Disgusting development and a horrible example of how destructive technology can be.
This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through mandatory ethics classes throughout their education.
This reinforces my belief that engineers and scientist need to go through mandatory ethics classes throughout their education.
1. Some people will need jobs. 2. Ethics are subjective. 3. Some people won't care.
The correct solution would be in trying to vote in less authoritarian politicians. Americans haven't done a very good job of that over the last century.
People are probably less likely to stand up when economic inequality widens and they have a cozy software engineer position.
That requires a system where people actually have a meaningful vote... e.g. it's impossible in China, and for what its worth Chinese ethics are way, way different than typical Western-sourced ethics.
In the US, the ability of people to have a meaningful vote has been largely dismantled by a number of bad factors:
1) gerrymandering leading to situations where a Democrat won't run in a Republican stronghold (or, less often, the other way around)
2) the Electoral College leading to a situation where despite losing the popular vote, the respective candidate does win the presidency (as happened with Trump and I believe also with George W)
3) states with "fixed" political leanings get largely ignored and campaigning largely takes place in contested/swing states.
4) voter disenfranchisement: in Germany, voting is generally on Sundays as most people do not have to work on weekends, thus improving turnout compared to the US where voting is on a Tuesday for whatever reason; also in the US there are all sorts of measures to make it harder for poor or minority people to vote, including weird arbitrary ID requirements.
For gerrymandering, there are plenty of proposals around requiring districts conform to some set of geometric rules.
The electoral college issue gets a lot of attention, but the more fundamental problem is first-past-the-post voting. What we really need is approval-based voting (i.e. I approve of candidates A and B; whoever has the most approvals wins). Such would eliminate the incentive to solely vote for the lesser of two evils. The electoral college has a bigger influence than when the Constitution was written due to the even higher concentrations of people in urban centers -- the idea makes sense though, perhaps with some math we can find a compromise. Regardless, FPTP is much more serious.
Easy to pass any legislation that changes voting and threatens all the incumbents? Not without a HUGE push, which I don't see happening anytime soon but why not try?
How? There is no incentive for the entrenched party to change the rules.
Agreed. Open to ideas.
For some of us, that might mean not working on a project that we could reasonably foresee would result in the deportation of children who don't speak Spanish and have only ever known this country to some foreign country. For others, it might mean not working on projects that assist women in obtaining an abortion.
Obviously, there's no "class" that settles the differing ethical boundaries we all have (though better ethics education would allow us to recognize the huge subset of ethics that we tend to share). The point is to tune in to our own ethics and not let the noise of professional life occlude them.
As a field, I think we've allowed ourselves to simultaneously believe that we're doing the most important work that's being done this century, while at the same time believing that we're powerless to shape the outcomes of our labor. But that's not true at all: if you believe the former, then it's likely that we have immense power over the latter! So, I think the point of the root comment on this thread is well taken.
Unfortunately it seems a lot of engineers either don't have much in the way of ethics, or truly believe what they're doing is good. See all those willing to implement things like invasive telemetry, DRM, and walled gardens, for example. The "security" argument is pervasive and very convincing to those who don't realise that it's also a way for companies to enforce more control over its users.
This also brings up another point: if you had to choose between not working on a project that goes against your ethics (leaving others to drive it toward its undesirable-to-you goal), or work on it but silently subvert it (as in subtly break it or otherwise impede its progress), which one would be the more ethical thing to do? In other words, "do everything you're told, just some things better than others"? Maybe I'm just optimistic, but the existence of jailbreaks, rooting, and flaws discovered in DRM schemes really make me want to believe that the latter exist.
I'm not commenting to advocate for the notion that people should get an ethics education so they'll all turn out to be good Democratic Socialists. I'm saying, our field would be better off if people recognized that their ethics intersect with the field heavily, and they should do this work mindfully.
Problem: engineers working on things like license plate scanning
Your solution: engineers should be ethical
My comment: engineers can be ethical and still do things like license plate scanning
Your comment: you agree
From my vantage point it doesn't look like your recommendation changes anything.
As it is, too many in the tech community are willing to defend anything with arguments such as „if I don’t, someone else will“ or „technology is ethically neutral, it is the use...“.
There's a process for coming to group concensus on contended questions, in which individual volition and choice isn't possible. It's called "politics".
It's messy, but I'm unaware of any better options.