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Why Engineers Must Consider the Ethical Implications of Their Work
An anonymous reader writes "An article by Abbas El-Zein at The Guardian explores the ethical responsibilities for engineers who create and maintain 'technologies of violence.' He says, 'Engineers who see themselves as builders of the shelter and infrastructure for human needs also use their expertise in order to destroy and kill more efficiently. When doctors or nurses use their knowledge of anatomy in order to torture or conduct medical experiments on helpless subjects, we are rightly outraged. Why doesn't society seem to apply the same standards to engineers? There is more than one answer to the question of course, but two points are especially pertinent: the common good we engineers see ourselves serving and our relationship to authority. ... Our ethics have become mostly technical: how to design properly, how to not cut corners, how to serve our clients well. We work hard to prevent failure of the systems we build, but only in relation to what these systems are meant to do, rather than the way they might actually be utilised, or whether they should have been built at all. We are not amoral, far from it; it's just that we have steered ourselves into a place where our morality has a smaller scope.'"
They pay us like shit compared to doctors!
"I have become death, destroyer of worlds."
While it is hard to draw exact parallels, society already holds engineers to similar standards to doctors. The outrage over doctors experimenting on helpless test subjects is pretty similar to, say, when engineers use live subjects for testing weapons.
We engineers got our historical start by building WAR engines.
Probably because a Doctor helping torture someone is directly involved. The engineer's creation may be used in a way he/she never invisioned and with no involvement from him./her
In Rowanda the slaughter was committed using nothing more than machetes. However the people where whipped into a fervor by people on the radio inciting to violence. Marconi should have seen it coming. He had a responsibility.
More seriously, to paraphrase stephenson and others. human beings are at the top of the food chain because we are the most effective and fearsome killing machines currently known. We will find new ways to kill things, and each other regardless of the intended purpose of a tool, and how many safe guards are built into it. It is what we do and why we are where we are.
Technology is a tool, and a tool can be used a weapon. You should blame the one who wields the weapon. Do we blame Pasteur for biological warfare? I do not, but without him much of what we know about making bio-weapons would not exist.
You can study rockets to go to the moon, but eventually someone is going to shoot them at their neighbor.
You can study a way to get cheap energy for everyone, but eventually someone will make a bomb.
You can create a large forum for the people that is resistant to people stopping you from communication, but someone will eventually create a global spy system that watches everything you do.
It is unfortunate, but I would place the blame not on the person who makes the technology, but the one who decides how to use it. When we complain about doctors helping with torture, we are complaining about the ones there to extend the pain, not the ones who came up with ways keep people alive.
A lot of the engineers I've known who worked on military equipment do consider the ethical implications of their work. They feel they are helping protect our troops (see the beginning of Iron Man 1, where Tony Stark uses a similar justification), or something similar.
Other guys I know are just happy to have a job. Some people consider it unethical to work in the corporate world at all, so just because you consider something unethical, doesn't mean everyone considers it unethical. The NSA has the purpose of catching terrorists, which is a good goal. The reason we don't like them is because of the abuses, not because of their goal.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Saying an engineer shouldn't design a better weapon is like saying a doctor shouldn't treat a wounded soldier.
While it is hard to draw exact parallels, society already holds engineers to similar standards to doctors. The outrage over doctors experimenting on helpless test subjects is pretty similar to, say, when engineers use live subjects for testing weapons.
Yeah. The article's author is making a poor analogy. Blaming engineers would be more akin to blaming the scalpel designer for the doctor's experimentation. Its not the scalpel or the gun that is the problem, it is the mind and the intentions behind the hand holding the scalpel or gun. Both can be used for good or bad.
Short of WMD the issue is not as simple as the author suggests.
"When doctors or nurses use their knowledge of anatomy in order to torture or conduct medical experiments on helpless subjects, we are rightly outraged. Why doesn't society seem to apply the same standards to engineers?" If the doctor uses their knowledge of anatomy to conduct medical experiments, do we blame the person that created the tool, the tool, or do we blame the doctor? When someone uses a weapon to kill someone, do we blame the person that created the weapon, the weapon, or the person using the weapon. Too often we will blame the doctor if they did something wrong, in modern day history if someone did something wrong it is not their fault. Its the weapon, the parents, etc. Engineers are tasked with creating an item (be it a weapon, or a car) to be safe as possible to the user. They have no moral obligation to prevent it from being used incorrectly.
