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by jp_sc 28 days ago
Last year alone, 40 people died in Spain in a train derailment. In total, how many people have died over the last 100 years because of something a software engineer did?
5 comments

Software defects are the #3 cause of medical device failures, and growing: <https://meddeviceguide.com/blog/medical-device-recall-trends...>

ETA: Admittedly the above is getting off-topic from YouTube, but I can easily imagine a scenario where an instructional video was deleted due to a spurious copyright strike or some other stupidity.

Probably more than we'd like to admit. This isn't new either (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 for example).

Thinking software developers have done no wrong (deliberately or not) ever is just borderline naive.

Not just accidental, there are many tools/processes/weapons that are powered by software written by engineers who knowingly write their code to do harm.

But people gotta eat and all so who am I to blame.

Probably many, but how many is the result of the title of someone's IP leaking? Other than private video titles, what can this AI actually access? I doubt it has bank account information or any other PII that could cause actual damages. The risk is real but the impact is incredibly low.
Probably way more.
Take a look at the software integration in the average hospital and you'd be horrified