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How Responsible Are App Developers For Decisions Their Users Make?
itwbennett writes: In a blog post, Rado Kotorov, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Builders asserts that the creators of enterprise apps implicitly assume some of the responsibility for other people's decision making. He says it's not just developers, but anyone who is involved, from defining the concept, to requirements gathering, to final implementation. Thus, the creators of the app have an ethical obligation to ensure that people can reach the right conclusions from the facts and the way they are presented in the app.
The creators of the app have an ethical obligation to ensure that people reach the same conclusions as the developers.
Apps!
Everyone is on the same team, working towards ensuring the company is successful and profitable. Anyone who wants to sit back and say, "It's Not My Fault", needs to be removed.
I can sue Ford if I get run down by one?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
In the real world "an ethical obligation" is no obligation at all. Nice circlejerk of an article, though.
Jeesh. Why is this even a question?
Anyone who has ever done any reading on usability knows that we need to craft the interface to the user.
That usually means different interfaces for different cultures.
For example, Japan and Germany have general populations that are far more used to multi-choice, complex UIs than the US and UK. They tend to prefer their UX to be a bit more technical than other cultures.
Engineers tend to design for themselves; not for others.
Read The Design of Everyday Things. It's quite life-changing.
"Rado Kotorov, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Builders"
Who? That pretty much sums it up. "Chief Innovation Officer"? Give me a break.
"In a blog post, Rado Kotorov, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Builders asserts that the creators of enterprise apps implicitly assume some of the responsibility for other people's decision making. He says it's not just developers, but anyone who is involved, from defining the concept, to requirements gathering, to final implementation. Thus, the creators of the app have an ethical obligation to ensure that people can reach the right conclusions from the facts and the way they are presented in the app."
I call bullshit. This is simply another step down a slippery slope that removes more personal responsibility.
This is the very definition of the nanny State.
Information Builders is not getting their money's worth out of this idiot.
Thus, the creators of the app have an ethical obligation to ensure that people can reach the right conclusions from the facts and the way they are presented in the app.
Who decides what the right conclusion is? Why waste time and money creating an app if you already know the "right" conclusion; just send it to all employees via a one-time email.
From a philosophical or pure cause and effect approach, sure, the makers of an app have some responsibility for the effect it has on people and what they do as a result. From a legal/liability standpoint, generally not.
The article writer is just saying to keep in mind that how your app behaves, how it looks, how it presents data, can have a real effect on its users, so you should consider the implications of your decisions.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
If the description of the app were "this is buggy adware that crashes all the time and steals all your personal info and can barely fulfill its nominal function" then more people would be able to reach the right conclusions.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"How Responsible Are government officials For Decisions The people Make?"
Honestly, why would anyone be held more accountable for the result of their actions than government officials? App developers are slightly more important in a society than toy-makers, and yet we have these articles.
They're the conclusions that *I* have come to!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
People who are too far up-front of the chain will not encounter the situations that develop down the line and can not possibly foresee the many business requirements that the users of the software will face.
Second, attempts to 'control' the facts much like big media in America are really going to piss off users! The tool should stick to the facts as they are and not try to spin them.
First off, I think what the author is claiming is bullshit. He's just reiterating stuff that we already have laws and protections for. We don't need a new bank of BS intellectual property laws, or CEO protection laws to throw at developers when the first thing doesn't go correctly.
Now on to my main point:
The summary makes it sound like the author was talking about ALL apps and app developers, however after reading the article, it's clear that he's referring to business analytics and applications that people would use to gather data and make business decisions. There is a little bit of language that makes it sound like he might secretly wish that it applied to all app developers, but that's not really the takeaway from the article.
His claims are still completely moronic: if an app pretends to offer a service and then can't deliver, or provides data that leads to bad decisions, then (1) people will stop using it once this is discovered and (2) we have consumer protection laws if it is found that the developers did this intentionally and then deliberately misrepresented what they had to offer, would protect the people they screwed.
This isn't a question of "apps" or "applications" or "data," this is an old idea that has been around for literally ages and someone wrote an article while masturbating to the words "big data," "analytics," and "apps."
What scares me is that idiot politicians and business majors will see this and think "hey, yeah! I don't have to be responsible for bad business decisions in a new way!" Fucking idiots. How much lower can we go on the idiot totem pole?
Yet the only way I can imagine meeting that goal is to have a self-aware AI that can in real time (actually it might have to be prescient) determine the users thought process so that it can morph the UI into a state that will present the information to the user in a manner that will lead them to the right conclusion. We can now move on to a discussion of perception and truth.
Replace developers with "article writers" and see if you, the writer of this article, still agree. I can hear "free speech!" piercing my eardrums right about now.
