It's funny how no major CS curriculum at a major
University includes a legitimate ethics course. In the modern era, programmers are akin to lawyers or politicians; we wield immense, and often implicitly trusted power over hundreds of millions of opinions. It's long past due that programmers be required to adhere to ethical codes, maybe even to the extent of bad-style licensing.
I recently graduated from a middle tier state school in CS/Math. The CS portion required an ethics course, I believe its inclusion had something to do with an ACM mandate. Out of over 100 enrolled juniors/seniors I don't believe attendance ever reached double digits outside of 2 tests.
Sure, there was a "requierment," but I wouldn't really consider it legitimate. It took concerted effort to "earn" any grade lower than an A. I wasn't personally acquainted with any other student who seriously considered the social and ethical implications of computers during or after taking a 400 level course titled "Social and Ethical Implications of Computers."
On the bright side, I heard through the grapevine that rigor, or at least workload for the course, has increased since I took it.
Although anecdotal and perhaps specific to my institution, every recollection of my University career makes me feel deeply thankful that I ended up eventually pursuing a double major in mathematics. The quality and dedication of the instructors wildly surpassed that of the CS department. Mathematics professors were there to share knowledge. CS perfessors were pressured by hiring statistics into "preparing us for the workforce" by essentially quizzing specific interview questions like "what's the difference between interfaces and subclasses in Java."
A counter-example: I also attended a middle tier state University for CS, and our single term required Ethics in Computing course was all but easy. That said, it certainly didn't capture the attention of students.
My one hour exam final prompt was “Networking is useful, but explain the ethics involved in networking.” I answered with an essay about conflicts of interest in business while my friend wrote about file-sharing.
This matches my experience. In addition to taking the course as an undergrad, I was the graduate TA for three semesters. While it wasn't super deep on any one topic, the course was far from easy and required to graduate.
My Canadian software engineering degree included a substantial engineering ethics course shared with the rest of the engineering flavors (including mechanical and aerospace). At the time, I thought it was a waste, but the further down my career I go the more valuable it was in retrospect. I also can't call myself an engineer in Canada without joining a provincial engineering organization (like the PEO in Ontario).
I agree for engineering classes, but those completing a computer science (CS in a science or arts faculty) degree in Canada usually do not have any regulatory oversight of any kind and no ethics classes.
However, in the Quebec system (and presumably the equivalent in other provinces) we have 3 philosophy classes (humanities, world-view etc) in college/cégep (somewhat mandatory before university). I also had a mandatory ethics class since I completed a technical degree, which I also did not appreciate at the time, but it helped me develop more critical thinking later on.
The global nature of software development limits the utility of licensing.
You can't go overseas to get a bridge built across the river in your town. You can't get a foreign barrister to represent you in court in your country.
You can easily get a new social media website or IoT server built and hosted in any country you want.
The scenarios where the effects of bad ethical decisions most often make the news are not things that lend themselves well to being subject to local licensing regulations, like embedded avionic or medical devices or internal banking systems. Problems do happen in those spaces, but they are rare.
None of this even touches on usability and the difficulty of restricting tool use to the "good guys". The jslint licence got a lot of stick for that.
The framework for regulation of these sorts of systems will almost certainly come down to “possession of data”.
You can build/host things anywhere, but something centered around “if you generate profits in the USA, and hold the data of Americans, these requirements exist for your system” makes sense. In particular, liability needs to rest somewhere, such that someone gives enough of a shit to do things right.
A civil engineering firm could outsource the design of a bridge anywhere, but in the end, somebody’s neck is on the line if it fails.
> something centered around “if you generate profits in the USA, and hold the data of Americans, these requirements exist for your system” makes sense
This is exactly the stance taken by GDPR. Most devs don't like it from what I've seen on HN. (Saying this without any judgment. I am personally very much in favor of what GDPR does.)
This sort of thing already gets dodged by international companies who "generate profits" in countries with lower taxes and "incur costs" in countries with higher taxes.
>" and hold the data of Americans"
GDPR? System requirements is one thing, requiring a licensed engineer from multiple jurisdictions is another. Bear in mind that because software changes constantly, this has to be a senior staff position, not a one-time sign-off like it could be for a bridge.
I really liked my university's required ethics course. It was taught by a CS professor with a law degree, and in addition to covering law included philosophy and ethics of what you should do with technology, and when an engineer should refuse to build something. Participation was about on par with other courses of the term.
I assumed all universities had a similar program, if they don't students are really missing out.
I had an ethics course as a part of my curriculum. It was an extremely interesting course, but completely inapplicable to my professional career.
The main problem is there is not a certifying organization that standardizes ethics (and includes licensing). A single developer refusing something on ethics is pretty meaningless. A company will just find someone else who will do it.
I'm wondering how someone can even go about teaching ethics when they're a purely cultural artifacts.
Isn't it just subtle propaganda? Good, bad, just, unjust - what's ethical in China, for example, or Saudia Arabia is not the same as what's ethical in the US or even Europe.
