Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by smabie » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

grumple wrote: post #187

smabie wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you might find some intro philosophy useful to understand how you can have a universal morality without a deity. Some Kant is a good place to start, with his universal law being a fundamental idea.

I actually majored in philosophy, Kant presupposes the existence of God in his assumption about the specialness of rational (i.e human) beings.

I never liked my ethics classes. Phenomenology and existialism is my shit, though I suspect Husserl was the inspiration for GPT-3.

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

#192

Post by austincheney » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

spaced-out wrote: post #164

austincheney wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The people who actually decide to do these unethical things are the executives, not engineers. Executives are the ones who should be taking Hippocratic oaths.

So? The goal is to eliminate improper behavior not cry about it and point fingers.

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

#193

Post by Conan_Kudo » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

If you're an actual engineer of any kind, you always have some choice on this. You make architectural decisions every day, and you generally work for places that do, in fact, take your input into consideration. If you don't work for any of those kinds of places, then you are still responsible because you wrote the code to enable it. You can always say "no". There are consequences for that, for sure. You can always quit as well. And it may still get made. But it won't be by you.

And sometimes, that's still better than the alternative.

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

#194

Post by matsemann » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #10

> There are no common ethics codes to determine how lethal autonomous weapons and systems that are developed for the military should be used once they end up in the hands of civilians. It's interesting to me that this just presumes developing these autonomous weapons systems in the first place is ethical. I understand there is a difference of opinion on this ethical point, but it immediately frames the discussion pre…

"It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter."

- Borenstein

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

#195

Post by andrewfong » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #131

andrewfong wrote: post #109

I'm not against the idea, but analogizing to medicine isn't great. There are a number of challenged that need sorting before an oath is feasible: * Medicine is thousands of years old. Software is decades old. There's still a lot we don't know. * Medicine involves a lot of repeat situations, do you can set precedent and learn over time. Software isn't always new, but there are more novel applications than in medicine.…

The patient is the company. So the oath would be to do no harm to the company.

I don't think that's what the original article is getting at though. It talks about user privacy rights for instance, and it would be harmful to certain companies to not spy on their users, even if it's the right thing to do for society at large.

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

#196

Post by jbay808 » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #150

ryandrake wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Eh, this isn't a great analogy either. If I'm an engineer that develops a single beam in a bridge, is it my fault if someone assembles those beams together in such a way that is dangerous? At which point does a function become unethical? Do you now have to only use software made in your country by ethical developers? Software isn't a bridge and comparisons fall apart quickly.

Engineers at the beam companies just certify that the beam meets its specs.

I'm not sure why software would be any different. Bridges are complicated and made up of versatile submodules, just like software. Some other software engineer eventually designs the "bridge" and selects "beams" for the structure. If those beams fail to meet their specs, then the engineers who stood by them are at fault. If the bridge fails because the beams weren't used in accordance with their spec, or didn't have a spec at all, then the engineers who approved their use in the bridge is at fault.

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

#197

Post by iandanforth » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #32

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…

Ironically the "don't seduce people" bit that got axed is actually still enforced and is one of the most common reasons doctors get their licensed revoked. (More specifically sexual misconduct).

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

#198

Post by jbay808 » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

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…

> To say it’s on the engineer to do no harm puts them in the tenuous position of doing the job or being replaced by someone who will. That isn’t setting us up for success.

This is where a strict licensing requirement, like Canada's P. Eng, can empower the engineer. If you think what you're being asked to do would violate your professional ethics, not only can you decline to do it, but you have a system to ensure that you won't just get replaced by someone who will do it.

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

#199

Post by kqr » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:52 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #93

jrumbut wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think making a statement as an industry helps avoid some of this stuff even being asked. With research you can easily find doctors who are brought in to assist with torture or other heinous crimes, but in general I would expect it to be harder to find a doctor to help with my project of creating a more addictive cigarette versus finding a web developer to help me market them. There's some (not a lot, but some) powe…

You would lose the ability to practise medicine as a license is required. Do you want to license software developers?

I think the way Uncle Bob said it was reasonable. We have a choice: either we commit to doing good ourselves, and get out of licensing. Or we fuck up repeatedly, and eventually someone else will force a licensing process upon us. And it will not be a pretty one, because it's unlikely the person designing it will know the first thing about how we work.

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

#200

Post by chii » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 5:52 AM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #198

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…

> To say it’s on the engineer to do no harm puts them in the tenuous position of doing the job or being replaced by someone who will. That isn’t setting us up for success. This is where a strict licensing requirement, like Canada's P. Eng, can empower the engineer. If you think what you're being asked to do would violate your professional ethics, not only can you decline to do it, but you have a system to ensure that…

a licensing system is just a form of regulation as alluded to in the comment you're replying to.

And in the end, if software engineers are to conduct themselves in moral and ethical ways, they must be empowered to do so without having to sacrifice their personal wellbeing or livelihood. Regulation, it seems, is the only way to achieve that end.