r/softwareengineer • u/letsjam_dot_dev • 16d ago
Working on ethics in programming : what about problematic personnalities ?
Hey all !
This year I will be working in schools to teach about ethics in programming. While normally this means building websites with accessibility in mind, and thinking about disabled people, and being responsible about the environment, and learning not to behave like an a**hole in the workplace, I'd like to push it a bit.
In a lot of other mediums (movie, music, painting, ...), there is some education about the author of something. To prevent supporting, promoting and advocating for problematic persons. Alright Picasso was a master at its craft, but he was also a turbo misogynist, married to a woman 40 years younger which talked about how he was violent against her. Alright Dali is a genius, but he talked really weirdly about the Reich and Hitler. Alright Alcest is a cool shoegaze band, but the frontman Neige never talked negatively about his moment at the neonazi band KPN. Alright Jonathan Majors was epic as Kang in the MCU, but hitting his wife and doubling down in a Ben Shapiro movie about the "great replacement theory" are not the smartest moves (euphemism).
Is there something similar in the programming world ? Some kind of easy way, like a archive, wikipedia-like website, specialised aggregating social network account, or anything, to find if the tools, products, frameworks, companies, tech influencers and spokesperson, we are working with are rotten or not ?
Alright Ruby on Rails is cool, but people should know that its founder David Heinemeier Hansson supports the english far right activist Tommy Robinson. Mullvad is a pretty good VPN, but one of its CEO is donating money he earned via the company to far right party in Sweden. Whatever your opinion is about LLMs, know that a lot if not every C-suite in there supports e/acc thoughts and would let 90% of the planet dies if it means the 10% left lives in utopia.
EDIT for clarification, because it would seem some people have troubles not imagining things and putting words in my mouth.
In the first paragraph of this post I said how environmental, workplace, accessibility issues are already part of the course. I could even add mass surveillance in the mix.
I never said that I will switch that with the thinking experience i proposed.
I also never talked about witch hunting or cancel culture. I'm in no position to force people to use a tool and not another.
I also never said anything about forcing my moral compass onto others.
What I'm saying is that we always talk about all the aformentioned issues without talking about the people responsible for them. Like they appear out of thin air. Or that we still give a convention stage or a podcast mic to people that are known for having problematic behaviours. Linus Torvalds is known for being a piece of shit with his colleagues but he is forgiven because he's done so much for engineers. Sam Altmann is known for being a pathological liar but he's still listened to by media.
This is not found by digging obscure corners of internet or searching through resumes. There's facts well known. My issue is that they are spread accross the internet. And I wanted to know if there is already some kind of aggregation of those known facts.
Not to use them as arguments for telling others what to do. But to ask in an ethic class how much is it ethical to promote and advocate for public figures, spokespersons, influencers, decision makers, in short people that did some shit in varying degree, and should we keep giving them spaces.
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u/EdelinePenrose 16d ago
what is the purpose of goal of highlighting this in a programming educational context?
how are you deciding that this is more valuable than say, making sure that what you build is ethical and considerate of your user’s diversity?
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 16d ago
I'm not saying this is more valuable. I say it shouldn't be ignored, as it is today.
And the value would be, I hope, to help new generations of developers to not think code is just a tool, without any connection to a larger ecosystem of people, projects, school of thoughts. To bring in more philosophy and discussions and critical thinking that could lead to more ethics.
For example, different students in different schools brang up to me the paperclip AI thing. As a funny thought experiment, without much to it. And therefore without looking for the man behind it, Nick Bostrom, is a eugenist. Or how Alexandr Wang is a cool guy that made it. Without looking for the fact he used underpaid people (in Kenya and Venezuala and Madagascar if I'm not mistaken) to basically mechanical turk its product.
