It won't work. There will always be an engineer willing to sell out humans for money or knowledge. Money obviously being the root of all evil.
The surveillance apparatus wouldn't exist without these types of engineers.
Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
421–430 of 544 posts
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
So? The goal is to eliminate improper behavior not cry about it and point fingers.
So, there’s always a sucker who needs the cash or health insurance.
I hope no one wonders why it's been so easy to tie a person's health insurance to their employment in "capitalist US" (as opposed to "communist Russia"), and how frustratingly difficult it has been to affect substantive change now that it's been shown to be exactly as constrictive as it sounds.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#423I’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…
There is the problem that everything can be subdivided in a bunch of menial task so every cog in the system isn't aware of their impact. It already happens a lot in software. the idea of Hippocratic Oath reminds me of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics in "The Naked sun" (SPOILERS ahead): the detective realises that the normally quoted First Law of Robotics ("A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, al…
> There is the problem that everything can be subdivided in a bunch of menial task so every cog in the system isn't aware of their impact. It already happens a lot in software.
Precisely the issue with the original proposal. Would it have mattered whatsoever if PhD's took a Hippocratic oath when developing the Manhattan project?
I feel like this MSFT executive may already know that swearing engineer to "do no harm" is fruitless after reading the article, but it's still unfortunate that statements like his diverts attention from more meaningful proposals.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not realistic. Any H1NB visa holder who doesn't do what they are told will be fired and must move their family back to their country of origin. SWE would need to first unionize to protect workers from being fired/deported for pushing back before anything like this is even considered. Or tackle the problem where it begins: with the organization.
That's an unrelated problem. A person who follows an illegal order, whether in violation of law or ethics of practice, probably won't retain visa sponsorship long enough for that argument to matter. It also won't prevent them from suing their sponsor for wrongful termination and fraud. At any rate ethics is a hard sell to an industry whose professionals are completely unaware of what ethics are or how they apply.
I don't understand your argument. Do you think people who follow unethical behaviour are quickly fired? That is not usually the case if the unethical behaviour was profitable. Do you think that the legal system is quick to move so people won't be deported in 60 days?
>At any rate ethics is a hard sell to an industry whose professionals are completely unaware of what ethics are or how they apply.
This is simply not true. Most everyone with a CS related degree in Europe or the US has taken a course on ethics and knows plenty about it.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#425I’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…
Kind of funny to hear this from a company known for harvesting tons and tons of telemetry from customers, with no true way to fully opt-out which is pretty damn unethical and probably feeds their AI.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#426How about we start with a Hippocratic oath for public company executive management.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#427Great, if we will take software engineers to task over their ethics, let's form a professional regulatory body that licenses them and a union or advocacy org while we are at it. Tech companies have benefited tremendously from the way the profession is currently setup. I'd love to see how they respond when they can't make SWEs dance like monkeys in their interviews to get a job. Suddenly, outsourcing the work would become a lot less possible too.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that a good freedom?
It doesn't matter if it's a good freedom, the chances of the US repealing the 1st Amendment any time soon are basically nil. You'd have a better chance of getting Apple/Amazon/Google to voluntarily split up their own companies out of the goodness of their own hearts -- it just isn't going to happen. The only argument that actually matters here is whether or not restrictions on corporate structure actually do violate…
Antitrust doesn't violate the first amendment, so clearly limits on corporate scale aren't unconstitutional, so the legal defense is insufficient and the moral question stands.
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#429It doesn’t work for doctors in the U.S. (see opioid epidemic, pharmaceutical company deals, etc.), why would it work for Software Engineers?
Re: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that a good freedom?
Because it allows people to associate with whom they choose to. Remove that and you’ve opened the gate to legal racism, legally institutionalized homophobia, banning of religion; the list is endless. The five freedoms are the pillars of our Constitution. Without them, we are no better than China or Russia or even any third-world hellhole you care to mention.
I don't see that even a little bit, your cause effect isn't explained.
I should phrase it differently. Why is an absolute freedom of association more important then the freedom from being harmed by large associations with amoral machinations. The original argument asks that if large corporations inherently obscure moral outcomes, maybe they are immoral, which is an argument that puts these two moral axioms in conflict. Simply stating that one side wins is thought terminating; its important to argue for why its better.