2020-10-20 Do Software Engineers

The center for humane technology (co-founder being the lead subject of the aforementioned documentary) outlines the principles of humane technology. This is a great place to begin thinking about these issues.

What are the steps we can take as software engineers? Here are a few:

1. Create an ethical guideline for your team to follow (“don’t be evil” may be too general but it’s a good starting point)
2. Limit data collection to what is necessary and/or inform your users the intent of data collection (2009/136/EC was a great start in Europe)
3. Include stop-gaps to influence user behaviour to be more positive (ie. the WoW rested model)

The world is starting to notice ethics in technology. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, went to the supreme court to answer questions about privacy and data collection. Lawmakers are crafting laws to make the privacy of users a default. We have seen social media platforms need to take a stand against extremist groups. We are aware that technology has influenced the destabilization of countries and influenced elections.

Software engineers need to become a larger part of this conversation and we need to do better.