Is it really clearly unethical? It's just messing with intellectual property laws. Pretty much every interesting innovation in history would involve messing with intellectual property laws, if the West's modern draconian ones were retroactively applied.
I don't like Levandowski (anyone who's worked at Google or Uber has perpetuated evil and he definitely paid his way to get that pardon), but it seems weird to claim that the thing people hate him for was actually unethical rather than just illegal.
> While working at Google's Project Chauffeur, the self-driving car program that would later evolve into Waymo, Levandowski allegedly modified the car's software so it could be taken on routes that were previously off-limits. After another employee became angry with Levandowski for altering the code, the two began to argue — which resulted in Levandowski taking the employee on a test run to prove his point, an executive told the New Yorker.
> Levandowski caused an accident during that test run, a former Google executive told the New Yorker. Google's self-driving Toyota Prius allegedly blocked another car from merging onto the highway, which caused the other driver to swerve into the highway median. Levandowski allegedly then took control of the Prius and swerved to avoid contact with the vehicle, but the violent motion seriously injured the other employee's spine.
> Even though Levandowski and Google's self-driving car appeared to have caused the accident, the pair allegedly drove off without checking to see if the other driver was okay, and the incident wasn't reported. Even after Google's self-driving Prius was involved with an accident, Levandowski defended his safety standards, and sent his coworkers an email with the subject line "Prius vs Camry" that contained a video of the accident.
Considering that his actions were a key part of Uber's rush to market for self-driving, and that resulted in the autonomous execution of a pedestrian, I'd say that it was unethical.
I don't like Levandowski (anyone who's worked at Google or Uber has perpetuated evil and he definitely paid his way to get that pardon), but it seems weird to claim that the thing people hate him for was actually unethical rather than just illegal.