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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

#171

Post by BeetleB »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #103
tfehring wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In sufficiently complex systems, you can always blame someone else if you're motivated to do so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IssR_J0QWr4 But ultimately there's always a software engineer involved in the creation of software - and that's not true of any of the other roles you mentioned. Since software engineers are necessary and sufficient to produce software, they should always be held responsible, and any oath s…

So management bears no blame for requiring illegal work be done, on pain of termination? Said another way, engineers now need to be technical and legal experts in the business domain? (Remember employees in the US depend on the company for health insurance. Saying 'no' could cost a lot more than just ones position.) Most software engineers are not like doctors. We have little autonomy over what is created. Our respon…

> So management bears no blame for requiring illegal work be done, on pain of termination? Said another way, engineers now need to be technical and legal experts in the business domain?

This is a red herring. The oath is not needed merely for illegal work. In fact, the more common use cases will likely be legal. It's a common sentiment, but: Don't conflate ethics with legal.

> Most software engineers are not like doctors. We have little autonomy over what is created. Our responsibility is primarily the how. And with devops sometimes the actual deployment and maintenance itself.

This is not a dichotomy - there can be a spectrum. You can restrict it to those who do know what the product is used for, or at least have good guesses for them.

And while not everyone is this way, I wouldn't really want to work in a job for long if I'm not told what the code I'm writing is for. It's not even an ethical concern for me - it just makes for a boring job. Ideally I want people to tell me the problem they are solving and give me some leeway in crafting a solution. Don't come to me with a solution and ask me to implement it.

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

#172

Post by pixl97 »

SllX wrote: post #71
trimbo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you hire an architect to design your house? Pick a doctor? Pick a lawyer?

That’s a bad faith question asked in an attempt to setup a straw man argument and you know it, and I know it, so cut the crap. Worry about the guy writing software for all the nuclear power plants we’re not building, not the guy who makes webshit, word processors and compilers for a living. Architects, Doctors and Lawyers are closer to one extreme, you can make as strong a case for licensing them as you can for not l…

Writers of open source software are winding up to one day spin in their graves reading the comments of the authoritarians demanding software licensing in here.

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

#173

Post by jojobas »

smabie wrote: post #165
jojobas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key incentive is cash. As long as doing sinister things can pay, there will be people doing it.

Or maybe, just maybe, ethics isn't at all universal? If my time in other countries has taught me one thing, it's that different people and different cultures have very different ideas on right and wrong. Ultimately (like, really ultimately), the very idea of ethics is a meaningless fabrication in the absence of God. Without an ultimate arbiter of truth, morality cannot exist.

While ethics are very far from universal, there are things that are universally accepted, i.e. that impaling everyone on Earth is bad.

God is not the only possible foundation of ethics, and not the most sound at that.

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

#175

Post by BeetleB »

Ygg2 wrote: post #128
tfehring wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The programmer still decides whether that code gets written, since they’re the one writing it! If you write or review a piece of software, even if the spec was written by the PM/business, you’re endorsing whatever that spec says and all of its ethical implications. “Just following orders” is a famously poor defense at this point.

Except that the start and goal are so far away you can legitimately claim you can't see the actual harm in writing something. You write a tool for let's say recognizing faces. Will it be used for login onto computer? Tracking dissidents? IDing corpses? Who knows. What if you start as something 100% ethical. But your company pivots to unethical application?

> You write a tool for let's say recognizing faces. Will it be used for login onto computer? Tracking dissidents? IDing corpses? Who knows.

I mentioned this in another comment, but I'll say it again:

Irrespective of any legal/ethical concerns, yes, I would like to know! If my boss just came to me and said "build a facial recognition system" I certainly will ask how it is going to be used. Not because I care about ethics, but it's a basic aspect of the job. You can replace "facial recognition" with "CMS" and I'd still ask.

If they tell me the facial recognition is for logging into computers, and then later decide to use it to track dissidents, that is a different concern. But I'll at least ask!

> What if you start as something 100% ethical. But your company pivots to unethical application?

If they pivot after my work is done, I won't feel responsible. If they never used it for the original application and pivoted to this, I may get upset and quit, but my conscience would be clear.

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

#176

Post by darepublic »

What an asinine suggestion. Of all people a president of microsoft punting responsibility down to the people simply following your orders. This comes across as a scheme to corner out newcomers to AI and make it so only well connected multinationals are able to control this tech.

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

#177

Post by BeetleB »

madrox wrote: 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.

Software engineers are accountable to themselves before they are accountable to their bosses.

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

#178

Post by erik_seaberg »

ryandrake wrote: post #127
tfehring wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The programmer still decides whether that code gets written, since they’re the one writing it! If you write or review a piece of software, even if the spec was written by the PM/business, you’re endorsing whatever that spec says and all of its ethical implications. “Just following orders” is a famously poor defense at this point.

Exactly. I can’t believe all the blame-shifting I’m reading in this thread! It’s as if software engineers are suddenly these powerless victims, lacking agency over their work, only capable of saying “yes, boss, whatever you say, boss!” If a civil engineer’s manager told them to design an unsafe building or bridge, they’re not going to just say, “Sure thing manager! One death trap coming right up!” It is their ethical…

A bridge is limited to a single purpose, like an appliance. If you insist on veto power over every outcome of what you build, that means you can only ever build sealed appliances for hapless consumers, not unfettered tools that empower clever human beings who will use them in unanticipated ways. Having sworn a Hippocratic oath, are you allowed to work on LLVM, which half of all evil apps probably depend on?

I could get behind a requirement that code be reliable and fit for purpose, though very few of us have any experience with the formal methods that might get us there, and most don't want to work that way.

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

#179

Post by throw_m239339 »

How about we make the executives and managers take an oath?

Engineers mostly do what they are told, it's too easy to let them carry the moral burden while higher ups can ask whatever they want out of them. It's too easy to shift the blame on developers.

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

#180

Post by quickthrower2 »

walrus01 wrote: post #161
pixl97 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the current state of things, that is factually true. However the same argument could be applied to labor abuses in the textile/garment and shoe manufacturing industry. Most people who follow news are probably aware that about 20 years ago Nike, Adidas and other brands went through a period of terrible public relations disasters, after the working conditions in some of their shoe factories in developing nations wer…

The more abstract the problem the less people care. Police suffocating someone to death > 1,000,000 people being subtly spied on. "I got nothing to hide" after all.
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