Every single person needs to do this. If you work in the weapons industry and don't feel bad about it, you are a psychopath. Simple.
So your view is that good guys produce no weapons, and bad guys produce lots of weapons...and it's that simple? What happens when the bad guys decide to be bad with their weapons by turning them on the unarmed, defenseless good guys?
Or, is it that some people should work in the weapons industry, but feel really really bad about it. And of course, those of us who have happy jobs are the better people, since we took the "high road" by forcing someone else to be bad. Perhaps we could have a lottery (Shirley Jackson's version), to decide who among us has to be bad so that our good lives can continue safely. Then we can all sit back and bask in the shiny, sunny warmth of just how good we all are, unlike those bad, bad people who make weapons that we can defend ourselves with...
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Without the weapons industry we wouldn't have space exploration. All the satellites we cherish so much go up on converted ICBMs.
Biological and chemical weapons were used, are used. It is just that now the world decries their use. If you look at WWI for instance. So it wasn't always the case that doctors were persecuted for using their knowledge for war. With engineers, creating conventional weapons, that is something accepted by the world. There is no moral outrage(on a large enough scale to matter)against a 500lbs bomb. When it comes to conventional weapons, everyone accepts the risks. We realize we need defense, so they are good. If someone uses them for offense, or evil instead, then that person is blamed, not the engineer. Should people that create steak knives also think about the ethical implications if someone gets stabbed with their knife? What if a car is used for violence? I realize these aren't the best examples, but my point is intended use. That is what matters. If an engineer creates a single weapon that will destroy the planet, then you will have your outrage. There is no point to such a weapon. Nuclear weapons are close to that, but they have been used to save lives as well.(est. that over 1 million Americans would have died invading Japan, along with millions of Japanese) There is nothing wrong with stepping back and saying, "Am I morally Ok with what I am creating?" But when it comes to conventional and nuclear weapons, if someone says no, then there will be hundreds to take your place. Military technology also trickles down to the general public and improves their lives as well.
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
Designing a missile system to kill lots of brown people on the other side of the world is not very ethically ambiguous. Thing is, there are plenty of technologies that are.
For example, DARPA has been doing lots of research on robots. They point out how self-driving cars can save lives, robots can find and defuse bombs and rescue victims, etc. But these technologies can be used for war just as easily.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I work in "the weapons industry". I sleep well knowing that my projects are being used so that my baby girls can sleep well at night. But then, I've seen first hand what motivated, evil people do when nobody stops them. But then, I've been to some nasty parts of Africa. At the risk of Godwining the thread, I strongly encourage you to go tour one of the concentration camps in Germany. Those people exist, and to paraphrase, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."-Orwell,
Even if I could develop a morality engine and install it in every device, system, and process I've ever worked on, I don't think I would. Not only is it too comnplex a problem, it subverts the morals of the user and substitutes my own. And I Know I don't have the far ranging vision to appreciate the fine points of every potential future situation to evaluate them properly. It is hard enough to do that well in real time, with all or most of the facts and evidence present for examination.
Any engineer, actiing responsibly, can take or refuse a job based on the knowledge at hand, and whatever moral framework may seem to apply. But predicting the future uses as well, no. It has been generally ruled out and rightly so. To do otherwise assumes people of the future are incapable of seeing their own situation and evaluating it for themselves. That kind of deprecation is as bad or worse than the kind of ancestor worship that says our forebears were smarter, wiser, more moral, etc than we are today. Still wrong, but at least in looking back we have evidence to back up (some of) the claims.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
in the US Military-Industrial Complex for most of the last 35 years.
If that doesn't match your ethics, that's OK.
What about the scientists and generals and governments that worked to design nuclear bombs? Didn't they have any ethics?
Kevin Smith - Clerks on ethics in contractors
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about?
RANDAL: The ending of Return of the Jedi.
DANTE: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer... (digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
RANDAL: Like when?
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.
DANTE: Whose house was it?
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Dominick Bambino's.
RANDAL: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.
DANTE: Based on personal politics.
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.
RANDAL: No way!
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: (paying for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.
I am officially gone from
As someone going for a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering, my basic response to Mr. El-Zein is ...
Sod off.
Now stop thinking that the world needs to fix the Middle East or care about your "problems".
Oil is over. Nobody cares about you anymore.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
An engineer should just look into the license.txt files that came with the particular technologies he/she used.