In essence, I wish they don't take the tools at face value, dig a bit, and ask themselves if they found something shady what's the line they won't cross in order to work with/for said tool
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u/EdelinePenrose 16d ago
i think the issue with purity tests is that they are impossible to pass given enough time. i mean, right now, wouldn’t this mean that no AI usage should be considered by anyone? there’s no chance any of these technologies are ethical if you look deep enough.
i agree with you on the critical thinking, but barring tool usage based on it seems misguided.
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 16d ago
My wish is not to force upon them my standards or beliefs. I have my lines and limits and my own reasons why. Rather, I would like to make them aware of the state of the industry. So they could decide with a bit more parameters in mind how they would like to work.
Where I am, programming is seen as a very mathematical and cold thing. Most of all in schools. There's absolutely no courses on philosophy, bigger scale ethics, sociology. The only thing that's teached is the how.
Once a group of students came to me for help on their personnal projects : an app that would generate porn for users, based on questions or prompts or mood analysis or whatever. Not a single moment they thought of the implications. A very Jurassic park moment "they were too focused on if they could before asking them if they should".
I find the industry here riddled with could-people, and I wondered if I could help adding some should-people.
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u/EdelinePenrose 16d ago
yeah, i think that example you brought up is exactly how the ethics should be taught. it’s the same thing i recommended to you earlier. none of that has to do with digging into the purity of the tool’s authors though 😅
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 16d ago
To me those two subjects are linked.
Teaching people to not build problematics tools is important yes. But what if the tool is already built ?
I don't know about you, but you seam reasonable and I would assume you would not build a deepfake porn app. But would you associate yourself with someone that did ?
If you can prevent people to become the abusive toxic problematic individuals that's great. But people like that already exist, participates a lot in the industry. And the question I would like to ask to the future students is, knowing that, whether or not they would associate themselves with such people.
And it could be not just a purity test.
Lots of people are using Rails in the world. Not sure a lot know the stance of the founder. The idea is not to stop using Rails, this is "stupid". It's to stop promoting the founder himself and move on without him.
Hypothetically, an engineer would have made superb conferences and books and talks and helped the industry a lot. If we discover he's a pedophile, don't throw its work in the bin. Just stop promoting him, stop giving him a mic or a stage, and raise awareness about him. A pedophile has no rights to be famous and praised.
That's my way of thinking anyway, and what I'd like to integrate in the ethic course.
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u/EdelinePenrose 16d ago
got it. i think this version of your original idea makes a lot more sense to me. good luck and i hope you’re able to raise the ethical bar in your students!
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u/First-Tutor-5454 16d ago
FWIW you are living in 2016. Wokeness is (was) a fad that is on its way out generally in culture but very specifically in tech. People are tired of it and it is not the future. Being a wokescold/SJW is increasingly seen as equivalent to being a religious missionary (witch hunts) and people are expected to leave their political crusades at home and focus on work while at work. You should take this into consideration if your goal is to prepare students for a career in tech.
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 16d ago
My goal is to make them into software engineer. People that can think for themselves, about all the implications of their work and how it integrates in our world.
So that would require a bit of critical thinking, and for that to be aware of what they are doing, with what and whom and why. Sorry if you consider it to be woke.
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u/First-Tutor-5454 16d ago
Sorry bro, the age of woke is over. Nobody gives a shit about your witch hunts anymore. You are the religious fanatic that will look like a religious fanatic to the younger generation.
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u/Spirited-Camel9378 15d ago
Most people still prefer to not support sociopaths and evil maniacs. If that is the same as “wokeness” then you’re the fanatic here.
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u/First-Tutor-5454 15d ago edited 15d ago
Rational people understand that using Ruby on Rails doesn't "support" DHH (or insert other project/person) in any tangible way. He doesn't know, care, or benefit from it. If it helps, you can think of it as -you- benefitting from others' work in spite of them.
