Therac-25
en.wikipedia.org
Therac-25
1–10 of 16 posts
Re: Therac-25
#2The Causality episode on this is really good: https://engineered.network/causality/episode-39-therac-25/
Re: Therac-25
#3The Causality episode on this is really good: https://engineered.network/causality/episode-39-therac-25/
The always-excellent Plainly Difficult ran an episode [0] on this topic a few years ago.
Re: Therac-25
#4It's worth noting that we don't know for sure how many people this killed, we only have a lower bound.
Re: Therac-25
#5Perhaps one of the best case studies in software ethics
Re: Therac-25
#6So they took components from a previous system, didn't test properly on the new system and today we inherit a whole lot of regulation for medical equipment because of this. Not that it's a bad thing that we ensure proper testing has occurred but there are so many cases where legally this applies even if it's very peripheral (like say a UI change in a menu item of something not related to medical equipment but is never the less under compliance)
Re: Therac-25
#7So they took components from a previous system, didn't test properly on the new system and today we inherit a whole lot of regulation for medical equipment because of this. Not that it's a bad thing that we ensure proper testing has occurred but there are so many cases where legally this applies even if it's very peripheral (like say a UI change in a menu item of something not related to medical equipment but is neve…
>So they took components from a previous system, didn't test properly on the new system
That is also how the first Ariane 5 crashed.
Re: Therac-25
#8Perhaps one of the best case studies in software ethics
And the only event I know of for which software was found to be the root cause for human deaths.
Re: Therac-25
#9The Causality episode on this is really good: https://engineered.network/causality/episode-39-therac-25/
The always-excellent Plainly Difficult ran an episode [0] on this topic a few years ago. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7gVqBY52MY
Kyle Hill also made a video on the topic. Different video styles if Plainly Difficult isn't your jam.
Re: Therac-25
#10Perhaps one of the best case studies in software ethics
In school it was my literal case study in software ethics.