Sure, there was a "requierment," but I wouldn't really consider it legitimate. It took concerted effort to "earn" any grade lower than an A. I wasn't personally acquainted with any other student who seriously considered the social and ethical implications of computers during or after taking a 400 level course titled "Social and Ethical Implications of Computers."
On the bright side, I heard through the grapevine that rigor, or at least workload for the course, has increased since I took it.
Although anecdotal and perhaps specific to my institution, every recollection of my University career makes me feel deeply thankful that I ended up eventually pursuing a double major in mathematics. The quality and dedication of the instructors wildly surpassed that of the CS department. Mathematics professors were there to share knowledge. CS perfessors were pressured by hiring statistics into "preparing us for the workforce" by essentially quizzing specific interview questions like "what's the difference between interfaces and subclasses in Java."
However, in the Quebec system (and presumably the equivalent in other provinces) we have 3 philosophy classes (humanities, world-view etc) in college/cégep (somewhat mandatory before university). I also had a mandatory ethics class since I completed a technical degree, which I also did not appreciate at the time, but it helped me develop more critical thinking later on.
You can't go overseas to get a bridge built across the river in your town. You can't get a foreign barrister to represent you in court in your country.
You can easily get a new social media website or IoT server built and hosted in any country you want.
The scenarios where the effects of bad ethical decisions most often make the news are not things that lend themselves well to being subject to local licensing regulations, like embedded avionic or medical devices or internal banking systems. Problems do happen in those spaces, but they are rare.
None of this even touches on usability and the difficulty of restricting tool use to the "good guys". The jslint licence got a lot of stick for that.
You can build/host things anywhere, but something centered around “if you generate profits in the USA, and hold the data of Americans, these requirements exist for your system” makes sense. In particular, liability needs to rest somewhere, such that someone gives enough of a shit to do things right.
A civil engineering firm could outsource the design of a bridge anywhere, but in the end, somebody’s neck is on the line if it fails.
This is exactly the stance taken by GDPR. Most devs don't like it from what I've seen on HN. (Saying this without any judgment. I am personally very much in favor of what GDPR does.)
This sort of thing already gets dodged by international companies who "generate profits" in countries with lower taxes and "incur costs" in countries with higher taxes.
>" and hold the data of Americans"
GDPR? System requirements is one thing, requiring a licensed engineer from multiple jurisdictions is another. Bear in mind that because software changes constantly, this has to be a senior staff position, not a one-time sign-off like it could be for a bridge.
I assumed all universities had a similar program, if they don't students are really missing out.
The main problem is there is not a certifying organization that standardizes ethics (and includes licensing). A single developer refusing something on ethics is pretty meaningless. A company will just find someone else who will do it.
Isn't it just subtle propaganda? Good, bad, just, unjust - what's ethical in China, for example, or Saudia Arabia is not the same as what's ethical in the US or even Europe.
Nevermind the thought of relatively centralized institutions acting as arbiters of ethics and, by extension, core aspects of culture.
Cultural artifacts are quite teachable; that's generally how they are transmitted. Why would that be difficult?
That's bullshit. Just because some places have unethical norms, doesn't mean their norms are ethical. Just because some places have a norm to mistreat some people, doesn't mean those people suddenly don't feel mistreated.
I do agree with your pretense though that programmers have a tendency to not think about ethics and should be held to some sort of code in the same way doctors and lawyers are supposed to be.
https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/ifikk/EXPHIL03E/index.ht...
It is worth noting that this is common to all first degrees, and may or may not be tailored to your particular subject area, so it's often up to the learner to work out apply the theory to their own scenarios.
I totally support the idea that all professionals need to be ethical and moral, and I definitely try to do so in my life, but I've given up hope that society at large is interested in this. I think individuals generally are, but any company, once it becomes powerful, seems to also become evil.
For instance, "don't build stuff that can be abused" is not a good framework for ethical decision-making. "Abuse" has no clear definition, and "can be" is an incredibly high standard. By this standard, the hammer should have have been invented. It's incredibly easy to hurt someone with one! There are no safeguards whatsoever!
Man if only we could make all our political science grads take an ethics course, then there'd be no more war!
If an ethics course teaches students which decisions actually have an ethical component in them, that's already a huge win: Whenever they encounter such a decision, they will be more likely to notice and ponder the ethical implications contained therein. This does not necessarily prescribe a particular set of ethical rules that they have to adhere to.
Edit: see also https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics
So maybe it's best this way. Computer scientists will still do bad stuff, but at least they'll be embarrassed about it when caught, rather than come up with clever justifications.
I first thought it was a lot of philosophical bullshit about good and bad, but the history part of things were an eye opener.
Like the census data being abused by Nazis to exterminate jews. It always starts up as good intentions.
Our job is to prevent the worst case. The worst case eventually will happen.