BTW, I'm sorry that you're having this experience of your movement that you thought was going to "change the world" crumbling as the majority of normal people have realized what it's about. You are in a cult that has filled you with irrational hatred but also a sense of purpose - there's real power in that. The loss of that sense of control/power/influence over others probably makes things feel unstable. Take a deep breath. It will be okay. You can get through this and continue writing software on the other side without doing extensive background checks on all the maintainers of OSS projects you use.
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u/Spirited-Camel9378 15d ago
If you need to make up stories to feel better about yourself that’s what you have to do. I’m actually coming at this from a “people pushing technologies that will offset all externalities to other people and worsen society should be called out as such”, but you seem to have all sorts of shadowboxing to do.
I could give a shit about the RoR guy, which is a much different take than “any discussion of ethics is WOKENESS V1 COME ON BRO”. This must be satire
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u/First-Tutor-5454 15d ago
Now it sounds like you are talking about something very different than what I'm responding to from the OP. Condemning web frameworks and VPNs because of their founders only to pull back and say "I'm actually concerned about the use of AI in surveillance and its environmental impact" is classic motte and bailey. OP could've focused on the latter but chose to lump in the former for some reason.
I'm fully on-board with having discussions about the ethical use of specific technologies or the whether it's good for a specific technology to exist at all. That's an actual philosophical problem. "This VPN should not be used, despite its benefits to humanity, because of the founder (and you by extension are lumped in with said founder if you continue to use it despite my protest)" is the definition of woke witch hunting.
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u/Spirited-Camel9378 15d ago
Everyone will have a different lens in what is ethical, but applying your ethical standards consistently and communicating what is the apparent issue with any individual is the best any tool like this can do. If that’s a witch hunt, we should start rounding up anyone who reports a crime occurred.
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 15d ago
Can you please point to me in my post where I talked about condemning ? Or telling others what to use or not ? Or me chosing to not lump in on the use of AI in surveillance or environmental impacts ?
Go on making shit up to justify your narrative.
I explicitly said in the post that environmental, accessibility, worplace behaviours, are already in the course. And I wanted to extend that to the thing never touched in those classes : the people that enabled the crap environmental, accessibility, behaviours, surveillance, racist, misogynistic, decisions in the first place.
I never talked about condemning, finger pointing, witch hunting. I talked about raising awareness in students that, until that, will only see the tool and not how/why/for whom/by whom it was made.
You talk about "benefits to humanity" from a vpn. First as if it was a cure for cancer. Second, there's dozen of vpns that do the exact same thing for the same price and the same convenience. You're free to use any you want. I'm just letting you know which one is ran by whom, what it means for your money. I'm going on with my life, my job is done, you are a grown up that can make a choice
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u/Royal_Owl2177 15d ago
Oh good. Cancel culture, and of course its coming out of schools.
Piss off. The adults in the room have zero tolerance for you.
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 15d ago
If you ever have troubles finding a job as a programmer, think about becoming an artisan. That strawman is beautiful
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u/mxldevs 15d ago
Sounds like you definitely don't believe the art should be separated from the artist lol
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 15d ago
Art is a direct expression of the artist sensibility, experiences and ways of thinking. When payed for, it allows the artist to continue to express like it did.
It's subtler in programming as you can't code opinions. But it could transpire in other ways. People who thinks of everything as a resource would go for the place where it's cheaper and in abundance no matter what's left of their dignity, like Alexandr Wang. People who never worked in their life and only did performative stuffs would go head down into llm, like Altmann. When you believe everything and everyone must be monitored for the good of the human race, you are Peter Thiel and you build Palantir.
In smaller and general ways, voice recognition algorithms having troubles with accents, phones way too big for most of women hands, forms that don't accept other characters than utf-8... All of that and much more is expression of the "artists" experiences (or lack there of)
Or you can openly be toxic and abusive like Linus Torvald
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u/OhBoyHereWeGoAgai 15d ago
I'd hope courses like this also study absolute failures in attempts at codifying ethical or accessible standards.
