Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New ethics courses in computer science

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 156 posts

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#11

Post by nemild »

If useful, I wrote my own thoughts on ethics in software, after reflecting on certain experiences over the years:

> A serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley once asked me to design a “social stockade” for his financial services customers. It would lock people out of their social media accounts and tweet out/FB share to their friends when they hadn’t paid a loan. He pitched it to prospective employees as meaningful work that would reduce the cost of loans for the needy.

> I was horrified that his product was being built and that many others would likely take the role I was turning down. And he was hardly the first to pitch his “innovation” as providing only good.

https://www.nemil.com/musings/software-engineers-and-ethics....

If anyone ever wants to discuss something, feel free to reach out (see HN profile).

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#12

Post by subroutine »

Whenever I hear about these ethics courses I'm mainly curios about what non-obvious substantive content being taught (because there is apparently enough to fill a semester-long course). Anyone who has taken one of these courses care to share something they learned that, before the course, had never considered?

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#13

Post by rafiki6 »

Technologists aren't doctors. Doctors are a necessity because people have an incessant need to stay alive. Technologists aren't a fundamental necessity to society. We are business people. The only rules/ethics that govern us are business rules/ethics. Some might argue, "but technology is required for us to survive". It's not. We've survived plenty without it. Technology is required for us to thrive.

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#14

Post by moomin »

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…

If the law is the only thing that matters, then it follows that more regulation will come.

Maybe try self-regulating before putting more power in the hands of the government?

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#15

Post by Apocryphon »

rafiki6 wrote: post #13

Technologists aren't doctors. Doctors are a necessity because people have an incessant need to stay alive. Technologists aren't a fundamental necessity to society. We are business people. The only rules/ethics that govern us are business rules/ethics. Some might argue, "but technology is required for us to survive". It's not. We've survived plenty without it. Technology is required for us to thrive.

To be specific, we've survived without monetized, big money-driven technology.

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#16

Post by hobofan »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #5
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…

Except the article mentions that they're targeting >the next generation of technologists and policymakers Sure tech workers in a bad system are coerced into unethical actions, but policymakers hold the power to alter the system itself so that they're not.

> policymakers hold the power

The cynic in me tells me that the winning unethical companies hold the power over the policymakers.

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#17

Post by purple-again »

rafiki6 wrote: post #13

Technologists aren't doctors. Doctors are a necessity because people have an incessant need to stay alive. Technologists aren't a fundamental necessity to society. We are business people. The only rules/ethics that govern us are business rules/ethics. Some might argue, "but technology is required for us to survive". It's not. We've survived plenty without it. Technology is required for us to thrive.

Well said. Those of us who came from a business background remember our business ethics in university well. The running joke, from start to finish, is a thank you for compiling together the things we should walk carefully and carry a big stick while doing.

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#18

Post by spodek »

I like their goals, but the traditional academic implementation described in the article and in the syllabus the article linked to won't achieve them.

If you want people to learn behavior, you can't lecture them into it, nor will talking about case studies or writing papers help. Look at the behavior those classes teach: analysis, reading, writing, debating other people's behavior.

Active, experiential, project-based, exercise-based learning will do the trick. Many professors think "flipping the classroom" or having more class discussions is active or experiential, but it rarely is.

You have to get students acting on their values, feeling their own values conflicting with each other on projects they care about involving people in their lives that they care about, having others depend on their actions, having to perform on something they created, not spelled out for them in a case study. Then they learn empathy, compassion, responsibility, initiative, self-awareness, and ways to act in challenging situations.

If you want to be an artist, you have to practice making art. Art appreciation classes won't hurt, but they won't help, any more than reading about or discussing lifting weights will build muscle.

The classes they describe are ethics appreciation or leadership appreciation. Well-intentioned, but limited.

Re: New ethics courses in computer science

#20

Post by dragonwriter »

rafiki6 wrote: post #13

Technologists aren't doctors. Doctors are a necessity because people have an incessant need to stay alive. Technologists aren't a fundamental necessity to society. We are business people. The only rules/ethics that govern us are business rules/ethics. Some might argue, "but technology is required for us to survive". It's not. We've survived plenty without it. Technology is required for us to thrive.

> Technologists aren't doctors.

Doctors are a subset of technologists.

> Doctors are a necessity because people have an incessant need to stay alive.

Medical care is an application of technology people are particularly willing to sacrifice other things to pay for, but not without limit.

That's not the only application of technology for which they is true.

> Technologists aren't a fundamental necessity to society.

Hard to say that's any more true than of Doctors; you can have a society without doctors or without other technologists, but if you do, people will very quickly start assuming those roles.

> We are business people.

Most technologists are not business people. A few are, but that's incidental, not fundamental.

> The only rules/ethics that govern us are business rules/ethics.

At least in formal terms, this is true of information technology, but it has nothing to do with necessity or lack thereof (it's not true of lawyers, who are certainly not necessary to survival.) It's just that IT (unlike medicine, law, or proper engineering) lacks professionalization.

Post reply on HN