If, for example, it says: "this technology SHALL NOT be used to harm people", then you should either not build weapons with it, or you should search for another technology with a more liberal license.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Submitter doesn't like humanity very much. He wishes there were laws, rules, regulations, and guide lines for everything. He wants to hold engineers responsible for their discoveries. He wants to judge each discovery as "good" or "bad", then reward or punish the engineers, scientists, and the craftsmen for whatever results.
Sad as it is, I prefer the world we have, in which men and woman exercise free will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpCASVFyQoE
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I have long thought it was time for OSS licenses to support a morality clause, that does not grant license to the software when the software is used to extinguish life or violate the rights of people. This, if applied to Linux, would prohibit use of Linux in military applications, like that sniper rifle as well as a number of drones.
I have long taken a moral exception to working for defense contractors, especially since 9-11 when we started spying on everyone and killing people with drones. However Linux/OSS was not as attractive then. I want no part of my software to be used in the use of depriving people of life, liberty, or their rights.
I call on all open source licenses to add a morality clause, or offer a version with the morality clause. To not do so is to condone the use of the software for nefarious purposes.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
and not just those who happen to work in today's "hot button issues" Amazon and its massive JIT warehousing has a social impact just as much as working on a new drone avionics package - and economists and accountants who need to have and follow an ethical code - if you develop a tax doge that damages poor people ok in his book?
Most engineers I've met who work in defense do not wake up every morning thinking about more efficient ways to kill women and children. They wake up, believing that what they do furthers the protection of their families, fellow citizens and their homeland. Doesn't matter if the engineer is an American, Chinese, Russian, Israeli, Iranian, etc., most pretty much think that what they do is going to create a better and safer world for their loved ones. The engineers at the NSA, and I would even argue their most senior leadership, likely believe that what they do is for the benefit of the United States. I think there's plenty of room to argue whether or not their assumptions and ethical standards are correct, but to imply that they're not thinking about this at all or simply creating superweapons for sport with no care about their end uses is overly simplistic.
When doctors or nurses use their knowledge of anatomy in order to torture or conduct medical experiments on helpless subjects, we are rightly outraged. Why doesn't society seem to apply the same standards to engineers?
When a doctor tortures a patient there is a direct cause and effect from the doctor's actions to the pain and suffering of the victim.
When an engineer designs a weapon, he's not actually causing the pain and suffering. Once you get away from "complete responsibility", the rest is easy:
1) If I don't do it, someone else will
2) I need to feed myself and my family
3) It'll only be used on the bad guys
4) It helps protect my country
5) It's the user's responsibility, not mine
6) The boss thinks it's a good idea
7) It has significant non-evil uses
8) No one will ever know it was me
For a concrete example, consider the Collateral Murder video from a couple of years back. Who was responsible for these deaths?
The helicopter pilots got the go-ahead from their commanders, the commanders [probably] got the go-ahead from intelligence services, the services made the correct decision based on the information they had, and the information was somehow "wrong".
Who's to blame for the collateral murder incident? By deftly distributing blame among many players, it changes from personal responsibility to "a failure of the system", or "a tragic accident".
For a second example, consider Bush's Iraq war: he was on TV stating that he had convincing evidence of WMDs in Iraq. A couple of years later it came out that the intelligence services had never said this and tried to convince the president of the opposite. Bush's response was: "We [the administration] didn't get the message". (Note the use of "we" in his statement.)
Who's responsible for the war? The President says he got bad intelligence, the intelligence services say they never gave bad intelligence. It's impossible to lay the blame on someone, it's a "failure of the system".
But don't worry, the problem is fixed - it'll never happen again.
(Epilogue: The Gulf oil spill was largely enabled by failures of the Minerals Management Service, who is responsible for overseeing the safety procedures of off-shore drilling. The problems were largely fixed by renaming the service to Bureau of Ocean Management. The problem is fixed, now we won't have any more disasters. Sorry about that...)
Strictly speaking coders are not engineers. We use that term colloquially but I definitely got the impression that the article was speaking primarily of PEs.
Strictly speaking coders are not engineers.
They may or may not have an engineering degree/license but what coders are doing is most assuredly engineering. I'm an industrial engineer by training but I also do work almost daily that could be described as electrical engineering and sometimes mechanical engineering. Just because you don't have a document hanging on the wall saying you are an engineer doesn't mean you aren't one in real life.
We use that term colloquially but I definitely got the impression that the article was speaking primarily of PEs.
