I had to take Computer Ethics as part of my degree, but it didn't really anticipate the sort of problems that software engineers run into today. It mostly focused on Therac-25 and integer overflows. Indeed, letting your integer overflow kill a bunch of people is horrifying and is something we should avoid. But we have a much wider reach than people thought at the time. Software is pervasive throughout society and touches every area of life: food delivery and banking are among the examples listed in this thread, and were never touched on in any class I took.
Software didn't create the gig economy or the microloan economy, but as engineers, we had the opportunity to step up and say "hmm, this doesn't seem right, I don't think we should do that". We didn't.
AI is a whole 'nother can of worms. I watched a lot of my friends deactivate social media over the holiday as their pictures got posted to Twitter and got live AI edited by Grok into things that horrify them. You probably wouldn't have gotten an A in Computer Ethics if you said "yeah, we should publicly show women nude pictures of themselves if someone asks in the comments section", but here we are.
It's not great. As a field, we have been remiss in our duty to society.
Software didn't create the gig economy or the microloan economy, but as engineers, we had the opportunity to step up and say "hmm, this doesn't seem right, I don't think we should do that". We didn't.
AI is a whole 'nother can of worms. I watched a lot of my friends deactivate social media over the holiday as their pictures got posted to Twitter and got live AI edited by Grok into things that horrify them. You probably wouldn't have gotten an A in Computer Ethics if you said "yeah, we should publicly show women nude pictures of themselves if someone asks in the comments section", but here we are.
It's not great. As a field, we have been remiss in our duty to society.