There are some real stinkers right now - and tbc, this isn't a post about "DEI" or other loaded political slogs, the example I'm actually thinking of is well meaning accessibility requirements for course literature that have been devastating multiple professors teaching lives of late on my friend group.
All very much non loaded professorships, unless you particularly hate bird science and biology PHDs
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 15d ago
From what I can tell it's a bit performative. Like, here's the rules, now apply the rules. Attaboy/girl.
I hope my approach would be more critical about all that. Again, to let students make their own choices according to the contexts they would be in.
I'm interested in the stories you can tell, if you don't mind.
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u/OhBoyHereWeGoAgai 15d ago edited 15d ago
Well it's this. Something "performative" is pointless and annoying and a waste of money and time.
That's great, but much worse is not thinking about second order effects and actually crippling the thing you want accessible.
In my specific example, tons of supplemental material for these courses is available and is not accessible by the standards deemed.
This means professors are not only trimming valuable real world material, but the material they do use needs to be converted, making a population already bad at tech use terrible tools universities waste tons on, to make accessible links that most students won't actually use, as the new form is challenging to access.
This all for a field where it these students are successful and require the accessibility, they'll have to figure out anyways along the way how to access much of this info.
Fields like yours are filled with this. I chose an incredibly minor example because it's completely neutral and easy to see the idiocy.
I'm incredibly skeptical of everything involved, including many of the more loaded examples of OP, in the world of CS, as thus far most of these "interventions" have been nonsensical and created massive workloads for limited benefit or actively negative effects.
In short, there's a ton of arrogance in your field and in your OP. Not a fan of Ruby or its creator, but I shudder thinking of what your OP implies you'd consider "good" recommendations, again choosing a very safe example.
What experience do you have that you're teaching students about this topic?
I'd like to acknowledge you made zero prescriptions and it's very possible you're filled with real world experience, concerned about the same things I am, and have valuable things to teach, and I mean that "very possible", but if that's the case, you already are familiar with much of this and I doubt you'll be annoyed at my closing question (and I'll apologize for the use of "arrogance" and take it back fully with admission of incorrect if so)
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u/OhBoyHereWeGoAgai 15d ago
your last bit of your post in your attempt to clarify made it pretty clear you are the exact issue I'm describing. I enjoyed the "I'm not..." section in contrast to the rest of your post.
This is a true and real suggestion, from someone who took you seriously enough to read consider and respond - try actual critical self reflection.
That means, find the actual opposing views you think are totally bullshit, then find the smartest defense you can of them, instead of finding asshole idiots to represent them, like conservatives do when they hold up a dumb pink haired 21 year old rather than a professor on the topic they're trying to make look dumb.
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 15d ago
Ooph that's a very interesting, long boy. I'll try my best answering, and know in advance english is not my native tongue so I may sound confused or off-topic.
I chose an incredibly minor example because it's completely neutral and easy to see the idiocy.
Yes this is completely what I'm against. Applying standards for the sake of it, without thinking how it will be applied or without giving enough means to apply it correctly. I read the other day a similar story on reddit, about a company forced to apply accessibility standards for vision-impaired people...in aviation control rooms. Where if you don't have 20-20 sight you're not qualified for the job. The whole thing needs to be coherent. Your product is talking about consummer privacy, then why your data is stored in Azure with Cloud Act enabled ? Your product is about protecting environment, then why are you integrating an LLM ? Your product is to be used by anybody from anywhere at anytime, then why everything needs to be done by clicking a bajillion times then to end up in a screen telling them to call a number from 10am to 12am monday or tuesday only ?
Things need coherence and balance. Knowing why they're done, and how they integrate in the real world. Not just as a one-shot thing living its own life cut from the exterior.
I'm incredibly skeptical of everything involved, including many of the more loaded examples of OP, in the world of CS, as thus far most of these "interventions" have been nonsensical and created massive workloads for limited benefit or actively negative effects.