App developers aren't some special magical people that have extraordinary powers to influence users.
They have a moral responsibility not less or more than that of a store clerk, a fashionmodel, a garbage collector or pretty much everyone else.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Of course! That's why every damn application I use these days has its own "skins" and its own custom layout. Using a standard, familiar window layout would allow me to actually get some work done without having to search for the menus and buttons. Can't have that, can we?
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
... opinion.
Just walk away everyone. Nothing to see here. (Taken from: http://www.informationbuilders...)
"Dr. Rado Kotorov is vice president of Product Marketing for Information Builders and works both with the Business Intelligence and the iWay product divisions to provide thought leadership, analyze market and technology trends, aid in the development of innovative product roadmaps, and create rich programs to drive adoption of BI, analytics, data integrity, and integration technologies. He strives to make BI and business analytics more accessible, intuitive, and collaborative through the adoption of innovative Web 2.0, advanced visualization, predictive modeling, search, and mobile technologies. Prior to his current role, Dr. Kotorov, was executive director of Strategic Product Management and Competitive Strategy. Active Technologies, InfoAssist, Magnify, RStat, Enable, Mobile Favorites, and the BI Portal are just a few of the products that have been developed and launched by his team."
"Dr. Rado Kotorov has a Ph.D. in Decision and Game Theory, and institutional economics from Bowling Green State University. He has also published various papers and articles on business processes, emerging technologies, intellectual property rights, CRM, KM, innovation, and entrepreneurship."
If you are a Decision Maker you are the sole person with any ethical responsibility regarding the decisions you make. You, as a user are the sole party responsible for ensuring the completeness and accuracy of the Data Sets provided and to ensure that you understand how the software you use for your job works. Anyone who does not act on their own to proof their Data Sets and to completely understand how their Software works is acting negligently and is the sole party responsible for any issues that arise. It is not up to the Developer to do anything more than provide Software that produces output that is as accurate as possible. To demand they somehow be psychic, to know what the user thinks or do anything more than simply provide a tool for people to use is disingenuous and smacks as an attempt to allow incompetent managers to shed personal responsibility and blame others for their own failings.
They seem to focus on those apps that replace corporate drone brains. "My job is to do what the app tells me to do." So if the app tells you to fire your best customer because that's what its logic concluded, and you actually do it, who is responsible? Most likely your boss, who just yelled at you to stop bothering him and just do as the app says.
here
This is another way of saying that "everyone's responsible" (and therefore no-one's responsible.)
Insuring that a tool (app) suits a business process (and vice versa) can be a non-trivial process - but is one that the business itself is ultimately responsible for.
It shows we should take it fairly seriously because he has a PhD in decision and game theory?
What's your point? Do you have two PhDs in decision and game theory or something?
apparently software developers are stupid dolts incapable of actually doing their jobs and so we need AI systems to do their work for them
who programs these AI systems again?
What a stupid buzzword-article only to say that.
... but put in a EULA that you are not.
I think application developers should try to design things as if they are driving the final users decisions - and in their own minds should feel like they are responsible for bad decisions. I have seen way too many apps that are slapped together by a code-monkeys who ignores to understand the importance of clarity (such as units and legends on a graph - "Put in a feature request, and we'll see if we can get it in the next sprint; it is not a critical bug."), or designs like a programmer ("I can just reuse the old UI if I treat X as Y"). Poorly designed documentation ("help is under Options which comes up if you swipe just so") with arbitrary changes to normal behavior and hidden nuggets ("everyone knows that Ctrl+C is copy, so let me disable the context menu and edit menu") are other problems.
No one is suggesting that developers become legally responsible for users decisions. But it would sure help if creators designed their application expecting a child to make a decision using their app.
About 20 years ago, when I got my Ph.D in computer science, Texas was defining a licensing for software engineering. The idea that there would be a certified profession. As my Ph.D. would have automatically qualified me for this, I considered it. And then considered not. The problem is that it would shift accountability to the professional software engineer for any issues. However, there would be extreme pressure from the business entities to dictate design decisions. A situation similar to when HMOs started to tell Physicians which procedures they could do based, not on medial needs, but financial needs. Of course, the doctors neck would be on the line. So, if you go down this path of thinking you suggest, you'll be asking to have accountability heaped upon your head for other peoples miss-deeds and then also be in an environment where your bosses (who rarely have much technical knowledge or skill) will be dictating how you design your software. I say no thanks.
Can I then say that an app led me to make bad decisions and I am no longer responsible?
I'm sorry that I drank 2 bottles of whiskey and ran over that family of 4, judge. That free app I downloaded said it would be ok.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Just another reason to GPL everything you create.