There are relatively few PEs compared to the number of engineers out there. Having a PE license doesn't mean you are better at engineering than someone who doesn't have one. The the sort of engineering I do it would have been a complete waste of my time for me to go get a PE license. It simply isn't necessary for many engineers. A PE is only required in certain circumstances and primarily for liability and statutory reasons. (Though it must be said that people with PE licenses tend to be good engineers in my experience)
Sounds like a good option.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
I won't go into specifics, but for me a few extra dollars or potential for advancement would *not* compensate for the lifetime of guilt I'd suffer knowing something I built or contributed to was primarily designed to do harm. Likewise, I will lose respect for those in a similar position to me who willingly contribute or design those systems.
On the other end of the scale, folks struggling to get by have my sympathy when assigned tasks like this. Food on the table and a roof over their family's head may trump personal ethics in some situations. When I and the other senior engineers declined the tasks I refer to, they assigned it to new-grad immigrants who for cultural and financial reasons felt they couldn't push back. The Evil Bit(tm) was definitely set in that workplace.
This. Very much this. I have an EE. I remember when I graduated almost ten years ago Raytheon was one of the bigger employers of engineers in the area (still is). I had friends who refused to work for them or BAE or any of the other defense contractors for moral reasons. Others specifically wanted to be in those companies to contribute to the protection of US lives. Everyone has their own opinion of right and wrong when it comes to defense, engineers are not excluded from this.
Chemical/biological weapons for example.
The engineer designs/builds the stuff. Someone else uses the stuff unethically.
True an engineer can't know ahead of time exactely how/when/where say an American combat rifle will be used. However, seeing that after 9/11 we invaded 2 countries that had little (Afghanistan) and no (Iraq) connection to it but do have strategic uses/oil (rich tasty oil) its pretty clear the US will use those weapons as it chooses, unilaterally (more or less) and in violation of international law and any sense of morality.
It would be like suggesting chemical weapons research for Bashar al-Assad might be used to find new cures. Technically true but the precedent suggests otherwise.
Pretty much anything can be weaponized; some things more directly than others, but in the end, whatever you design, think, build, imagine can (and likely will) be used to hurt others, be they human beings or animals.
We should build more powerful nukes because people would just knife each other anyway?
Logistics matter a great deal, saying the internet is worthless because USPS is a reliable means of transmitting information would be moronic.
if John Doe is an engineer and he's offered a military industry job, then if he turns it down, someone else will take it.
And someone else can deal with the ethics of that.
"The standard you walk past is the standard you accept." Don't pretend you have higher ethics than what your actions reflect, you don't.
Also, the article implies that an engineer should think of all possible implications when working on something, including ethical use of the product. Which brings back the original statement: you can't make sure that the product will only be used in an ethical manner. It's an impossibility. The only assurance would be that no engineer builds anything anymore. And I'm pretty sure that most people would loathe shivering in a cave with only a raw pelt covering their skin. Just sayin'...
I completely agree that there could be times an engineer is working on a project and not predict how that technology, even fairly directly, could be used for purposes they would never condone. I, personally, would only ask that an engineer make an honest attempt to determine if immoral uses are possible and reasonably likely in lifetime of the technology and use that to judge the work as ethical or not. A standard would need a more concrete definition and thus more consideration than I can put into this comment.
I was brought in to a government contractor's project as consultant during the Vietnam War. They were having severe problems with building their software system, and expected me to help them identify the root causes. For two weeks, they hemmed-and-hawed, trying to keep from telling me the true purpose of the system. Finally, when it was clear they couldn't understand the root problems themselves, they briefed me on what the system was ACTUALLY intended to accomplish. They did this on a Friday.
I was appalled that American citizens could dream up such an incredibly horrible intention: I can't say more, but the goal (in part) was to efficiently kill innocent civilians.
My choice was clear: I packed up, went to the airport, and bought a ticket home. On Monday, I was back at my regular desk. There was simply no way my conscience would allow me to optimize the schedule and effectiveness of such a project. There was never any repercussion, from anyone. I understand the contract was cancelled for non-performance several months later.
We who understand technology need to make value judgements: Do YOU want to write code that disadvantages fellow citizens? Do YOU want to create systems that transfer wealth from middle-class to rich folks? Do YOU want to write code that has secrets that could harm someone in the future buried inside? Do YOU want to make money by cheating ordinary citizens (think High-frequency "trading")? Do YOU want to see more systems, like NSA's, that violate the constitution, the law, and common decency?
