
'Silicon Valley' star scared of what he sees as tech's ethical failings - slg
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/techie-tv-silicon-valley-star-says-hes-scared-sees-techs-ethical-failings/
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clydethefrog
This is what happens when all the education about computer programming cuts
out any parts related to humanities. In my three years studying information
science on university, there was never one minute spend on ethics, the impact
of technology on society or any critical thinking. Feeling some discomfort
with your disruption? Just repeat the dogma “technology itself is neutral -
it’s just a matter of how you use it.” and you will be fine.

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manyxcxi
That’s interesting to me that you guys didn’t have any ethics classes. At my
uni (10 years ago) we actually had a 200 level CS class specifically focused
on ethics in technology.

Granted, one class in four years still isn’t much, but it was a part of the
curriculum if you were going for a CS or Computer Eng degree.

I’d never been fully exposed to a class on ethics before and enjoyed it enough
to seek out some similar classes while fulfilling my general ed requirements.

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WorldMaker
ABET accrediting has nearly always required an ethics class for all
engineering fields, including Computer Science/Computer Engineering degrees
when ABET accredited.

Maybe there are some CS degrees out there that warrant investigation into why
they aren't ABET accredited? (Or if they are accredited, maybe should have
that reviewed?)

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ejlangev
My university didn't have classes on ethics in technology as a requirement for
a computer science degree. In retrospect after working in the startup world
for a few years I wish they had. People need to be given the tools to evaluate
questions of technical ethics themselves otherwise they'll just sign on to the
employer arguments about "tech is neutral" or "think of all the people this
helps" while ignore all the people they (or someone else using what they
created) may hurt.

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aurenen
My university did, but since most CS majors did not care about GPAs, most of
my classmates took the class and just cared about passing it, not actually
learning anything or recognizing the importance of ethics. Hearing my
classmates joke about some really serious ethical dilemmas kind of made me
depressed about the state of the field.

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cletus
Can we get some actors to weigh into this and maybe take up the other side?

I hate to be dismissive but without any specifics were just tilting at
windmills here.

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2K17
He identified a virtue signalling niche.

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lithos
For something that has so many low hanging fruits and obvious fundamental
failures, it has no reason to stay niche long.

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2K17
Also it's not good in truthspeak which makes it an even more attractive
target.

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xg15
There was a reason why the 29C3's motto was "Not my Department".

