I honestly think that there should be some sort of ethics course required of CS students (like how MBA students are often required to take a class in business ethics, and doctors are required to learn medical ethics).
Engineers who behave unethically without asking questions aren't good engineers--at least, they're not the sort of engineers we want to be creating.
I have trouble with the notion that a single class during tertiary studies is what will make the difference between ethical or unethical behaviour.
Ethical behaviour is - or should be - learned and refined over a lifetime, via parents, peers, all levels of education, employers, wider society and one's own contemplation.
I'm suspicious of the inclusion of ethics classes in MBA courses, given the kind of work many MBAs end up doing. I suspect it can create a mindset in which anything you convince yourself is OK according to what you learned in your ethics class is acceptable, which is a very weak and inconsistent standard.
To be clear, I'm fully supportive of the idea that engineers and everyone else in tech companies should behave ethically. I'm just not sure ethics classes will achieve that outcome.
If engineers, or any employees, are behaving unethically, it's because there's a misalignment between the employee's own short-term incentives (i.e., keeping their job, getting a promotion/raise), and societally-beneficial objectives. It'll take more than an ethics class to fix that.
In my case, I never seriously thought about several hot button social issues that were ethically troubled until I took a course on ethics. They simply didn't intersect with my life, nor did I expect them to. Only once I was in the class did I stop and think about costs incurred by choices and policies and their outcomes, much less how I might simply ask "What choice is more just (or less unjust)?"
College is about not only learning deliberately but allowing serendipity to open your mind to the unexpected. In my experience, budding engineers are among the last of us to become aware of social costs vs benefits and alternative perspectives. Without a required course to open their eyes, it's likely that many young techies will leap into life's choices before they look.
IMO, college is exactly the right time for all students to confront the cost of living an unexamined life.
Absolutely. But, what if someone's parents, peers, etc have never really introduced the foundational ideas? I mean, most people are taught ethical rules, but they're often taught as rules and not ideology that should be applied broadly. Also, most parents aren't equipped to teach some of the ethical dilemmas that we face with social media and big data. Having a course on some of these things should be another building block for many, but also a backstop for those who have never given it any thought at all.
Yes, it may not be sufficient. But what we need is not only to change the short-term incentives, but to encourage employees to disregard these incentives when it is morally necessary to do so.
I am not so sure. It is hard to teach ethics, but you can have ethics as a basis for a framework. Most MBAs will be very aware of something like compliance or labour law. And if know that framework you can critique them. Not every hardware engineer understand the importance of ethics, but they mostly accept the regulations or principles derived from ethics. In tech we don't really have that, so it is often a non-starter to begin with. The exception being GDPR, but you have probably noticed how messy those discussions are.
Well, define ethics. The protesters mentioned in the article seem to think that even providing software to law enforcement is unethical (like many google employees seem to think that providing software to the US armed forces is unethical). I don't think that a Silicon Valley definition of ethics will gather much consensus.
But SV doesn't get to redefine ethics. They have to confront the same problems, criteria, and choices as the rest of us.
For example, I used to contract to the US military in the DC area. That work invited many of the same concerns that SV does -- privacy, security, freedom of speech, acting preserve and defend the Constitution's principles. Today I work for a big pharmaceutical. Comparable concerns apply here too -- honesty, doing no harm, serving people in need, improving and extending their lives.
Ethics are universal, no matter where you live or what you do.
I don't think that would do anything at all. People aren't going to learn ethics from a class. Furthermore, there is absolutely no reason to single out CS students, as many ethical decisions in tech are made by business people anyway.
Some people really do learn from classes. I'm not being facetious. Sometimes teaching you can actually see that students have never considered certain things and for them it is a revelation of sorts.
To understand this you have to also take on board that ethics is difficult. The media often gives us simplified versions of situations after the fact and we can't help but feel the "right" choice was always obvious. But in reality, as an ethical conflict develops those involved often feel helpless as the problem continues to grow. No one risks stopping it precisely because they don't have the intellectual framework to deal with or understand the developing complex ethical dilemma until it is too large for a single individual to take on.
I get where you are coming from though. I'm just saying that some people aren't lucky enough to have come from that place. Education does often make the difference for well meaning people not otherwise exposed to a good moral foundation.
My journalism ethics class did open my eyes to some things. However, when the industry itself ignores the ethics taught in the classroom and demands its cogs do the same, then no matter how good the class may have been, it's not going to win over a boss deciding to behave unethically.
There are plenty of things I didn't fully understand as a student, not just academic things but self-realization "youth is wasted on the young" type learnings, which I suspect impacts all of us
BUT, I bet if you look at the data, things like DARE and driver's ed and sex ed v abstinance education have measurable, statistical impacts on what people believe and how they act.
ALSO, there are plenty of jobs out there for technical work. Each of us decides what people and organizations we are comfortable supporting with our labor. It's not a perfectly free decision, and there are plenty of individual trade-offs to make, but we're hardly passive players.
