Chapter 7 | Ethics and Ownership

7.1 Ethics and Ownership

Ethics Principles →

Ethics are rules of conduct in a particular profession or area of life, based on religious or philosophical morals.

Computer ethics refers to standards and code of conduct in computer use - social and ethical impact of IT

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE) proposed a code of ethics/professional standard for software engineers and tells the public what to expect. The eight principles are:

• Public: Software engineers shall act in a manner that is consistent with public interest
• Client and Employer: Software engineers shall act in a manner in the best interest of client and employer consistent with public interest
• Product: Software engineers shall ensure product and related modification meet highest professional standards possible
• Judgement: Software engineers shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgement
• Management: Software engineering managers and leaders shall promote and subscribe to an ethical approach to managing software development and maintenance
• Profession: Software engineers shall advance integrity and reputation of profession consistent with public interest
• Colleague: Software engineers shall be fair and supportive of their colleagues
• Self: Software engineers shall participate in lifelong learning regarding the practice of their profession and shall promote an ethical approach to practice of their profession

Public good: Benefit and wellbeing of public, regarding health, safety, welfare, interest, concern

Software Ethics →

Copyright: Formal and legal recognition of ownership. Legal restrictions and permissions on program use. Intellectual property rights of programs

The internet and WWW is a major mechanism for piracy through peer-to-peer file sharing. ISPs should monitor usage and report to interested parties

• Commercial licence: A fee is paid to use the software. Can be single-user, multi-user or a site licence. Special rates for educational use or earlier/limited versions. Can’t modify or distribute and no access to source code. Purchased alongside the licence restricting and specifying number of users. Benefits include:
  • Support and training are available
  • More robust with less errors
  • Forums and user groups are available popular software
  • Can follow upgrade path at minimal cost
  • Patches developed and automatically downloaded
  • Inbuilt compatibility
• Shareware: The software is available on a trial basis, as a limited version or as a beta test. Free for trial, but the user ust pay after the expiry date. No source code is available. Allows user to check if software works without paying if not
• Freeware: Can be used freely without cost. No source code given
• Open source: Unlimited use with access to source code. Users are free to modify, copy and distribute as they want. Can be cost-free or paid. Aims for collaborative development, addition of features, and bug fixes. The open source initiative makes open source software and source code available for free

To stop illegal copying and changing, use encryption, assign a unique code to install (product key) or limit number of times and time period for installation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) →

Artificial intelligence is any technique or program enabling computers to mimic and replicate human intelligence.

• Uses decision-making algorithms trained by repeated use
• Analyses past choices and chooses the most successful
• Improves from previous mistakes by scoring positive and negative and changing future choices

Applications →

• Police identifying people: Image recognition can identify features, characteristics, items in an image
• Natural language interface: Speech recognition to identify works spoken and adapt to regional accents
• Self-driving cars: Detects position on road and within traffic. Follows a route, avoid collisions, and self-parks
• Spoken interfaces: Natural language processing takes a sentence and works out the meaning
• Video games: Models characters in a computer game to react to player movements

Pros

Cons

Less errors and more accurate More efficient and learn to predict Automated reasoning and learning Faster jobs and no errors → repetitive multi-tasking Rational thinking without emotion Reduced crime and increased safety through facial recognition More profit and productivity Less manual labour and more leisure time Use robots in environments too dangerous for humans to enter Aid doctors and nurses

Privacy issues May be incorrect and lack creativity Expensive to repair and maintain Excess power generation and disposal of scrap robot materials harm environments and their creatures Can’t adapt to changing requirements Loss of jobs for humans leads to laziness Potential for accidents from driverless cars Needs large amounts of limited raw materials Could replace doctors and nurses