I didn't, and I don't. Stand up for what you believe.
Short of WMD the issue is not as simple as the author suggests.
Really? Explain to me what purpose an M1 tank or an F22 fighter has besides killing people? What humanitarian purpose do land mines serve? Assault rifles? (target shooting? don't make me laugh) Hand grenades? Let's not pretend that the engineers working on these products have no idea what they will be used for. Plausible deniability does not apply to a lot of weapons.
There are many technologies where the line between ethical and not-so-much is fuzzy but you hardly have to go to WMDs to get there.
Does a teller at JP Morgan think about the ethical implications of their work?
Does a cashier at WalMart think about the ethical implications of their work?
In both examples a person that is in no way responsible for the overall direction of the company is facilitating the daily operations of the company that will commit unethical acts.
We cant just ask Engineers to sacrifice their careers because some whiny Journalist/Engineer is having a moral crisis. Our entire society is unethical. We buy clothes that were made by people working for less than $100 a month, living in concrete rooms smaller than most jail cells, who were forced into that labor by their parents. We shop at companies who are lobbying to oppress workers rights. We use electronics made by children and people who would rather kill themselves than continue working at Foxconn.
Get off of your fucking high horse and stop acting like an Engineer is any different than a Banker or a CEO or a cashier. We are all players in the same fuckedup game.
Some of us choose not to design weapons. It isn't theoretical.
Actually it is in a way. This strategy only works because you are protected by other engineers who design the weapons that protect you, whether you approve of those weapons or not.
There is nothing wrong with your moral choice but lets face facts. Pacifists can only exits in absolute isolation or where they are protected by friendly non-pacifists. In the real world there will be unfriendly non-pacifists who will subjugate, enslave or kill you. Regrettably this is the way some humans are wired.
In the book "Guns, germs, and steel" a warlike group of pacific islanders are mentioned. A subgroup colonizes a new island, loses contact with the original group and in isolation becomes pacifist. When contact is reestablished the subgroup is enslaved. This was done to blood relatives separated by only a small amount of time (in generational terms) with a common culture, language and religion.
Very well written. Thanks.
I think George Orwell summed it up thusly: People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. In other words don't sit around in a nice 1st world country and pretend it got that way by accident.
I think college students should have to take an ethics course on spotting vaporware. The scenario usually it goes like this: An employer hires you to do a job, and then eventually they want you to work on only the front-end portion of a solution to use for presentation purposes only. They say "we'll make it work later. right now just make it look like its work because we're using it for a presentation to sell this company to a new owner". Then of course later on they say "ok make it work now" and demand unreasonable completion deadlines and want emails by end of day confirming a list of functional features that have been completed and confirmed to work (nevermind relational database design and the testing phase). When the developer says they can't get all that done in that short of an amount of time, next they get a speech that goes something along the lines of: "right now we have chickenshit, and we need to turn this into chicken salad so we can sell it". And somehow the owner has convinced themselves that the developer is totally oblivious to whats going on. They're obviously going to rip off some poor soul who thinks they're buying a near-completed product, and when the buyer realizes they've been duped and take it to court, the previous owner will have a stack of emails from the developer saying "your honor, my programmer lied to me. i was unaware we were this far from completion". Its vaporware, its a scam, its unethical to participate, plus you're willingly setting yourself up as a patsy.
Without the weapons industry we wouldn't have space exploration.
A wonderful example of the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because the military was instrumental in the development of the space industry, it does not logically follow that there is no way we would have space exploration without military backing. The space industry would look different of course but you cannot claim it wouldn't exist.
You people and your simplistic "Good Guys/Bad Guys" concepts, dear lord....
So...it's called "sarcasm," yeah. What you just said was the point of my entire post...the person I was responding to was taking the view of "weapons can do bad things, so all people who make weapons are doing bad things, and should feel bad about it." There was no recognition of "dual use" technologies (like the Internet, GPS, explosives, etc.) or the fact that sometimes fighting is the morally correct choice, as unpleasant as it may be.
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if you are working on a government contract for the DoD then you should realize that everything you do is furthering war. if you are working on something that seems like it's not an offensive weapon but help prevent soldiers from dying, just consider that it will be used to reduce risk which will enable higher risk activities in war. if you are a manager, you are working to coordinate the efforts to make this stuff. oh and we sell are war tech to other governments and gives them to rebels to fight a proxy war, so do realize it's not just wars that the US wages.
if you work for the DoD or defence contractor, you are working to further global warfare. if you think anything else, you are just in denial.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The big difference with medical knowledge being used to torture versus, say, design of a weapon, is that weapons have moral use. Defense is inherently moral, and technology makes that safer and better. Technology used to kill is the same as a sword being used to kill, is the same as a rock- if the man behind the tool is working towards good, defending his nation / family / self, then the action, and the weapon is moral.
