[contingencies]

Often this stuff is used for surveillance. If you choose to study this area, please be careful how you apply your knowledge. There are plenty of positive ways to use it: contributing content classification systems to sci-hub or libgen, building tools for the disabled, automating multilingual visual design aesthetics with computational linguistics and machine learning...

[ngcc_hk]

Whilst I understand the concern but just Internet is now for control and tracking (chi-na is more obvious but post someone we all know better), we cannot stop the wheel.

Not knowing is even worst.

[amelius]

We need an equivalent of the hippocratic oath for software engineers: I swear by Hephaestus, the ugly god of crafts, that I shall not use my skills for controlling and tracking ...

[Jedi72]

Early in my career (it began after a discussion in a tutorial during my undergrad) I made a choice to never to use my engineering skills to build weapons. I don't believe its a morally justifiable choice in this century. It's not like I have been forced to starve as a result but it did reduce a few opportunities.

[pmcjones]

See the ACM's code of ethics, which they are in the process of updating: https://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=3173016&ftid=1936873&dw... .

[myaso]

Great, these who want to build these things will simply hire people who don't subscribe to this oath ... And now the organization will be populated by a whole tribe of people who have no qualms about doing this -- does that sound like something that will make things better?

Aside: the book looked interesting. Skimmed it, beautiful typesetting, not gratuitously mathematical, looked readable -- I may be wrong, but it's just a exercise of adding awareness of it's existence to me.

[amelius]

> Great, these who want to build these things will simply hire people who don't subscribe to this oath ...

How many doctors are willing to give up their title to do unethical stuff?

An ethical code will change people's perception, and that's a big thing. It will morph the perception of Google and Facebook from cool tech companies into dark places where no decent people want to work; unless of course these companies are willing to change. And there will be a huge effect on politics, other businesses, and media.

[myaso]

Um, how are they supposed to make money if they don't track you to a certain extent? Do they have flaws? Yes -- it's not funny what kind of things you can target for based AdWords, their internal staff probably aren't creative enough to think up ways in which their tools can be used to inflict misery. Software engineers aren't soldiers, doctors, or civil servants what kind of ethical code do you expect? How will people be held accountable to it? What will happen to these who make transgressions?

[randcraw]

And how are cigarette companies going to make money if they are hindered in addicting you and giving you cancer? Legally of course.

Software engineers are surrogates for ALL jobs because software is used everywhere. When we serve medicine, we should be obliged to take the Hippocratic oath. When we serve the military or intel agencies (with a security clearance), we ARE obliged to take an formal oath of secrecy. IMHO, many other S/W roles bear no less responsibility.

I think it's time that we software infrastructuralists take our role behind the scenes as seriously as those on the front lines do.

[matt4077]

> Great, these who want to build these things will simply hire people who don't subscribe to this oath ..

Morally, this argument quite obviously fails because it could be used to justify anything.

Practically, we see many professions where people of character have successfully resisted temptation: every government employee who is not corrupt comes to mind.

And even if they'll just hire the next guy/gal: If you say no to an offer, you were, by definition, their top choice. That next one down the ladder will therefore be slightly worse, making such businesses less profitable.

[myaso]

Top choice based on a search with finite resources, maybe there is a better top choice if they spend a bit more time -- one that is also more agreeable. I'll return with a question -- Is resisting temptation the path of least resistance? What are the odds that the personality trait you describe also overlaps with the person being in a position of enough authority to actually matter?

[brian_spiering]

Inventing ships also invented shipwreks