So You Can Sleep At Night… ethics in software engineering

In a post-truth world, software doesn’t have to be malicious to be dangerous. For example, in 2016, Facebook replaced its (human) news editors with an algorithm. Within days, conspiracy theories were at the top of the trending feeds, presented as 'news.' In this talk, we'll discuss the ethical considerations of building software in a world that looks more like an unfolding episode of 'Black Mirror' with every passing week. No software exists in a vacuum. As developers, we have to understand the social implications of our software to help us make ethical decisions about what we get involved in, and how we build software in general. And we have to be brave and speak up when we think something could go wrong. And, if someone else speaks up, we must be willing to listen. In short: we must be humble, we must be watchful, and we must ensure the decisions we make mean we can sleep at night.

Transcript

1. So you can sleep at night Jonathan Rothwell @jorodev Zuhlke Engineering Ltd.
2. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 3dman_eu / pixabay.com
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5. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 –Maciej Cegłowski, Build a Better Monster http://idlewords.com/talks/build_a_better_monster.htm This year especially there’s an uncomfortable feeling in the tech industry that we did something wrong, that in following our credo of “move fast and break things”, some of what we knocked down were the load-bearing walls of our democracy.
6. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018
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8. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Thomas Midgley Jr. • 1922 Nichols Medal • 1925 Longstreth Medal • 1937 Perkin Medal • 1941 Priestley Medal • 1942 Willard Gibbs Award • 1944 President American Chemical Society • 2 Honorary degrees • Over 100 patents • Member of US Academy of Sciences
9. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Thomas Midgley Jr. Inventor of leaded petrol …and CFCs “[had] more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history”
 —J. R. McNeill, Georgetown U
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11. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 No software exists in a vacuum. Software has context.
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13. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 We do have codes of conduct
14. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 It’s impossible to get struck off 
 as a software developer
15. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Buddhism’s “Three Poisons” Ignorance Attachment Aversion CC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bhavacakra_Thikse.jpg
16. CONTAINS: SCARY STORIES, SPECULATIONS FREE FROM: CONCLUSIONS PRODUCED IN A FACILITY CONTAINING NUTS ⚠
17. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 གཏི་muག Ignorance
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20. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Bad software ruins people’s lives.
21. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 འདོད་ཆགས་ Attachment
22. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Wouldn’t it be cool if…
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25. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 “Oh, but that’s not us. We’re just doing _______”
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27. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Censored!
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38. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 – Maciej Cegłowski, The Moral Economy of Tech Approaching the world as a software problem is a category error that has led us into some terrible habits of mind.
39. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 ཞེ་sdང Aversion
40. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Some people do 
 consciously bad things.
41. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Most people don’t believe they’re bad people. But…
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45. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 “The company defended itself by explaining that “people have to expressly agree to use” the opt-in feature for importing their contacts on Messenger or Facebook Lite to allow Facebook to collect the cell phone data, but Sunday’s statement is the first time the social media company actually spelled out that practice in clear terms for users.”
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48. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 We often model responsibilities to our users and customers. What about people who aren’t our users and customers, but are still affected by our software?
49. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 6 million Jews 2—3 milllion Soviet POWs 1.8—1.9 million ethnic Poles 150,000 Disabled people 90,000—220,000 Romani 5,000—15,000 Homosexuals 1,400—2,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses Total: 17 million people killed
50. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 –Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, BBCtv This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance.
51. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018
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53. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 What if someone wanted
 to do that today?
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56. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 –Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, BBCtv This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance.
58. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 What can we do?
59. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Buddhism’s “Three Poisons” Ignorance Attachment Aversion CC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bhavacakra_Thikse.jpg
60. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 གཏི་muག་མེད་པ། Non-Delusion
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63. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 མ་ཆགས་པ། Non-Attachment
64. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should
65. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Metcalfe’s Law “the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2)”
66. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 SHINY OBJECT SYNDROME
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68. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Not doing something is an acceptable answer.
69. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 When things in real life that sound like satire start to happen, it's way past the time where we need to start reflecting on how we are fostering a society built on hate [...] We cannot let people advance tech for their own selfish reasons while they pretend that they're doing it for everyone. — Jenn Schiffer
70. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 ཞེས་sdང་མེད་པ། Non-Hatred
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72. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Be civil to people?
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74. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 The one effective lever we have against tech companies is employee pressure […] Unfortunately, the enemy is complacency. […] A workplace free of 'politics' is just one of the many perks the tech industry offers its pampered employees. – Maciej Cegłowski
75. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Should we use our position
 to resist handing control to
 a few dominant players?
76. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 But… who do we think we are to make this call?
77. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 But… who else is there?
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79. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 What can we do? Non Delusion ‣ Be humble ‣ Talk about your concerns ‣ Have a life outside tech Non-Hatred ‣ Have a visible ethical charter ‣ Try to be civil ‣ Leave or refuse Non-Attachment ‣ Don’t be seduced by that framework, technology, LinkedIn buzzword etc. ‣ Track what people do with your system… think about hostile users, not just attackers
80. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 By Oliver Spalt - CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=202801 Make a 
 conscious decision. Don’t drift into a world
 you didn’t choose.
81. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 By Oliver Spalt - CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=202801 Thank you.
82. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Meeting Resistance and Moving Forward by Linda Rising @RisingLinda https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DrCD1wmK9oM When The Truth No Longer Matters by Kate Gray
 @grisgraygrau https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DeyRJnhwPgU Consequences of an Insightful Algorithm by Carina C. Zona @cczona https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YRI40A4tyWU Jenn Schiffer @jennschiffer at XOXO
 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DrCD1wmK9oM
83. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 A Quest for a
 Better World by Adrian Kosmaczewski @akosma TONIGHT, 5:30pm Firebase Room
84. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Links •http://idlewords.com/talks/notes_from_an_emergency.htm •http://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm •http://idlewords.com/talks/build_a_better_monster.htm •https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/the_battle_for_1.html •https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ 1xTxAPtv9TJIF1exU9hR48plP1wBbl8QiLbZPvY8Eopw/edit#slide=id.g222c0f1959_0_23 •https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery- hijacked-democracy •http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/little/little.html
85. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 •Better - A Surgeon’s Notes On Performance
 written by Atul Gawande •IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation
 written by Edwin Black •Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race
 written by Reni Eddo-Lodge Recommended Reading
86. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 With thanks to: •Sal Freudenburg •Katherine Kirk •Kate Gray •Sebastiaan Peters •James Thomson for their invaluable help and encouragement •Dan Hon •Ivan Moore •Asad Razvi •Steve Freeman •Friends and colleagues at Zuhlke
87. So you can sleep at night @jorodev © Zuhlke 2018 Slides will be online
 and on Slack later
88. So you can sleep at night written and presented by Jonathan Rothwell @jorodev co-written with Steve Freeman @sf105 © Zuhlke Engineering Ltd. 2017-2018 — Thank you for coming