Torture, on the other hand, is always wrong. But that doesn't make scalpels evil, or handguns, or rockets.
Well there are people that have been questioning the ethical implications of the work of engineers: like Richard Stallman. He has been clasified as crazy for doing so by many people though. But he's usually right.
You end up with the engineering equivalent of pharmacists refusing to sell contraceptives because they think that contraceptives are immoral.
It's amazing how everyone who says "so-and-so profession must consider the ethical implications of their work" always imagines that the person considering the ethics happens to be considering ethics that they agree with. They never think that they might consider unethical contraceptives, abortion, gay sex, miscegenation, etc.
We *want* apartment owners to say "If you use that apartment for sodomy, I am not responsible just because I rented you the apartment you used to do it in."
...who cares vere zay come down.
Zat's not my department,"
says Werner Von Braun.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I suspect that another key problem with ethics is that many evil things are more fun to do, think about, and tell people than the boring things. If you tell people that you are an HVAC engineer they will think, "BORING!!!" yet the reality is that you make many poeples' lives more comfortable, and with good designs, save energy, and create healthy environments. But if you tell people you are the inventor of the hellfire missile or build nuclear bombs then they will go, "oooooooh"
I'm not sure there is any limit to the "coolness" of what is effectively sociopathic behavior; If you tell tech people that you are building a military robot that is designed to hunt and then jump onto the faces of the Taliban (alien style) and stuff a GPS tracker/grenade down their throat that forces them to surrender or be blown up from the inside then you will make headline news. If you develop a way to make cheap home wiring that conducts better than silver you are back to boring.
The above evil will get a few people to gasp in horror but most people will want to know more.
Now normally the defense industry goes through spasms of peace and the engineers face huge layoffs. But this time around the US is effectively doing a War on Fear which will pretty well never end. So if you can invent a tool for annihilating the boogy man then you will remain solidly employed. I you are inventing somethings solar that reduces fossil fuel use then your employment will be fitful at best.
Someone Mod parent up.
Engineers created RADAR to make it easier to find and kill people. That work wouldn't have been done under the ethical guidelines outlined by some. I on the other hand am fine with something that makes it easier for the other guy to get killed before I do. I'm also fine with using that technology to get from place to place in peace time.
It is very much true for any kind of technical innovation, not only weapons.
An entrepreneur, who thinks of a new idea and rushes to set up a startup company, doesn't stop to think on the full implications of uses for his future product.
In most cases, I would think, engineers are very much not the kind of people who philosophize on the merits and dangers of technology... They're much to busy solving technical problems.
Straw Man fallacy.
TFA did not say we need to the government to judge each 'discovery' (btw where does maintaining software, what TFA talks about, fit into 'discovery'?)
TFA said engineers should consider the ethical implications of what they do in choosing their work...which **of course** they should
Everyone, everywhere has patterns of choices of behavior. In work or anything else besides work...in all aspect of life...if you have ethics they have to be consistent. Otherwise why have them?
If you say using ethics in work (computer work here) is bad or not necessary then to be consistent you must also say that same thing for all of the things humans do in life.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Not long after developing nukes, some of the scientists and engineers formed Federation of American Scientists. A good question to ask of an engineer would be whether (s)he knows of it and how (s)he feels about its mission.
The first things engineers developed were engines of was, i.e. the catapult. They started calling civil engineers civil to distinguish them from engineers that had a military purpose.
I had a friend who wanted to build a secure, anonymous email platform (think bit torrent for e-mail) that would be free of NSA snooping. He didn't do it because he's worried that criminals would use it more than good people
For reminding us that in your warped view of the world, the able must bear the weight of the sins of the unable, the good must carry the bad, and the winners must be brought down to the level of losers.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
And did those rough men design and build their own weapons?
I think what Orwell meant by "rough" is that these are men capable of following through. It's not that they were grizzled war veterans looking for someone to kill. Sure, at one time they *were* ordinary. The moment you put the uniform on and are given orders, you become rough despite what type of person you were or will be in the future.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Why Everyone Must Consider the Ethical Implications of Their Work
There, FTFY.