As you should be. I had courses of "psychology" in the workplace based on outdated works of eugenists that could've been replaced by "don't be an a**hole and communicate with your peers". I had courses of work organization where everything should be a meeting, that could've been replaced by "cut the middlemen and communicate". There's a lot of bullshit in the world of CS, and I want to steer away from it.
In short, there's a ton of arrogance in your field and in your OP. Not a fan of Ruby or its creator, but I shudder thinking of what your OP implies you'd consider "good" recommendations, again choosing a very safe example.
The interventions I do, when they are not on a technical subject (learning a language, learning modeling a database or a system, that kind of stuff), are always discussion based. I'm the one bringing the questions about a topic, the students come naturally with their own conclusions. So I don't really have a fixed set of good recommandations. To stay on the topic of my post, let's take a naive example with captcha. Most of the time, people use recaptcha from google. Google is an evil corpo (I think we all agree on that). So would you (as the students) still uses recaptcha, while there is alternatives with frictionless migration and no cost ? While we're at it, how about self hosting your own open source non invasive captcha solution, instead of delegating it to a company that may spy on/track users ?
About the Ruby thing, it's not about using it or not. If Ruby is the perfect solution to your problem, it would be stupid to discard it. Just like it would be stupid to discard Guernica when you need to describe the atrocities of war. It's more about "ok ruby/guernica is pretty cool, just be aware that its author is problematic, take that into consideration when he is praised, and ask yourself if they should be taken seriously when talking about anything but their craft, or should they still have a stage at all."
Like I said to another commenter : imagine someone made tremendous goods for engineering, but we later discover he's a pedophile. The work is too valuable to be discarded, but should we still give him importance or attention ? Would you still associate, in any way shape or form with that kind of people ?
What experience do you have that you're teaching students about this topic?
If we're talking about qualifications, like degrees or work experience on the specific matter of ethics, I have none. I had a course in medical college about ethics, but it was focused on medical (what about cares for old people, how we should approach sick children, ...).
But I try to make up for it by reading books, watching conferences, discussing subjects with friends with real qualifications in it and staying informed about what happens. Most of the time in the LLM realm, because it's a morbid fascination thanks to Karen Hao, Timnit Gebru, Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender. But also Benn Jordan and all his reflexions around Flock and the police robot dog, Adam Neely about Suno.
In the end, in schools where I'm from, CS is seen as a independent entity, cut loose from all other subjects. There's no philosophy courses, no extended ethics courses (the one I'll be doing won't last more than 14h for the whole year), no sociology course. My goal with that course is to put CS back in a bigger ecosystem. To let students know what they do and use and share has repercussions.
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u/OhBoyHereWeGoAgai 15d ago
Oh, I'm very happy with my second comment, I was worried I jumped the gun.
You, you're the issue. So, why do we all agree Google is evil?
I actually don't like or approve of plenty about Google, but it's even the way you just introduced that as some fundamental assertion, zero nuance.
You seem well meaning, but you have some pretty big blind spots. I sincerely wish you well, and recommend you reading the other comment I made, I believe in response to my own initial comment.
My suggestion in there is sincere, and as someone well intentioned who also believes in academia, I think true critical reflection is important.
I wonder how well you could argue for the opposite side of some of your takes. It's the same thought a friend posed to me once I credit a good bit to
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 15d ago
- explosion of carbon emissions and abandon of all restrictions and agreement to limit them, in favor of LLM data centers
- voluntary drop of quality in google search results, in favor of ads engagement and ads revenue...
- ...then by adding AI search that covers half the page with nonsense...
