Article Review- importance of special ethics courses By Rudra Tiwari

 

Article reviewed: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/business/computer-science-ethics-courses.html

In the above article, Natasha Singer talks about the importance of special ethics courses for the students of Informational Technology and Computer Science that Harvard and Stanford University is focusing on. According to the universities, just like the medical student’s first ethics is: First, do no harm, the engineering students should also be taught something similar to that. The ethos that Silicon Valley works on is, “Build it first and ask for forgiveness later.” But with the fake news and other troubles raising in the technology sector, it is very important that the students are taught basic ethics of the profession they are in,

The main ethical principle that is upheld here is role duty. The principle defines that, as a professional one should know, and act according to the specific duties and carry out your job description. Thus, the students should know the ethical approach to any problems or dilemma that they face in their professional life. The student should be able to identify what is ethical and what is unethical. Harvard University feels that the ethics subject in computer science background is the need of the hour.

The main idea behind this is to train the next generation of technologists and policymakers to consider the complications of innovations, for example, the autonomous weapons and the self-driving cars before they are released in the market. The ethical principle of utility is also being addressed here. This is because we are maximizing the greatest amount of well-being for the greatest number of people and minimizing the greatest amount of pain or discomfort for the greatest number of people. It includes resources, staff, money, technology, research, etc. There is a proper cost/benefit analysis done for the decision-making.

The article is comparing the medical students with the engineering students. It is comparing how non-maleficence is taught to a medical student. Whereas, most of the IT and software companies are more interested in making a profit than thinking about people. Thus, the “do no harm” principle should be taught to them at such an early stage so that they can make a rational decision.

When someone sees something unethical work is happening in a company, the guy’s first instinct should be to inform people in authority and take action against it.

Employees from a company as big as the Google agree with the particular idea of making students study ethics. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube is struggling to fight with the side effects of, fake videos on Facebook, fake followers on Twitter, and lewd videos of young children on YouTube.

I agree with the professors and the people from the industry to take such an initiative. It is important that someone takes up the responsibly to bring a change and the others will follow him/her.

With the artificial intelligence taking over most of the IT and software industry and there is the popularization of automated machine learning, it is important that the engineers understand what is right and what is wrong for them to do a job that will benefit the people. These powerful tools that the technology is developing these days, if not taking proper caution it can alter human societies.

The initiatives of the top universities are the best approach because only then it will reach the maximum students out there.