To hell with hundreds of generations of the "I was just taking orders" bullshit. It's about time the species grows up socially. We have waaaay too much population pressure and sardine-can conditions to keep this up.
While the analogy does apply sometimes, when technology is being used to do evil, the software/hardware engineer usually isn't in a role equivalent to a doctor torturing a patient. The engineer isn't the one acting upon the person being done evil to. More typically, since most tech has a wide variety of uses, the engineer's role is much more akin to a developer of medical devices. A syringe can just as easily be used to inject antibiotics or cyanide, and it would be silly to claim that the person designing the syringes is morally responsible for how the things get used. Consider the case of Saeed Malekpour, who wrote some code for uploading images, and is in jail in Iran (and was almost executed) because that code got used on a porn site. (No, not claiming that porn sites are evil or anything like that, it was just the first "syringe maker will never know what gets injected" example that I thought of).
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
You have the potential to produce a rather powerful weapon.
So do your enemies
Do you decide to not produce the weapon for ethical reasons, knowing that if the enemy produces it, he will use it, and your way of life will end?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That shopping cart app I made the other day could also be used to track how many human body parts one has stashed in his basement.
I admit, I'm part of the problem.
I disagree - I actually think it's more like craftsmanship.
You are solving a technical problem using applied science. It is instructing (effectively designing) a machine to solve a real world problem. That is what engineers do. The fact that the problem they are solving doesn't result in a tangible good (at least not directly) is irrelevant. Programming a computer IS a form of engineering. No, it isn't the same as civil, mechanical or industrial engineering. It is its own discipline with its own unique requirements. Calling it craftsmanship frankly demeans what is going on. Maybe if you are solving some trivial previously solved problem you could say that but that doesn't describe most real world professional programming.
I think the article you quoted is full of nonsense. Programming a computer is essentially configuring a set of transistors to solve a math problem. It's a manipulation of physics albeit indirectly in most cases. There are a number of abstraction layers but strip those away and that is what is fundamentally occurring. The engineering comes in solving the problem, not in the exact mechanics of how it occurs. That is no different than a mechanical engineering using CAD to design some part. Furthermore not all engineering is about physics. I'm an industrial engineer by training. I design processes and production systems. It is very much engineering and it doesn't directly result in a tangible good. My work is rather more abstract - very similar in fact to programming in many respects. The main difference is that I program using people and machines and statistics instead of transistors and formal logic and languages. But the outcome in both cases is a process to solve a problem.
Along the way, things like the Geneva conventions have been struggling to make doctors and engineers part of the solution by making some of their products illegal (as war crimes), so we have a precedent for this idea.
BUT
The hegemony we saw in late 1700s in Europe has stopped spreading (because colonialism is evil). So the Euro-centric model of limiting war by rules is confronted by a genetic algorithm based solution that is right now trying to find out which system is better. At the extremes: the Western trended "rules of war". A the other extreme, the guerrilla tactics and all's fair models of the new tribal societies. Hooray for science, we know how to model the question of which will win (see Prisoner's Dilemma ). The bad news is that the genetic algorithm does not reward "fair", or "just" or "peace". It rewards fecundity (see Idiocracy) whether genes or memes.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Presumably most of those engineers would assume these technologies would be used to defend their friends/family/people they care about.
Most weapons are sold both domestically and internationally. The US has sold fighters and bombers, tanks and other weapons in dozens of countries, not all of them friendly and every engineer that worked on those weapons knows that. Some of them have been used to attack the US or its allies. If weapons platforms were developed solely for domestic consumption you *might* have a valid point but the simple fact is that they are not and pretty much never have been. While the weapons systems the develop might be used to protect their family/friends/etc they can never be entirely sure of that.
We like to think that libertarian philosophies will save us ... it is not a shortage of libertarians in the West that is the problem, it is that they spend their time trying to stop the West from waging war rather than trying to stop the rest of the world from fighting dirty. But we are working on it (Syria DID back down, no?)
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
A cursory review of human history provides adequate evidence that morality is relative to some other situation and is in constant change. If it weren't for the baser human instincts of mistrust, scapegoating, quest for power, wealth and status, the world would be a more idyllic place. Unfortunately our baser individual instincts often oppose what may be best for society overall. In the mean time we have to judge morality according to what actors do with certain tools and what provides relative stability to the cultures in which we occupy. There are no absolutes.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire