doctors can agree on a minimal ethical standard, software engineers can't
Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
261–270 of 544 posts
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#262I’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.
If we were to introduce an oath we would have to take further inspiration from doctors, e.g having a certification required to do the job, or, failing that at least having an industry-wide union/guild protecting the position.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#263Earlier 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…
Very few software engineers in the US, despite receiving health insurance as compensation, do not have sufficient cash comp to purchase health insurance on their own should they need to.
I believe that this is a red herring.
Yes, the drone operator that pushes the button is a murderer, even if it was the POTUS that gave the order for it to happen.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Said another way, engineers now need to be technical and legal experts in the business domain? Consider something like the 737 MAX debacle – did the programmers writing the MCAS code actually have enough aviation domain knowledge and understanding of where the component fit in the overall system to realise it was a threat to people's lives? I don't know, but my guess is the most likely answer is "No".
That's completely the wrong comparison and context. The reason MCAS came about was because management wanted to try to fudge a larger engine into an outdated design created for a different purpose rather than do the engineering and certification necessary for the new requirements and to update the system. Management wanted to save money. Of course the engineering leadership did not want to fudge something -- they wan…
> That's completely the wrong comparison and context.
By the rest of your comment, it looks as though it's an excellent comparison. How would engineers taking an oath help the situation?
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#265In Greece, we do take an engineering oath to graduate: in summary to nurture and expand science and to improve and protect human welfare.
In a similar fashion, in Canada they have the iron ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring.
IEEE and almost all of the serious engineering organizations have a code of ethics.
Accountability of the management is what is missing. If a hospital management instructs their doctors to skip costly steps in a procedure, they are going to jail. If any engineering company screws up and lives are hurt, lost or damaged somehow (e.g. privacy), they issue a public apology; rinse and repeat.
Which is ironic, as "a doctor might screw up and kill a few patients, but if you as an engineer screw up you can kill thousands." Because you are not there holding their hands when people get hurt, get their identity stolen, their money or lose their lives due to a bug or critical error, does not make you less responsible.
The problem with our field is that i) it has immaterial direct results, ii) big failures have big money behind them. The first makes it hard to impossible for the public to understand the implications and does not excite terror if you are not directly involved. How many people run in fear hearing about "x credit company got hacked"? The latter reason implies that there is an incentive for no punishment -- similarly to banking institutions in 2007.
I think we are unfortunately a lot of the times swaying between being a statistic (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/) or having insignificant or incomprehensible impact for us to gain legal power to push back. Recall that deep learning, distributed ledgers, etc are magic or demonized by the public.
P.S. One could argue that not all software developers are trained engineers etc, but I am not buying that. As a lot have noted even if a person is not academically trained they can take an oath, but nothing is going to change in the responsibility realm.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#266Could a software engineer writing guided missile targeting software be held accountable to such an oath?
The Hippocratic Oath is not for assigning blame or providing accountability towards society's rules - at least not in the first place. It is a reminder of basic ethical and professional standards and contributes to the common understanding of a physician's role.
This may seem ridiculous considering the responsibilities of medical professionals but it works as a baseline independent of the legal and moral standards of the particular society they live in.
So to answer your question:
Yes, the software engineer could be held accountable - yet, that would arguably be up to him- or herself in many cases [1]. There were physicians in history who have done horrible things [2] and - if not by the legal system - they were at least judged by their peers for their actions.
From my perspective, the most valuable aspect of having an oath (and that I regard for professions in general) seems to be the opportunity it offers for reflection, identity and future aspirations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath#Violation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#267Hippocratic Oath is the wrong thing. Software Engineers need to act like real Engineers, namely certifications, accepted practices and penalization (revocation of certifications) if accepted practices aren't followed. Software Engineering needs live up to it's actual name and stop being just "programmers".
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#268Wow coming from Microsoft that is a bit rich.
I do understand the problem with developers being a law unto themselves but that was largely caused by the propriety mess caused by Microsoft and others.
So now they want to fix what they broke to their advantage.
No thank you.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#269How about a Hippocratic Oath for the pharmaceutical industry first?
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#270Hippocratic Oath is the wrong thing. Software Engineers need to act like real Engineers, namely certifications, accepted practices and penalization (revocation of certifications) if accepted practices aren't followed. Software Engineering needs live up to it's actual name and stop being just "programmers".
No please. Let's not take 1 step forward and 10 steps back. Software engineer culture is already light-years ahead of pretty much every medium in every regard ranging from inclusivity to simple fun factors.
Certifications is meaningless corporate propaganda and we should eliminate it completely unless it's free and public.