][3], but encountered resistance from instructors and professors over perceived impracticality and adding non-technical "burden" to the major.

[1]: https://github.com/UMD-CS-STICs/389Rspring18

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14680425

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14106201

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#125

Post by KirinDave »

theoh wrote: post #73
KirinDave wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people are doing legitimate things in this space. One need only look. Legitimate NON-currency (token or integrity) applications abound. In a very real sense, github was an early blockchain startup. Do you type "sigh" on an internet forum when people talk about github?

The "hub" aspect of GitHub takes a decentralised protocol and adds a trusted third party (github). The whole point of blockchain is to avoid creating trusted third parties, something people like Nick Szabo identified a long time ago as a problem for protocol design.

> The whole point of blockchain is to avoid creating trusted third parties

Nonsense. The "point" of "blockchain" is to commit blocks to merkel trees with an agreed upon protocol. Your value judgement are just as unwelcome as the previous post's.

You're also wrong about github, as its only a point of centralization for specific UI services. It need not be canonical, it's simply privileged.

Please stop policing the direction blockchain conversations go with religious anecdotes.

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#126

Post by KirinDave »

kbenson wrote: post #83
theoh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to police the direction the conversation takes. I was responding only to the GP, as a matter of fact.

You're right, my comment was better aimed farther up-thread than yours. I wasn't attempting to police the direction, just note that the tangent started with little explanation and possibly some misinterpretation.

Theoh is trying to derail because he has religious objections to the idea that github uses "blockchain technology." You're not "policing", you're resisting someone trying to take an offtopic turn to an existing conversation. Please be proud of this, I thank you for it.

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#127

Post by lovich »

pascalxus wrote: post #108
lovich wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not you choose to follow orders _is_ an ethical decision.

The laws align pretty well with Ethics. Most things that are unethical are also illegal and hence won't be built by any legitimate company. How often do you think a company chooses to build something that's unethical but legal? Have you ever heard of a engineer who said to the PM or boss, "hey, i'm not going to build that because it's unethical". I've never seen that happen. have you?

Any payday loan company? The financial service companies that figured out how to obfuscate shitty assets and led to the 2008 recession? Companies that mine your data and sell it to the highest bidder and rely on hiding privacy settings or making it too complicated for most people to prevent? Companies like Equifax that hold on to important personal data and don't even do the bare minimum to protect it?

To be honest I'm not sure how to even respond to the statement that the law aligns with pretty well with ethics. The law aligns pretty well with what the people with power want and in any study of ethics you quickly learn that legal != ethical

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#128

Post by spydum »

QML wrote: post #53

Honestly, there should just be a required ethics component to all college curriculums; I am not sure why it needs to be technologically focused. I would actually say the tech industry is the least of our worries with concerns to ethics; the last two years, tech has been heavily criticized and as a result it seems that people in the field are willing to change. Can't say the same about any other industry.

Is this not common? Even at junior collgss ethics is typically a first year requirement

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#129

Post by KirinDave »

kerkeslager wrote: post #116
KirinDave wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flip side of this: People who say this are usually folks trying to justify the fact that they're resorting to underhanded, abusive tactics to compete with talented, successful people who are not. It is the battle cry of the mediocre, the hallmark of scammers, the ultimate admission of the untalented and unworthy. I know a lot of folks in fintech and blockchain, and we've all skated the outer edge of what's defined by…

> Those are the folks who are still around. Even big US national banks, notorious for their immunity to law and enforcement, are starting to feel the pressure. Rumor is, Customers left Wells Fargo in droves after the last kerfuffle and new account opening went down substantially at Citi after their money laundering fine. The hidden cost of bad optics is immense. There are two parts to a cost/benefit analysis, and you…

> With Wells Fargo, Citi, Experian, Bank of America, etc., when their scandals went down, did they lose more money in the scandals than they gained from their antisocial behavior?

Wells: Yes, almost certainly. Citi: Good question. Every I've talked to from Citi seems to think it was a disaster that hurt the business bottom line. BofA: Not sure which BofA problem we're talking about here. Experian: They walked away. They're a great example of how the government SHOULD have come in and made it more expensive and then given that money back to people they hurt.

On Experian, I do know that their scandal with fake credit scores direct to customer hurt that business badly.

> More importantly, did the individuals who made the antisocial decisions, who are protected by limited liability, lose money? I doubt it.

In some cases yes, in some no.

> But I'd say these are anomalies and not the norm.

We could make it the norm :)

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#130

Post by Rylinks »

MereInterest wrote: post #104
zombieprocesses wrote: post #86

We already have ethics in the philosophy department. I'm was CS major and I took ethics and liked it so much I double majored in CS and philosophy. Ethics has no place in CS, nor more than ethics is required in biology or physics or algebra. If universities want students to learn about ethics, then make ethics 101 a "required elective".

Your comparisons are rather odd, given that most universities do have ethics requirements for the sciences, focused on examples from the field in question. Biology: Do not repeat the Tuskegee experiements. Do not be the next Andrew Wakefield. Physics: Do not falsify data. Do not plagiarize results. Do not play fast and loose with statistics. I can definitely see corresponding examples being made for issues that affec…

Chemical engineering: If you don't know what you're doing, your reactor will blow up and kill people. Here are some cases where people didn't know what they were doing. Don't be like them.
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