Nobody can just own anything any more can they, nor can they accept we live in an imperfect world where mistakes happen.
An app developer should do their best to provide users with concise, but complete, accurate, and timely information to the extent the technology allows. Perhaps developers/vendors have some responsibility to set realistic expectation about the quality of the information, but that is as far is can possibly go.
Beyond that people/users just have to make decisions and bear the responsibility. If your counter terrorism intelligence app does face recognition and determines Jim on camera is really Oliver Public Enemy No.1, and Mr.Policeman shoots Jim, its Mr.Police man who is at fault unless your application was deliberately misleading or you mislead Mr. Policeman about the accuracy and confidence possibly with your app.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This is imaginary thoughtcrime again. Good luck prosecuting (sorry, "holding responsible") someone who's been long dead.
The culprit obtained, kept, and operated the tool, device, machination, etc. that's pertinent. MAYBE the operator caused the events unknowingly, in cases where they were unaware of a strange or faulty capacity (the latter is pre-t-t-y hard to predict the first time), but that affects the measure of intent, which some areas of law are rational enough to outright forgive.
What it doesn't affect is blame shifting up some abstract chain of causation leading from the inventor's guilty parents to the guilty Big Bang.
0%
If I design a tool like a hammer, and sell 100 of them and all 100 of them are used to build houses - but one of the builders also uses it to kill his wife - I am not a murderer. The killer is responsible for his actions. This is the rule of simple tools. However, this responsibility should change with regard to weapons development (I design a nuclear bomb and make it available to anyone and everyone) or creating AI systems and functionality. Asimov's three laws of robotics would be one way of responsibly addressing the AI issue.
It's hard to believe that this is controversial. The whole idea of applications is to make someone's job easier, not to booby-trap them. If you think your job is to crank out some piece of shit and get on with your life, you are in the wrong business.
From a legal/liability standpoint, generally not.
If you're a lawyer, you suck miserably. In product liability cases, some jurisdictions allow the manufacturer to be held liable for "reasonably foreseeable misuse", e.g. use of a product that is not within the scope of what the product is defined to do but that nevertheless a normal user would commonly do. An example is a person standing on a chair to change a lightbulb; if the chair breaks while the person is standing on it and the person is injured, the manufacturer can not get away with saying "a chair is only for sitting in, not standing on, so we're not liable."
What the article is talking about is basically the same thing, except for software.
(I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.)
OK, IMNAL... However we have all heard about:
A) The definition of insanity is performing the exact same action multiple times but expecting different results, and
B) The courts hold that if proven insane, they are not legally responsible for their actions.
I manage several enterprise applications. I have personally seen users, incorrectly doing something which makes a mess out of data, then attempting to fix it using the exact same method, then doing it again, and again, and again, etc...
Clearly if the user can't be held responsible because technically they are all insane, how can a developer be held accountable for some insane persons actions. Poppycock! If you start talking about the design and the requirements analysis, I will point out that users don't just start being insane when they start to use applications, that is their steady state of being. Requirements that are essentially mutually exclusive for example. A reasonable person would say that isn't rational. Anyway, at best we can care for them, and try to do our best to steer their drunken keyboard mashing into something that resembles productivity. However true responsibility for user actions? You must be a user (i.e. insane).
Ok. That's on me. Haha.
I guess my point is, yes, we should consider his points comprising how folks look at data to make decisions. These are things that any good app developer knows (at least insofar as user interfaces are concerned) and anyone dabbling in the world of enterprise data analytics should ABSOLUTELY be familiar with.
My point was that it sounds like may talk a lot about app development without ever building anything himself. It seems off-base to then turn around and say that app developers should be held responsible for what their customers are doing with their apps. It feels like a play to absolve the users of software from bad decisions or not understanding the product they purchased and/or are using.
I've said it maybe three other times in these comments, so long as the app developer did not intentionally mislead or misrepresent their product (through misadvertising or withholding information), the responsibility lies with the user, not the developer.
Adding "for apps" seems to be the new "on the Internet". Replace it "with cars" or "with tools" and then it becomes obvious that SOME precautions should be taken. e.g. you nake seatbelts that are not too hard to use. You add some safety on a chainsaw.
You indicate what weight something can carry if it can carry anything.
So the answer should be "DUH!" The real question is how much is reasonable. If you put a warning in font size 4 in white on a white background it is not enough.
The discussion could even be about what the dault is for a button and what the questioning is. That in such a way that each time yoy select "No" the No is on the right and it will stop whatever you want. Not Yes/No and then No/Yes and then again No/Yes where the first you must answer Yes, then NO and then Yes to go through.
