[HN Gopher] ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
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ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
Author : pjmlp
Score : 32 points
Date : 2023-12-02 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.acm.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.acm.org)
| sgift wrote:
| Imho, the most important part of the whole code is in the
| preamble:
|
| > The Code is not an algorithm for solving ethical problems;
| rather it serves as a basis for ethical decision-making. When
| thinking through a particular issue, a computing professional may
| find that multiple principles should be taken into account, and
| that different principles will have different relevance to the
| issue. Questions related to these kinds of issues can best be
| answered by thoughtful consideration of the fundamental ethical
| principles, understanding that the public good is the paramount
| consideration. The entire computing profession benefits when the
| ethical decision-making process is accountable to and transparent
| to all stakeholders. Open discussions about ethical issues
| promote this accountability and transparency.
|
| There's no algorithm for ethics. People will have to weigh
| different aspects and make decisions. Others can and will
| disagree with the decisions that have been made. So, we need to
| think about our decisions and be prepared to defend them. The
| exercise alone will to make better decisions than just "going
| with the flow" or "yolo" or "I did what was asked of me", even if
| in the end we do decide to do what was asked of us.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Software Engineering Code (of Ethics)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32783007 - Sept 2022 (52
| comments)
|
| _Does ACM 's code of ethics change ethical decision making in
| software dev?_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528782 -
| March 2022 (1 comment)
|
| _ACM, Ethics, and Corporate Behavior_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30464247 - Feb 2022 (33
| comments)
|
| _ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24533181 - Sept 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13176325 - Dec 2016 (2
| comments)
|
| _Software Engineering Code of Ethics_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6827305 - Dec 2013 (35
| comments)
|
| _ACM Code of Ethics_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1949326 - Nov 2010 (6
| comments)
| RecycledEle wrote:
| I like the part about contributing to the public good.
|
| There are 3 kinds of actions:
|
| Good actions increase the public good. Helping a child is an
| example of this.
|
| Neutral actions do not change the public good. Frivolously
| blowing money you earned is an example of this.
|
| Negative actions decrease the public good. Enforcing artificial
| scarcity is an example of this.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Artificial scarcity is the only thing that allowed recording
| musicians, and continues to allow fine artists, to have any
| career at all.
| sgift wrote:
| Musicians and artists in general had careers before
| artificial scarcity (read: Copyright/IP) existed, so that's
| false (the usual path was via a patron of arts). Now, we can
| discuss whether artificial scarcity allowed them to have
| _better_ careers. Or careers which could be planned better
| than before. And whether that upside weighs higher than the
| downsides of copyright.
| acdha wrote:
| That's true, actually, since this is in the context of
| recordings. Prior to sound recordings becoming available
| musicians were reliably in demand because anyone who wanted
| to listen to music had to have a human play it. Copying
| another person's work required a person with considerable
| skill and either permission or willingness to use someone
| else's work.
|
| Recordings completely change that and would absolutely have
| been a disaster without some kind of IP laws because people
| would've been competing against a now unlimited supply of
| recordings. That doesn't mean we have the perfect balance
| of rules but we need something.
| sinkasapa wrote:
| I think this is true for the sciences as well but it is
| more evident in math. Mathematicians could hypothetically
| exist in a system where they are funded by artificial
| scarcity. I don't know how practical that is but they tend
| to exist in a more patronage-like system. Outside of a
| number of areas of math that have applications where people
| will pay for their services, mathematical research is
| primarily a "patronage" system, where society is willing to
| pay for pure mathematical research at universities. There
| are a lot of examples of this in society.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I like the concept in theory, but I don't think's workable in the
| real world, because for the tricky edge cases (which are exactly
| why you'd want a code of ethics to begin with), nobody agrees on
| what is and is not ethical.
|
| Is working for a defense contractor to build smart bombs and
| killer drones unethical? A bunch of people think so, but there
| are also a bunch of people who think we need these things to
| defend ourselves and come to the aid of e.g. Ukraine. The same
| goes for facial recognition (does it destroy privacy or help
| catch criminals and bring them to justice?), cryptocurrency (does
| it enable crime and uselessly waste heaps of power or help people
| subvert government tyranny?), high-frequency trading (does it
| enrich Wall Street by picking the pockets of individual traders
| or provide liquidity to the market?), ad tracking (is it an
| invasion of privacy or is it enabling people to get useful
| services for free?), and so on for almost any application you can
| name which might theoretically be prevented by a code of ethics.
|
| Ethics are way too individual for this approach to be at all
| useful. A professional code of ethics either has to be so vague
| that anyone can interpret it however they want, or so specific
| that half the people who would be covered will disagree and
| ignore it.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I completely disagree.
|
| A lot of people out there are doing things that they know are
| wrong but think that because they have a boss they no longer
| own the responsibility of behaving ethically. Check out all the
| testimony in the FTX trial for examples of this.
| sgift wrote:
| Since you've brought up drones and smart bombs: What
| constitutes a war crime is a highly ethical and contentious
| issue with many people disagreeing on the exact scope. Yet,
| we've managed to write laws about it and get court decisions.
| Even if we want to, some things in life cannot be neatly packed
| into correct/incorrect categories. And the process alone of
| discussing whether smart bombs and killer drones should be
| build is helpful in shaping decisions on how exactly they will
| be build or not.
| jltsiren wrote:
| A code of ethics is just a starting point for asking the right
| questions. It's not supposed to provide answers.