In the US, if you go to an ABET accredited engineering school, you are required to take an ethics class. Computer Science, however, is not an engineering discipline as far as ABET is concerned, so CS majors often don't have an ethics requirement.
The content of the ethics class is different than you may think though. There isn't really an engineering version of the Hippocratic Oath, and the instructor normally realizes that he or she isn't going to instill a sense of ethics into a bunch of bored 20-somethings in three months if they haven't developed one already. Instead, the class tends to focus on choices you might face as an engineer, why they are hard, and the outcomes for both you and society at large.
There was a year-long module on engineering ethics included in my M.Eng. degree course. We discussed the usual "software engineering failure" stories - THERAC-20 and so on.
In my experience - the overwhelming majority of students just wanted to pass the module, had no intention of contributing. I asked a friend in the same class what he thought of it, and he responded:
"What does it matter? I'm going to be working for a company, and they'll have rich lawyers. Any problem can be made to go away with enough money. All I need to care about is my pay cheque."
Last time I looked at LinkedIn he was working at one of the FAANG companies.
When I was studying and we talked about that and other software failure incidents in a class my experience was more that most did not want to work on projects where failure had such a huge impact (i.e. death) or the discussion was about how can one avoid it from an engineering perspective. No one was flippant about consequences or talked about lawyers.
I also do know that people have been discussing AI, ethics and consequences in that same class now as I know the teacher. I don't now the outcome but I think people at least recognize the potential problems.
Might well be the 25. I probably should have Googled that first, it's been a few years since I looked at it.
Point of my comment: you can teach this all you like, but it won't do any good unless you can break people out of the "I only care about the size of my pay cheque" mindset.
The money-chasing mentality is probably partly to blame for the mess we're in...
Nice idea in theory; in practice, it might be tricky to have the organizational incentives aligned to make sure such a course is rigorous enough to be useful, rather than yet another worthless and trivial humanities requirement (at my large public research university with a strong CS program, faculty essentially compete for students based on how little work their gen ed courses are---no joke---and our required CS ethics class was similarly light).
And not just rigorous enough, but also engaging enough that even the "apolitical" students find it interesting. (The students who naturally find an ethics course interesting are the ones who will still find it useful but ultimately need it least.)
Does anyone seriously behave unethically because they don't know how to behave otherwise? I have a feeling that it's virtually always a conscious decision where someone prioritizes their own benefit over any cost to others, not that they just didn't know what the "right" decision was. Curious if anyone has experience a major change in mindset after taking an ethics course.
We had to take a required ethics course at UT after a student went to ridiculous lengths to lie during the senior year recruiting process. It was obviously just something faculty came up with in a scramble to save face. I suppose OP’s suggestion makes sense if you consider that there are people who seriously think an ethics course does anything, so you might as well wear the badge to one-up fellow applicants. Kind of like those certifications you find online.
Yes, it's known that psychopaths don't have an internal moral frame of reference and learn about what is acceptable by observing others, then replaying those learned scripts during social interactions, while not caring about them at all.
Highly Agree! I took a tech ethics class and learned so much about the basics of ethics, it really framed the world differently. I followed that up by taking a tech focused philosphy class which expanded on using those ethics basics in applied difficult tech industry questions. Just two classes, probably 6 credit hours total, and I have greatly expanded my mind. I also took a basic sociology course that was about information disparity in america which focused on race, class, etc. that probably helped as well. I so wish I could build a curriculum for modern CS
In my experience business ethics courses encourage behavior that is a far cry from what the rest of us would consider ethical — effectively boiling down to “generating the most value for shareholders”.
Lots of people here conflating "teaching what is right vs wrong" and "teaching how to consider what is right vs wrong". Ethics classes are typically the latter.
Well incorrectly according to whom? People are well aware when something is wrong. They just love the money. A training course won't solve that problem. Brainwashing one will though.
Lots of clever people unintentionally trained deep networks that unfairly discriminated against people of various races or from certain zip codes. Sometimes you aren't aware of all the implications of the decisions you might make and a course that informs you of such pitfalls can be helpful. Professional ethics courses at the University level aren't there to convince you discrimination based on gender, race etc is wrong, but to make you aware of when that may be occurring.
I don't know. From what I remember of the flame war the problem was that they fairly discriminated against various races and zip codes. So actually the algorithms had to be made less accurate to fit the legal expectations.
But once again the problem was in the customers. They should have said optimize for a, while keeping discrimination in check, not just optimize for a
So, do you think calculus, physics, type theory, etc are all things that should be taught and studied, yet ethics is not? Do you think that unlike the former subjects, the latter is just something that everyone knows?
The fundamental difference is that calculus, physics, type theory etc are all studies of what is. The goal is simply to describe and predict the world.
Ethics is the study of what one ought to do. It purports to lift some values over other and define morality, meanings, and legitimate goals.
These two - positive versus normative - are fundamentally different types of discussion and knowledge.
Just consider: A physics course in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia would likely teach the same thing as a physics course in Stanford. An ethics course absolutely would not. Consider why and what that means.