There wil be a lot of other things possible. Most could be answered by 'ease of use' and 'ergonomics'.
Does that mean that there will be no problems? No, but if you show some reasonable efford, you get very far already.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
So after zeroing out all the meaningless bullshit buzzwords, that was your takeaway too?
No, in the general case you're not responsible for making sure your users make the right decisions. Imagine doing that for a dating app. Should you date this person? How should I know? All I can do is present you with information.
The article, though, is about software that specifically exists to help businesses make better decisions. So yeah, if you're writing software that's supposed to help people make better decisions, you do have some ethical duty to write software that leads people to make better decisions. If you're writing such software that DOESN'T do so, why?
This is just a specific instance of the general idea that if you write software to do a thing, it should actually do that thing.
1.How responsible is Craftsman if someone uses a hammer to murder someone?
2.How responsible is Smith & Wesson?
3.How responsible is the tool creator when a tool is used by someone for a purpose that it wasn't designed for?
Now, I know people will come in on different sides for all of those questions. My own $.02 is that the tool creator would only be responsible for the tool failing...exploding Pintos for example. I'm guessing that many of you aren't old enough to remember Ford's issue with that model though.
Just another day in Paradise
I don't write apps, so perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems patently unfair to hold someone writing an app for the moral choices made by someone using that tool?
I mean, are we going to hold hammer-makers responsible if someone murders someone else with a hammer?
I even think it's ridiculous to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the misuse of their products.
-Styopa
Iit seems patently unfair to hold someone writing an app for the moral choices made by someone using that tool?
If the patient monitoring equipment gives faulty information to the doctor, it's the doctor's fault for trusting the equipment? The doctor makes moral choices depending on what the equipment tells him.
That's hardly a moral choice, and that's simply an error. If a developer programs an app and there's a MISTAKE in it, then of course he/she's liable.
If a medical device tells the doctor that a patient's heart has stopped, accurately, the doctor has to make a moral choice about whether to restart it or not. Delivering that news to the doctor accurately CANNOT be implicated logically if the doctor decides then to kill the patient.
Nevertheless: if you expect to live in a world that works 100% of the time, I promise that you're going to be disappointed.
-Styopa
The FDA is not sympathetic with that point of view with regard to medical devices. You all should be thankful for that.
Hmm, I was merely suggesting that they are not likely to be omniscient.
Interesting chap.
I don't agree with him on everything, but he's rich and famous on his merits, and I'm not, so I guess it's all sour grapes on my part...
In any case, he's all about developing UX to present complex data in a manner that provides a strong "signal to noise ratio," and that helps to afford the correct interpretation of data.
I'd say that BI data fits that profile pretty well, as it can mean billions of pounds/dollars/yen/ruble, and thousands of jobs.
I see that someone posted his attack on PowerPoint, but some of the other work he's done is pretty relevant to this discussion.
Have not RTFA yet, but this sounds a lot like Matt Gemmell's talk on "Making Mistakes Impossible", which is really good and which you can view here: https://vimeo.com/84322659
-- Nathan
Microsoft Office added PDF-generating functionality which is good, BUT they put it under File -> Export instead of File -> Save-As, which is where everybody goes to look for it. I've seen this trip several users already.
(If they had put it under both, that would be acceptable. Unnecessary redundancy is usually a smaller UI sin than misplacement.)
WTF were you thinking, Microsoft? I'd really like to hear the "rationale" as a study in human decision mental failures. That is, PHBiology.
Table-ized A.I.
Next question?
Try it! Library of Babel
"How Responsible Are App Developers For Decisions Their Users Make?"
Not at all, once the App leaves the developer then the end user is totally responsible for the decisions.
that's the dilemma really.
the developers don't try to make the right choice for the _user_ they try to make the user choose the right choice for the _company_.
like with windows 8/8.1. it tries to make the choice for you to create a microsoft account to use the computer with - you can create a local account but the UI is made so that you don't consider it even as an option if you don't know you can do it beforehand.
also consider tickboxes for optional things. are they ticked for you already or not? most often they're already ticked for you when it's detrimental for you and beneficial for the company(like installing adware, browser expansions etc when you install just regular software, changing your homepage to their "portal" or whatever).
when a software tries to take the users side, what is beneficial for the software user, it's like a breath of fresh air nowadays.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The contract developer writes the app that drives the doomsday device. He hands it over to his government, which in turn uses the app and destroys the world.
So, on judgement day who gets thrown into hell first? The developer or the head of state that pushed the "Accept" button on the app?
(Which was no doubt, followed by the "Are you sure?" button.)
I guess that's why they call it the "kill chain" these days. From forward observer back to Pentagon down to shooter they are all ubiquitously linked.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT