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Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

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Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

#151
No thanks. Apart from creating unnecessary barriers to entry, such an oath would immediately be politicized and used to stifle certain views, speech, and work. More broadly, I also think licensing in general can be counter productive, constraining supply and imposing bureaucratic certifications where none are needed.

How about we start with something we need more immediately - updated antitrust laws that are enforced against giant companies like Microsoft? Brad Smith is talking big about requiring an oath for engineers but neglects his own role. Before he was President, he was General Counsel for MS. He is still today the chief legal officer and chief compliance officer alongside his president title (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Smith_(American_lawyer)). Let see him and Microsoft come clean on antitrust, privacy, theft of others’ innovation (like Slack) while holding a giant patent war chest, etc.

Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

#152

I think we need to go well beyond a Hippocratic oath. Most Software Engineering Degrees require an ethics course. Yet - we still have the issues we have today. Asking for good intentions isn't going to change outcomes, because Software Engineers already have good intentions. Nothing will change. How about Software Engineering Licensure? You have been found to contribute glaring security issues in widespread code? Los…

Ethics is not a hard science.

Also it's not that the underbelly asks would ask their hacker candidates for a license, or that the military/cops would care about a licensing body.

Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

#153
post #8

I’m not a fan of comparisons to the Hippocratic oath. The greatest risk to AI ethics is not the ethics of software engineers but the ethics of the software engineering process. By the time tasks are handed to engineers, most of the ethical decisions have been made by product managers, designers, and business stakeholders who are focused on their own goals. Software engineers are accountable to their bosses before the…

> Software engineers are accountable to their bosses before their users, no matter how high minded we like to pretend to be I've quit jobs in the past because of ethical concerns about the way in which those above me have been acting. In one case this involved bribery of senior government officials to push through a project that put at risk the privacy of hundreds of thousands of people. If you go along with shit lik…

And I mean, that is good of you to have a moral backbone, unfortunately there are many people behind you that will do the same job in software and they can be located anywhere in the world.

Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

#154
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, what's more, isn't behaving ethically not part of being human? Aristotle and a while host of philosophers certainly thought so. Extending this, why don't we expect everyone in society to behave ethically? But then we get into arguments about what is ethical, because people disagree on that, and people naturally will disagree on what is ethical in software development, which isn't always a problem. The is a diver…

Ethic is subjective. Across time and space. Want to see an example - Ask Aristotle are women same or lower than men?

And relevant to this conversation, software can be written anywhere especially if you need alternative ethics.

Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

#155
Is there evidence that doctors and lawyers are, by virtue of their oaths, codes of conduct, and background study of ethics, more ethical, moral, and upright than members of the general population?

Also, whose ethics would such a Hippocratic Oath advance? For every privacy-conscious person saying that encryption-everywhere is good, there is a law enforcement officer speaking of reduced abilities to solve crimes.

Imagine a software engineer who has been asked to place a backdoor in some software. Is there any piece of uncontroversial advice which you can give them?

And like several previous commenters have asked, could this be a way to shift responsibility from institutions and their management cadre to individual developers?

Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

#156

Doctors no longer take the Hippocratic Oath (because it is incompatible with a lot of difficult situations doctors are placed in). But more to the point: Why are we trying to shift focus from the wrongs large multi-nationals do to individual software engineers? Plus what would the result be if this "oath" conflicts with a manager's instructions? Maybe we should start with Microsoft, Google, Comcast, Oracle, and simil…

> Why are we trying to shift focus from the wrongs large multi-nationals do to individual software engineers? Because software engineers are the ones doing the actual work. By imposing an ethical standard on the people doing the real work the multinational executives then either accept that limitation or knowingly accept risks from intentionally violating the spirit of that limitation.

Since you're talking about multinationals, since when have ethical standards not deviated significantly between different countries?

Are you now going to ask for more software import/export laws?

Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

#157
Yeah, how about not abusing their market dominance with lock-in and anti-competitive shenanigans? MS could benefit from sticking to proper business practices first. Preaching ethics while the company engages in shady behavior is hypocritical, not Hippocratic.

Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

#160
post #8

I’m not a fan of comparisons to the Hippocratic oath. The greatest risk to AI ethics is not the ethics of software engineers but the ethics of the software engineering process. By the time tasks are handed to engineers, most of the ethical decisions have been made by product managers, designers, and business stakeholders who are focused on their own goals. Software engineers are accountable to their bosses before the…

Agreed, the vast majority of software engineering disasters can be laid at the feet of bad management, not software engineers. Let's clean house in management first, just like Deming did when he straightened out Ford.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

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