I love what I do, I really do. But stories like this make me want to get a "boring" tech job that I am just maintaining something. Not innovating anymore and at the mercy of not technical people telling me to make horrible decisions.
I just find it disheartening. I am just curious if others ever feel this way?
I personally don't but I think the issue here is that things like ClearView AI and ID.me and the related controversies were inevitable. Just as we're seeing with the development of DeepFakes. An astute observer can probably pretty accurately pick out the differences but will that be true in five to ten years? Audio faking is already fairly good.
Once any technology is close, there will be people telling you it's solved. Look at self-driving cars. All these "we've solved it, autopilot is the greatest thing since sliced bread" takes are pushed as marketing, meanwhile the capabilities are substantially lower than human drivers. The bar for these kinds of things should be, at minimum better than a human.
The issue isn't with the tech itself but the actors involved. It's a tool, and like any others it can be abused. What makes it dangerous is that the limitations of these tools don't appear to be investigated at all, which is a failure of something or someone, I'm just not sure what or who (probably government).
Coupling a "not quite ready" tech with some snazzy marketing and shady practices seems to have been par for the course for a lot of technologies that emerged from the post-industrial revolution era, and in some cases even before then. Just chemical examples: Leaded gasoline, CFCs, DDT, Thalidomide, etc. You could look to something like cryptomining and its environmental and social impact as another more modern tech example.
But I imagine many of us have been on the side of being told that marketing/user retention wants a dark pattern introduced. "User Research" wants all kinds of tracking introduced. Finance wants ads. Management wants something quicker so we cut corners (or worse they tell us to release something even though we say its not ready and very buggy but marketing was making a big deal about it... which I have personally been involved in. Will give one guess how that one went and then who was blamed). Or any other decision made by someone non technical that is a bad decision and is another controversy waiting to happen.
I still see technology as a great force. I still believe in it. I am lucky that my current job, I don't have to deal with any of these things. But we are not a consumer facing operation. But when I look to the future, I find myself asking myself. Where is the industry going and it feels like it's just constantly getting worse. I worry about being in a position of needing to be involved in that again.
I really think what you're saying is just something engineers tell themselves to feel better about what they do. I hear it more often from people at FAANG, defense contractors, and other morally ambiguous places than anywhere else.
Also, if you're the guy building a tool that's oppressing someone, you are the guy building the means to oppress someone. There's nothing neutral about that.
But that aside, I do mostly agree. It's nonsense to help produce something that you know will be misused and then absolve yourself of responsibility.
The problem is not that people like this crap, it's that building and selling it is absurdly profitable and people like money. I don't know how you address such a thing other than to have government step in and block it (see GDPR, tracking cookies etc)
Using a gun on another human to defend my family from immediate threat. Moral.
Using a gun on another human to inflict harm on an innocent. Immoral.
Thus "tech is neutral, usage determines morality".
HOWEVER
what if we are in a society where using guns is the normal way to resolve conflict? Where everyone is required to carry a gun at all times and be prepared to use it to defend their family? Is the tech still neutral when it becomes a cornerstone of every interaction?
Not a fanciful example. Think: dueling.
Some questions I ask myself
Certain technologies force a certain world view. If that world view is not moral, then the technology is not moral.
If a technology is inherently dehumanizing, how is it moral?
Does the technology have room for forgiveness, repentance, and redemption? If not, how is it moral?
The counter-counter arguments is to move up the stack. "computers are neutral, but a computerized system which does X is immoral. So we can only have computerized systems which do Y". But what if the problem is that computerizing something inherently makes it immoral?
A toy example: When something becomes a metric, it loses its value as a metric ("lines of code", "rankings of universities", ...). Computerizing things makes them standardized metrics.
To work for a company is to support their mission (unless you're a corporate spy or saboteur). The morality of your work should be partly decided by how much it improves or worsens the morality of the company's actions. Not "guilt by association," but "guilt by participation."
Personally, I think this logic also applies when the outcome of the technology is obvious. If you devote your life to making a mind control helmet, you can't play the "technology is morally neutral" card.
Philosophical disclaimer: None of this is meant to be black and white rules. There are always murky situations involving trollies and stolen loaves of bread.
I don't see a reason to call out tech as being worse than other industries I could name. It is uniquely awful in a number of ways, but so are others.
I generally do not get disheartened by this sort of thing but you also probably will not ever see me working for Facebook for example.....
Just an hour ago I was thinking to myself, "I wish I was good with my hands. I wish I could do anything but this."
Computers are the only talent I have, and changing careers would mean going back to entry-level pay, which I can't do at this point in my life.
It used to be that when you got fed up with your profession, you could go teach. But that doesn't pay jack squat anymore.
Most people I talk with in the industry disagree with me on this but I firmly believe that most product/service updates are net negative for the user. They get done for the benefit of a company, with a lot of spin and marketing on top to make it sound like it's actually a good thing.