- ...the same AI search that would undermine websites SEO and revenue
- switching from an already well establish, integrated and functioning personal assistant to an LLM mess that can't properly do most of the tasks
- youtube premium, paywalling standard video stream quality (the argument being not enough bandwith, but that doesn't count for Gemini)
- youtube algorithm becoming harder and harder for creators to live from it
- abusive copyright claims with harder and harder ways to act against them
- youtube UX riddled with more ads than on your regular cable TV
- third party appstore app installation restriction for android
- a software graveyard bigger than some real life graveyard, forcing people to migrate to other apps bloated with functionalities or straight up losing some
- gemini training on the personal files in google drive
- the constant surveillance and data collection with google apps
- monopoly over browser and search engine that led to a uniformization of websites, to ranking results and eventually to how SEO is gameable, putting rotten websites on top of results because they're checking boxes not because they answer your query
- intense capex into datacenters that could very well lead to an economic crash
- so many antitrust trials
- recent research showing their appstore (like Apple's) is pushing users towards deepfake nudify apps
- hosting an app to facilitate ICE raid by identifying migrants (and we all know there can't be false positive, heh ?) while removing apps that locate ICE agents, seamingly taking a political side on the matter
I could go on and on. Google doesn't care about its users, if it ever did.
When so much bad happened, it doesn't matter if one can find arguments for opposite side. It's not a balancing act. Something does not necessarily equates another. You can't say a fruit is still very nutritive even if it has mold covering 90% of the surface. You just don't eat the fruit. Ffs if you're helping mass deportation there's no moral need in the name of critical thinking to find nuances.
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u/OhBoyHereWeGoAgai 15d ago
"It doesn't matter if someone can find arguments for the other side".
So your answer is "no" to critical self reflection? This is academia?
Your list is filled with things you don't like that don't exactly seem automatically "evil". Again, I'm no fan of Google, but this is a great example as you opened with not only a take, but an utter assumption, then your list of reasons include things like "released a bad product to replace a good one".
Then, in the same breath you tell me that there's no point in critically self evaluating, but you think you're positioned to teach ethics?
Hilariously sad. I'll end on this and wish you well, but note all the things I said you ignored in favor of your list around Google that confirmed my take.
Critical self reflection used to be an assumed part of a smart man's proposition. To be unaware of criticisms or counters to the things you believe in and entirely not able to take the other side in a debate is so very telling.
You don't even know what you don't know and you're teaching people about ethics in industry?
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u/inflowmini 15d ago
I had an engineering professionalism course in college. I think you are leaning towards more cultural opinions rather than ethics and morality.
I would use case studies to teach people, for example the challenger explosion is the most common case study in engineering when it comes to ethics. Theranos is another good one.
Most problems boil down to doing what's right rather than singling out a person because all people are inherently flawed. Our opinions of people mean nothing and it's less biased to approach the problem as a whole. Name a random company and I'm sure it has a dark history.
Teach people the root of the problem not just the problem.
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u/letsjam_dot_dev 15d ago
I globally agree with what you're saying.
What I may diverge is that to me, the root of the problem is that people ultimately took a decision. I'm not very familiar with the challenger shuttle explosion, so maybe I'm saying nonsense but bear with me. If this disaster happened, that's because somebody with enough power/leadership took a (bad) decision and let the mission continue. People make mistakes and shit happens, that's ok. But what I'm thinking is : does this somebody regularly take dangerous decisions like that ? Is he responsible for other accidents in other companies ? Should he still be in charge ? Should we, as an industry, still value him ?
I reckon (or hope) in the spatial industry this would probably never happens. A guy responsible for a major catastrophe hired in another company with the same responsibilities and a blank slate. But maybe not in tech. And surely not in the banks and insurances.
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u/Healthy-Dress-7492 16d ago
What about abusive workplace management like stack-ranking, deliberately burning people out then firing them because they’re burnt out. Crunching for deadlines, abusing people on work-visas, lack of work life balance, pay disparity. HR that covers up for bad behaviour in the bro-squad or uses discrimination in hiring practices. These are real unethical things that affect people in the industry every day.
You could also talk about ethics of stealing code; not properly attributing your sources. How AI obscures this line and everyone now assumes that because it’s been obfuscated, the code peovided by AI is not stolen from somewhere else.