> Just consider: A physics course in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia would likely teach the same thing as a physics course in Stanford. An ethics course absolutely would not. Consider why and what that means.
Deutsche Physik rejected relativity and quantum mechanics, aka “Jewish physics”:
Philosophy, including ethics, is foundational to everything we do, and unfamiliarity with the rules of the normative allows the unscrupulous to corrupt the positive.
You're right. I was thinking of things like rocket physics (the US gained many great engineers and physicists from German and to some degree Russia). Example would have been better if I specified "rocket physics" or "aircraft engineering". Let's proceed on that basis.
"unfamiliarity with the rules of the normative allows the unscrupulous to corrupt the positive. "
Which rules of the positive are you talking about? Your rules? My rules? Trump's rules? Hitler's rules? Confucius' rules? Jesus' rules? Mohammed's rules?
The point is that the normative doesn't have rules in the same way as the positive. You can do a science experiment to objectively show Lysenkoism is wrong. You can't do a science experiment to objectively show that slavery is wrong.
Given that there are so many systems of rules of the positive, there's no way you can teach one as the rules the way you can teach physics.
My fear with such courses is that they just end up as moral propaganda for whoever is in power - empowering the powerful.
> Which rules of the positive are you talking about? Your rules? My rules? Trump's rules? Hitler's rules? Confucius' rules? Jesus' rules? Mohammed's rules?
I'm talking about the ones that explain how to think about concepts, how point-of-view and experience affect what we perceive, how discourse can be used to further or detract from truth, etc. Basically, epistemology. Otherwise, how do you even presume to tell me that your physics is right? Because rockets fly? I think they fly because if you put fuel and make an offering of electricity to the gods of the ether, they will send it upwards—on what basis do you convince me, when I can rephrase everything you say to me as "the gods of the ether will it so"?
What has happened is that the Western world has created a shared epistemology and has done a very good job of laying it down and universally teaching it. So most of the time, we don't need to worry about right and wrong because the decision has been made for us long ago (and what does that say about us?)
Now, though, new questions are coming up—ethics in software engineering, bias in machine learning, etc.— where the universal model hasn't yet caught up and been agreed on, or where it is being challenged. And if we are not familiar with the process by which such things are agreed on, we are essentially letting other people make the decisions for us.
I totally understand the reluctance to empower the powerful, but I think education doesn't have to be brainwashing.
> The fundamental difference is that calculus, physics, type theory etc are all studies of what is. ... Ethics is the study of what one ought to do. ... Just consider: A physics course in Nazi Germany ... would likely teach the same thing as a physics course in Stanford
This is a superficial understanding. Once you start digging deeply, the difference between the hard and moral sciences is more tenuous, and less "fundamental". Sure, "calculus, physics" etc largely attempt to describe what "is", but these fields are motivated by the belief that nature "ought" to make sense. There would be no calculus or physics without a desire to make sense of the world, an "ought".
And "ought" does not just motivate hard science, it's an integral part of it. When following the scientific method, the first thing you do is form a hypothesis. A hypothesis, but its very definition, is not necessarily true, i.e., it's an "ought" not an "is". Scientists therefore have to embrace and believe in "normative" knowledge to advance just like other endeavors. The types of hypothesis and endeavors hard scientists engage in are subject to the prevailing social norms.
To reference your example, Nazi Germany did all sorts of ghastly experiments on twins and other prisoners, all in the name of science. Something that would not be done elsewhere. Even today, research on areas like stem cells and global warming are largely influenced by social norms and "ought".
Accordingly, while I agree there is a fundamental difference between "is" and "ought", that difference does not so clearly differentiate hard and soft sciences.
I think that many philosophers have gradually come around to the idea that the fact/value distinction is illusory. This is particularly apparent in the case of so-called "thick" ethical concepts (words like "cruel" or "courageous"), which do not seem to belong exclusively on either side.
A good software written to spec is by definition ethical. It is unethical to write bad software, not evil one. But if you write bad software - nobody should hire you anyway.
> A good software written to spec is by definition ethical.
Even if the spec specifies unethical behavior? Sounds like passing the buck.
Or what if the spec itself isn't well defined, and leaves many undefined states and holes that the developer has to fill in themselves?
If a lawyer submitted a brilliant and conforming but racist or unethical argument to a court, the lawyer can still be found to be unethical. Just because you're following the rules, doesn't mean that you're doing the ethical thing.
Even if the spec specifies whatever unethical behavior means. That is problem for the guy using the software not the one making it.
Get the job done, get the money, get out.
If you want to waste precious time of your life wondering whether something is wrong - be my guest. But don't impose it on people with better things to do.
10 years ago I’d agree with you, but now? Not so much. Such a class would quickly be taken over by SJW-types and turned into advocacy instead of a class with a more philosophical demeanor where there is room for debate and disagreement people generally practice the principle of charity.
Engineers who behave unethically without asking questions aren't good engineers--at least, they're not the sort of engineers we want to be creating.