Nevermind the thought of relatively centralized institutions acting as arbiters of ethics and, by extension, core aspects of culture.
How do you decide which brand of ethics to teach? Especially if your class is represented by a range of nationalities?
Look at this thread and how oblivious everyone is to the variability of the definition of ethics. We take the subject as some kind of absolute, but really we're just viewing the rest of the world through priveleged western lenses.
> How do you decide which brand of ethics to teach?
There's two common options chosen:
(1) broad multi-system survey rather than a single system or narrow set, and
(2) teach the system or systems most connected to the target legal system (for cases where ethics is being taught largely to create a safety buffer around legality and anticipate legality in adopting to address where legality had not yet settled.)
When you know why you want to teach ethics, it's fairly trivial to choose the approach.
Do you earnestly believe that Harvard University will be paralyzed by the choice between a modern western ethics system in which women have all the rights of men, or (to use your example) a Saudi ethics system in which women are property?
Most people in the real work are not so ridiculous that they allow themselves to be paralyzed by knowledge of ethical relativism.
The problem is that people treat and teach ethics as though they are absolute. Further, ethics as a field of study is unique because it is supposed to directly influence behavior. What no one seems to realize is that ethics lessons are a form of social conditioning with administrators deciding on the content.
Here's a quick illustrative example: what do you think passed for ethical to the average citizen at the height of Nazi Germany? Or Cold War era Soviet Union? To CCP members during the great leap forward? Supporters of Dutuerte? Liberals vs Conservatives in the U.S.?
So which brand is your University picking and choosing to offer in class? The whole idea is dangerous - colleges should not be in the business of teaching ethics, because in order to do so they must decide on what is ethical.
> Good, bad, just, unjust - what's ethical in China, for example, or Saudia Arabia is not the same as what's ethical in the US or even Europe.
That's bullshit. Just because some places have unethical norms, doesn't mean their norms are ethical. Just because some places have a norm to mistreat some people, doesn't mean those people suddenly don't feel mistreated.
I attended a pretty well known university in California and we had a professional ethics course where we analyzed case studies and current events in tech using the IEEE/ACM code of ethics. A number of states in the US have professional licensing requirements to be considered a Software Engineer so maybe that is a step in the right direction.
I do agree with your pretense though that programmers have a tendency to not think about ethics and should be held to some sort of code in the same way doctors and lawyers are supposed to be.
Examen philosophicum is common in Norwegian universities.
It is worth noting that this is common to all first degrees, and may or may not be tailored to your particular subject area, so it's often up to the learner to work out apply the theory to their own scenarios.
That is just another required course to pass though? I mean unless the teacher is especially good (which they practically never are if for any part of a non lap course there is compulsory attendance) you regurgitate the subject and forget everything the day after the exam, right?
You've got a good point, but do you really think an ethics class is going to stop Microsoft or Google? Do you really think an ethics class will make Facebook respect privacy?
I totally support the idea that all professionals need to be ethical and moral, and I definitely try to do so in my life, but I've given up hope that society at large is interested in this. I think individuals generally are, but any company, once it becomes powerful, seems to also become evil.
Do you know of any good resources for learning more about ethics (in the context of CS) online? I can't really imagine what an ethics course would look like; would it just be "don't build stuff that can be abused"? I'm genuinely asking because I don't know much about this. What would the end result look like?
An ethics course is mostly about familiarizing you with several frameworks that can be used to make decisions about ethics.
For instance, "don't build stuff that can be abused" is not a good framework for ethical decision-making. "Abuse" has no clear definition, and "can be" is an incredibly high standard. By this standard, the hammer should have have been invented. It's incredibly easy to hurt someone with one! There are no safeguards whatsoever!
Do you seriously think that taking an ethics course in college would be the difference between a world where programming is used as a weapon and a world in which it's not?
Man if only we could make all our political science grads take an ethics course, then there'd be no more war!
Studying ethics is not about "this is right or wrong", it's about "these are ways to consider what is right or wrong". It's one level higher in terms of "metaness" than you think it is.
If an ethics course teaches students which decisions actually have an ethical component in them, that's already a huge win: Whenever they encounter such a decision, they will be more likely to notice and ponder the ethical implications contained therein. This does not necessarily prescribe a particular set of ethical rules that they have to adhere to.
So -- I am finding amusement in this -- but ethics is very labour intensive. I'm sure we all wish we could dream up new projects in a vacuum without real-world consequences (simply for the fun of it).
I was taught "Law and Economics" in my Cambridge computer science course in the late 90s. There wasn't a lot of it and it was a bit erratic, but it was there.
Ethics is the study of what you can get away with. University level ethics people doesn't make people a whit better than they were already.
So maybe it's best this way. Computer scientists will still do bad stuff, but at least they'll be embarrassed about it when caught, rather than come up with clever justifications.
That’s not how the ethics class I took in college worked. It reminded us to feel empowered to speak up rather than build something we didn’t think was right, and what the best means of doing so were.
Which is why it is crucial everyone realizes how easy it really is to create these fakes, before the masses are duped in favor of the next war or genocide by these techniques.