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Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#101

Post by bumby »

geofft wrote: post #73
bumby wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming the U.S. founding fathers had an adversarial role in establishing democracy?

If by "democracy" we mean "a certain privileged class of humans have shared influence in their government, usually by voting," then the US founding fathers were rather late to the game - plenty of republics had that already. If by "democracy" we mean "there is no privileged class, and all people born in the land can vote if they are of age and have not had their privileges removed by due process of law," or we mean "…

I think you are missing the point of the parent comment. They implied the U.S. founding fathers made progress toward universal suffrage, not perfected it.

While accurate, your point on slavery misses the point too. The parent comment was implying that significant democratic progress was made despite contentious disagreement on important issues like slavery.

Your "in spite of" comment comes across as if it's saying "their system was flawed, therefore it didn't make any meaningful contributions and society would have been better without it". Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good...

This exemplifies the parent comment's original point about Google's AI ethics committee of throwing the baby out with the bathwater because they were unable to meet the expectation that everyone agree on everything. If that maxim isn't met, they just take their ball and go home and the overall system is no better than when it started.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#102

Post by neilv »

mempko wrote: post #66
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) but it's not promoted or advertised near enough in my opinion to people in the field.

This! I think what I'm going to start doing is to not take any computer professional seriously unless they are an ACM or IEEE member (or similar org in your country). EDIT: Getting downvoted, clearly not a popular opinion. Are people here not interested in having a strong corporate-independent organization to push the industry forward?

Contributions to the EFF (or maybe ACLU) might be a better predictor of responsible professionalism, than membership in ACM and IEEE Computer Society.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#103

Post by mspecter »

ABCLAW wrote: post #27

I think the imposition of this burden on engineers is the result of our belief that our legislators are too incompetent or unwilling to act in the fact of clear moral hazards. Tech has a very strong history of conscientious objectors. They're not the problem. Other institutions need to do their part.

A moral hazard happens when an entity is somehow insured against something (e.g. health insurance), so is rationally more likely to behave in some "bad" way (e.g. driving recklessly).

I'm not seeing how this a moral hazard, do you just mean "immoral"?

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#104

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #97

For my part, I'm just not interested in working at facebook or google or certain other companies because I disagree with their practices. Luckily, I'm far enough along in my career that I don't need to take just any job, even if it is limiting to be a privacy conscious data scientist. I do worry that people like me just staying out of these places leads to an echo chamber, and change from within is great. I wonder wh…

Yeah, it's hard to be a conscientious objector when you never put yourself into the position of working for a company whose goals you need to object to.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#105

Post by Zaphods »

icebraining wrote: post #90
Zaphods wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The regulation won't necessarily help anything but to outlaw a lot of smart people from being able to write certain software. It will put us further behind the USA in our ability to create tech companies that matter (or that can compete with offshoring) Has any of that happened with engineers in Canada? We still have plenty of engineers. A lot of this comes off as any industry wanting to hold onto the engineer titl…

> Software is not just some shit-tier SaaS app. I think the fear is that the same restrictions will affect shit-tier apps as well as aeronautic control software. After all, it's not like you can't already say "to work on aeronautic software you must have credential X or Y". So what's the point of restricting the word "engineer" as a whole?

The problem with that argument is that they can just call themselves developers and nothing would change. Currently, "software engineer" doesn't mean anything. There is no credential that obligates software engineers to the same standards as other engineers or more than developers. Right now it's just an empty title in the tech industry.

It's not a restricted word. It's a restricted accredation that, should one carry it, obligates them to a certain set of standards and accountability.

The people making those apps don't need to call themselves engineers. They can call themselves developers. And the world will keep spinning. But a developer calling themselves an engineer is like a local contractor calling themselves a "residential engineer". An engineer can be a local contractor, but a local contractor can't simply call themselves an engineer, of any sort, unless they're accredited. That distinction matters because engineers have obligations that they are held to that a local contractor doesn't. That's the point.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#106

Post by Aunche »

dragonwriter wrote: post #98
Aunche wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the Great British Empire was "better" than the early US (I'm sure some of their former colonies would say otherwise), it bears no relevance to the discussion of whether the American Constitution was a success or failure. The US isn't Great Britain, so it can't be compared as such. I also don't understand why you would hold the founding fathers responsible for things that happened several decades in the future…

> I also don't understand why you would hold the founding fathers responsible for things that happened several decades in the future. The Constitutional explicit protections for both slavery and the slave trade were written in by the framers, they did not occur several decades later. The concrete divergence between UK and US policy on slavery began no later than the UK 1807 ban on the slave trade, which was less than…

The US actually banned the slave trade the same year. Slaves didn't become fully emancipated in Britain until 1838 or so.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#107

Post by natalyarostova »

I'm very uncomfortable with how we are importing Chinese censorship into our lives, due in part to tech companies needing to build services that can operate in both regions.

At an object level, it's an important point to make and re-iterate.

On a meta-level, I am annoyed at how much special pleading I see from the NYtimes about the evils of tech, while it's simply par for the course for -- say -- Finance to act with near impunity when managing, fund raising, and dealing with autocratic and communist regimes.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#108

Post by ArtDev »

Coding is a craft. I wouldn't work on something I had moral issues with. There are grey areas for sure, but for me, work for the defense industry or a local gun shop.. nope.. go find someone else.

There will always be someone that doesn't have any moral compass about their work or income. That person is simply not me.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#109

Post by povertyworld »

mfoy_ wrote: post #3

I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anyt…

Why put this on programmers? The guy making the decision to make Dragonfly is a Stanford MBA with a materials background. It's not some working class kid who made it through a Javascript bootcamp that is making decisions about the direction of future Google products. So, why don't we let the MBAs be the ones to form an ethical organization to police themselves.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#110

Post by analognoise »

anarchodev wrote: post #74
mfoy_ wrote: post #3

I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anyt…

While it's true that getting "up and running" with a simple project is only a matter of getting a working laptop and internet connection (and a bootcamp if one is available to you), getting into the position where you could build (or not build) a system capable of broadly violating human rights on behalf of an oppressive government is not an opportunity most workers have. If you're interested in the sort of union tha…

"getting into the position where you could build (or not build) a system capable of broadly violating human rights on behalf of an oppressive government is not an opportunity most workers have."

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