[yason]

A wise future programmer might want to ensure that the software he writes acts mostly like science――it can be used for good and it can be used for bad but isn't inherently neither――and will thus force outsourcing decisions about the final product to someone else.

Maybe it's ok in the Volkswagen software to have a knob that controls the amount of NOX in the exhaust, for testing purposes and for adapting the car to various markets. Maybe it's ok for the software to provide heuristics for the driving conditions (highway, city, dynamometer) for some future telemetry application. But the wise future programmer does realize it needs to be someone else than himself who makes the decision to configure the system to couple those two things together, and make the car reduce pollution only when dynamometer mode is active.

Good old shifting of blame works for the bad guys as well as the good guys. It may not be pretty but it works well enough if only you're willing to draw the line of responsibility somewhere for yourself.