Computer ethics is an incredibly wide and subjective topic. My recent exposure to a few amazing educational events/talks and raised awareness has a...
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Not really sure what you mean by this here? Ethics isn't really a deontological concept. Utilitarianism is a Moral/Ethical Theory.
There are three major forms of normative ethics: consequentialism (of which Utilitarianism is a part), deontology (of which Kantianism and Divine Law are a part), and Virtue Ethics (of which Aristotelianism is a part).
Personally I have more of an interest in Virtue Ethics which focuses on the inherent character of a person rather than on specific actions, so that would be an interesting way to explore these questions.
Thanks for the post, Ethics doesn't come up quite often enough in the Software field, and does not typically become a focus till after something questionable has happened.
Hi @tcolligan-ap! Thanks for the comment.
Sorry I was a bit vague there, I was referencing deontological ethics, i.e. the way an action's morality can be judged based on rules or metrics. I hope that is clearer now!
I completely agree that Virtue Ethics is also an interesting way to look at some of these questions (though obviously far more personal).
You have a very good point that questions around ethics seem to only be asked after an incident. I hope that one day soon we will have mitigated the risk of this happening again (and repeatedly) by being more mindful about ethics and relentlessly asking ourselves questions!
Here's some questions to consider:
Would you feel confident in testifying truthfully about your company's software development practices in a civil deposition? In open court during a civil trial?
Would you feel confident in talking to the FBI, SEC or other law enforcement agencies about company's software development practices? What about testifying in a criminal trial where your bosses are facing charges and you might be accused as well?
These are both interesting questions.
I personally think that by the time we get to any kind of civil trial or law enforcement are required to be brought in, we have already failed as 'ethical' developers.
As we build our products and services, one of the constant questions that we should be asking is "what are the implications of this". I think to some extent we already do this quite well (certainly we consider the implications of design on a product's performance, we just need to think about the human implications too)!
This is why I mention the possibility that "we could (and possibly should) regulate this to allow ethical concerns to be raised without causing undue stress and worry" - ethical bodies might prevent us from needing to escalate these issues higher!
Software engineering isn't immature.
The commercial-industrial applications of software engineering are.
Software engineering as a discipline is clearly mature compared to e.g. genetics or neuroscience, which get their breakthroughs in the eighties and nineties rather than the fifties and sixties. And were also practically based on computers and software when they did.
One of the primary reasons for this is the basis for software engineering in math and formal logic, an old and mature way to reason about systems, nature and thinking. Lambda calculus is almost a century old and Turing died in 1954.
The immaturities mainly come from corporate management and politicians refusing to learn the discipline and its theoretical groundwork.
It's an interesting point you bring up. I do agree that the immaturities can be exacerbated by an unwillingness to learn and educate ourselves.
However I do believe that we are (relatively) immature in more ways than just this, certainly in comparison to engineering for example. 60 or so years is not a huge period of time in comparison to many other disciplines, and we see evidence of this time to time (check out this Medium article for some great examples).
Thanks for bringing up these extra points though - it is always interesting to hear other opinions on the matter!