Read: Class 42 - Ethics in Tech
Content
Code of Ethics
- Recognize that all individuals are stakeholders in computers and contribute to society and human well-being. Avoid causing injury.
- Be trustworthy and honest. Be fair and take steps to eliminate discrimination.
- Respect the time and effort that goes into developing new ideas, inventions, artistic works, and computer objects.
- Privacy should be respected. Respect the privacy of others. Strive for excellent quality in professional work procedures as well as goods.
- Maintain high levels of professionalism, conduct, and ethical behavior.
- Know and follow the regulations that apply to professional job.
- Accept and give expert assessment as needed.
- Provide extensive and in-depth assessments of computer systems and their effects, including risk analysis.
- Work solely in areas where you are proficient. Increase public knowledge of computing and associated technologies, as well as their effects.
- Only use computing and communication resources if you’ve been given permission or if the public good requires it.
- Design and deploy secure solutions that are both resilient and usable.
- Ensure that the public interest is at the forefront of every professional computer activity.
- Members of the organization or group should be able to articulate, embrace, and assess their social obligations.
- To improve the quality of life at work, manage employees and resources.
- Create, implement, and support policies and procedures that reflect the Code’s principles.
- Make it possible for members of the organization or group to further their careers.
- When changing or retiring systems, use caution. Recognize and protect systems that have been incorporated into society’s infrastructure.
- Uphold, promote, and respect the Code’s values. Consider breaches of the Code to be incompatible with ACM membership.
Software Engineering Code of Ethics
- Software engineers must pledge to make software analysis, specification, design, development, testing, and maintenance a profitable and recognized career. Software developers must observe the following Eight Principles as part of their responsibility to the public’s health, safety, and welfare: PUBLIC Software developers are expected to behave in the public interest.
- CLIENT AND EMPLOYER Software engineers must operate in the best interests of their client and employer while also keeping the public interest in mind.
- PRODUCT Software developers must guarantee that their products and changes adhere to the highest professional standards.
- JUDGMENT Software engineers must use professional judgment with honesty and independence.
- MANAGEMENT Managers and leaders in software engineering must adhere to and support an ethical approach to software development and maintenance.
- PROFESSION Software engineers should promote the profession’s ethics and reputation in the public interest.
- COLLEAGUES Software developers must treat their coworkers with respect and be supportive of them.
- SELF Software engineers must engage in lifelong learning about the practice of their job and advocate an ethical attitude to it.
The code I’m still ashamed of
- Bill Sourour wrote an essay titled “The code I’m still embarrassed of” about his experience writing code for a pharmaceutical firm that was selling a certain medication.
- He hadn’t given much thought to the questionnaire he’d created for the business that marketed a certain medicine to young women and girls until the drug caused a suicide and he discovered that the drug was linked to severe depression.
- He somewhat blames himself for assisting in the promotion of that medication since he assisted in the creation of the website that advertised it, and he wishes he had never participated in the creation of that website.
- I understand why the author of this post feels a little responsibility for the drug’s suicides because he helped market it with the website he developed, but I don’t believe he should hold himself to such high standards because he wasn’t the one who created the drug or was in charge of its promotion.
- He didn’t know anything about the medication and should have done some research before designing the quiz, but he was new to the company and had no choice but to write what he was told to create.
- I agree with the author that it is better to follow the code of ethics when it comes to coding, and to only create code that is useful to people and does not promote things that are possibly detrimental to others.
- I’d be careful to research what I’m coding before doing so, and make sure that whatever I’m helping to promote would not hurt others.
Self Driving Car Ethics
- Todd Spangler wrote an essay titled “Morality and Ethics of a Self-Driving Car: Who Decides Who Lives and Dies?” This article discusses the ethics of self-driving cars and how we should deal with the numerous issues that self-driving cars can cause in no-win situations, such as a potential car accident where the self-driving car must make a decision because the human in the car is unable to react quickly enough to regain control of the vehicle.
- I don’t think it’s a good idea to have completely self-driving vehicles just now because this technology hasn’t been developed and still needs a lot of work.
- Self-driving vehicles have a lot of potential for disaster, and I’m not comfortable with the concept of a computer determining who lives and who dies in a car accident.
- Someday, this technology will assist to avoid vehicle accidents and make the roads a little safer, but I believe it is preferable to wait until the technology is better equipped to cope with such circumstances before allowing it to become mainstream. I wouldn’t trust a completely self-driving car to take me around just yet, because a self-driving car can’t anticipate or cope with every circumstance.
- Even if a computer reacts quicker than a person in an emergency scenario, it may not pick the best ethical course of action or may even make the situation worse.