|
| You mentioned some controversial technologies that have
| potential both for good and for ill. When you work on
| technologies like that, there is always a risk that your
| contribution to the society will be net negative. That the
| world would have been a better place without you. Is that a
| legacy you want?
|
| Some of those technologies are a necessary evil. There will
| always be weapons of war, and there will always be people
| developing them. If you choose to make a career in such
| technologies, you should keep asking yourself the right
| questions. What are the specific choices your company is
| making, and are they making the technology better or worse for
| the society? Which choices are you personally advocating for?
| What is the actual impact of the technology you are developing
| in the field? Do you have faith in the leadership of the
| company and in the choices they are making? Should you continue
| at your job or quit?
|
| You have some rights as a citizen of a free country. Those
| rights are balanced by responsibilities, because the government
| ultimately receives its powers from citizens like you. As a
| professional, your choices likely have more impact on the
| society than the average citizen. You should therefore take
| your responsibilities more seriously as well.
| torstenvl wrote:
| This appears to be deeply misguided. There is no possibility that
| this was written by someone who has any experience in
| professional ethics issues.
|
| In many cases, this code of ethics is _un_ ethical, such as
| elevating "public good" as the "primary" concern.
| infamouscow wrote:
| This is the rhetoric of low quality people making excuses for
| their cowardice.
| torstenvl wrote:
| It isn't rhetoric, and I frankly don't care what some troll
| on the Internet thinks of my "quality." Professional ethics
| is something I deal with all the time. This ain't it.
| sgift wrote:
| If you deal with ethics so often, maybe you can illuminate
| us _why_ this code is deeply unethical? I cannot decipher
| it from your original post.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Your point is 100% correct: I think immediately of how
| effective altruism turned into a contest of how many billions
| of lives you could save a century from now.
|
| I can't go as far as saying "public good as the primary concern
| is unethical", because there's so many ways to twist abstract
| words.
|
| I think immediately of someone saying the same thing about the
| Hippocratic Oath, or the Order of The Engineer, and they'd be
| just as correct. But the correctness is surface level: it is
| _rational_, but it is not practical.
| torstenvl wrote:
| You bring up the Hippocratic Oath, so let's use doctors as an
| example. If the "public good" takes precedence over the
| individual patient, then any patient with a communicable
| disease with a fatality rate should be euthanized. Do you
| think that's ethical?
|
| Elevating public good as the primary concern necessarily
| means pure utilitarianism. There isn't a society on earth
| today that accepts pure utilitarianism as a valid ethical
| system.
|
| And in countries that trend _closer_ to pure utilitarianism,
| public policy is repugnant:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-
| venezuela...
| refulgentis wrote:
| I see, thank you, that's also a really good explanation of
| why my mind must have jumped to effective altruism, and the
| 238 billion lives saved 347 years if you give me $10 for
| lunch.
|
| I guess with the Hippocratic oath, I'm thinking a simile
| would be: "well, if first do no harm takes precedence
| literally 100% of the time, that could lead to 0 treatment
| because there's always a potential for harm"
| sgift wrote:
| But that's not what the code does. There's a rule that says
| "avoid harm", which directly contradicts (imho) euthanizing
| someone without a very good reason (and no, I don't agree
| that "public good" is one). More importantly, there exists
| neither a rule nor a specific definition what public good
| means. You've taken your personal interpretation of the
| words from the preamble, ran with it and from that inferred
| that the code is unethical.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think you should expand on this or it will leave a
| 'middlebrow dismissal' vibe.
| mac-chaffee wrote:
| I wrote about this here:
| https://www.macchaffee.com/blog/2023/ethics-self-attestation...
|
| Too many jaded technologists throw their hands up and just ignore
| ethics. At least ACM are _doing something_ about it.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Code of Ethics are useless and toothless without a licensing
| agency that gatekeeps who a company is allowed to hire.
|
| That is why it can make sense for medicine and law but makes
| absolutely no sense for programmers since there is basically no
| barrier to entry.
| epgui wrote:
| This represents a big misunderstanding of the nature of ethics,
| as opposed to deontology or law.
|
| That being said, I also wish society was better at punishing
| ethical lapses.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| This is all very commendable, skimming through it I couldn't find
| one point with which to disagree. But ... where do I get this
| sense of naivete?
|
| I tried to work that out but it became too complex, and
| overshadowed the positivenes of bringing ethics to the forefront,
| where it seldom is.
|
| Suffice to say that ethical principles in the chaos of reality
| where wolf eats wolf are extremely difficult to uphold. Sometimes
| they even become a veil over an ugly underbelly. Not always, but
| it happens sufficiently often for warning bells to go off when
| someone cites their lofty ethics.
| suslik wrote:
| Although I did glance over the text, I don't really see a point
| in even reading this thoroughly.
|
| I will always put my personal ethics above any generic code of
| conduct (for instance, my ethics do not place 'public good' or a
| generic 'avoidance of harm' above anything else). Same, I
| suspect, applies to anyone who ever thought about ethics at all.
|
| Happy to prioritise my own ethics in most situations, but someone
| else's? No thanks.
| smlavine wrote:
| At my university (RIT) they made us all read this and do a report
| on its importance in the seminar class before we can go on
| internships. It's all well and good but I don't think it has any
| teeth without a culture to support its enforcement or a licensure
| process to require it.
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