The Ethical Technologist
David Tuffley
Published by Altiora Publications at Smashwords
© Copyright 2012 David Tuffley
When values are sufficient, laws are unnecessary;
when values are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
- Emile Durkheim.
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Contents
Habits of the highly effective technologist
Ethical issues of the info age
Appendix B: Software licensing
Appendix C: Propaganda techniques
Introduction
The Ethical Technologist is an exploration of what it is to be a change agent during this most dynamic period of human history. Hundreds, even thousands of years in the future, the technological advances of the late 20th and 21st Centuries will be recognised in history as a pivotal point in human evolution.
Technologists today have the power to do what humans have never before been able to do. But with great power must come responsibility if we are to avoid trouble. Technologists working today are busy creating the future of humanity. We need full awareness of the impact of what we are doing if we are going to create the best future we can.
While technology is merely a tool, this book makes the case that the best kind of technology is that which helps people come to a fuller expression of their humanity, their human potential, to help a person become self-actualized. On the other hand, the worst kind of technology dehumanises people, reduces them to a component in a machine, a mere unit of production.
Ethical conduct in technology development comes down to a simple, two-part proposition; people must be told what the consequences of using a technology will be and give their informed consent, and secondly, that they must not be harmed by using it.
At a personal level, an ethical person has integrity; they are the same person regardless of who they are with, they do not adjust their morals to gain the approval of the people they are currently with.
An ethical person is autonomous in the sense that they are the embodiment of right action. They do not need to look outside of themselves to know how to behave. The knowledge is already there inside them. This can only come from careful introspection; this book shows you how.
It comes down to being fully aware of what you are thinking and doing every moment, and consciously making choices that will produce beneficial outcomes for yourself and those affected by your actions.
The Ethical Technologist
There are many reasons why humans have been so successful as a species; our tool-making, our team-work, our creative imaginations, our endless search for better ways of doing things, our omnivory (we can eat almost anything), our communication, our adaptability in different environments, and this is not the full list.
But it is our tools of ever-increasing power and utility that have lifted us beyond the capabilities of our fellow primates. There is no doubt we are excellent tool-makers, and our information technology is perhaps our finest tool-set.
More than just inanimate objects, information technology is an extension of our body and mind. It lets us extend our ability to think and process information well beyond our biological brain, out into the environment. Today, our individual minds have extended out to form a pool of collective cognition that we call the Internet. Only a few generations ago, this would have been unimaginable to most people.
This ability to push our minds out into the world did not begin with information technology. We have been doing it for at least a hundred thousand years. The cognitive scientist Andy Clark reports that brain scans show that if you were to pick up, for example, a garden rake and start to use it to gather leaves, within a short time your brain would have mapped the tines of the rake to be extensions of your hands. This is called haptic touch.
The computers that we have come to depend on are just another tool that we project our minds into and use to outsource some of our cognitive tasks. If you doubt this, imagine if you lost your personal computer. In some ways, it would be like having a stroke. Part of your brain would have disappeared, and you would definitely feel the lack of it. You would probably feel debilitated until a replacement is found, complete with restored data.
People have a more personal relationship with information technology than they realise with IT having become an extension of our biological brain. As millions of extended minds have reached out and merged with each other we observe a remarkable phenomenon, the formation of a new layer of consciousness in the world.
Welcome to the Noosphere
The French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin foreshadowed the Internet as far back as the 1930’s. In his book The Phenomenon of Man published after his death in 1955, Teilhard describes humankind as the evolutionary process of life on Earth becoming conscious of itself. The generation and exchange of ideas between people over time created a collective memory that enhanced human consciousness to the point where a thinking layer was created that enveloped the earth. He called this the Noosphere after the Greek for mind. The Noosphere is an extension of the Biosphere, which is itself founded upon the Geosphere.
As Kevin Kelly (2007) pointed out, the Internet is a neural network that at that time approximates the human brain in complexity, and it is doubling in complexity about every two years. Kelly predicts that by 2040, the total processing power of the Internet will exceed that of six billion human brains. The information richness and accessibility options of the Noosphere are growing at a phenomenal rate.
All of this is leading us towards an event horizon some time around 2045 that writers like Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge have called the Singularity. With exponential growth in computing power and advances in AI, the Singularity is the point where a super intelligence comes into being. It will happen when a critical mass of computational power, vast amounts of accumulated data and advanced artificial intelligence capable of organising the data all combine in a spontaneous moment of creation.
What the post-Singularity world will look-like is difficult to predict with any certainty. It will be smarter through having increasingly powerful and pervasive embedded artificial intelligence. If you use the web, you will become known by it. Your like and dislikes and much besides will be known and catered for by intelligent software agents.
The Internet of the future will be pervasive, even ubiquitous. Everyday objects in our world will have web-ness built into them in the form of computer chips communicate with the Internet. In a sense, we humans will have the option be elements of a global super-brain.
Technology in the first decades of the 21st century allows people to project their minds anywhere in the world, unbounded by physical limitation. In a sense the human mind has been liberated to encompass the entire planet. This is a fair description of the Internet, the most powerful and pervasive tool ever constructed by humans.
We speak of the Internet as a single entity, but it is really a vast heterogeneous entity that exists beyond anyone’s control. As much as some governments and global conglomerates would like to exercise control over the Internet, it is ultimately ungovernable. It was designed that way. Originally conceived in the late 1960’s by the US Military’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a fault-tolerant communications system, it had to withstand having elements of it be destroyed or made unserviceable, while the rest continued to function. At the time, telephones were the only ‘theatre-scale’ communications systems in warfare, but the centralised switching mechanisms were vulnerable to attack, making the whole system unreliable. There would be an obvious advantage in having digital communications that side-stepped this vulnerability in the event that the cold war became hot.
What are the risks of technology?
With greater transparency and global access to information comes the potential for abuse. But with the many benefits of information technology, it is arguable that the potential for abuse should not in itself prohibit the use of technology.
We need for the technologists who are the creators of our technological future to have an mindset that moderates the potential for harm.
We need to know what we are dealing with. What are the various ways that technology can be used to harm people? There is intellectual property theft where all manner of material from photos, to text, to music and videos is copied and distributed without the owner’s permission. Otherwise known as ‘piracy’, the annual loss of revenue is reckoned by the recording industry to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, though these estimates are considered by some to be grossly inflated.
There is pornography, a very broad spectrum of material ranging from non-violent erotica between consenting adults, to fetish erotica between consenting adults all the way to non-consensual material and the most depraved of all involving children.
Identity theft is widespread where someone’s personal information is misappropriated and fraudulently used.
Privacy is a major problem where your email address and other personal information is distributed to unknown third parties without your consent. Spam is a prime example.
Cultural differences around the world mean that material that is considered acceptable in one culture is able to reach other cultures in other parts of the world, causing offence. There are also issues like stalking and cyber-bullying, gambling, and social inequity that gives greater access to information to some and not others.
The ethical technologist is competent
To say that the ethical technologist is a competent technologist might sound like an obvious statement, yet because anyone can call themselves a computer programmer, there are many people working in the IT industry calling themselves professional, but whose overall competency is less than it needs to be.
Some unethical practices of software developers can be traced directly back to a lack of competence. For example, a developer who releases faulty software to the user community expecting the user to help de-bug the software is not only being unethical when the user is paying for fault-free software, they do it because they were not skilled enough to develop defect-free software in the first place.
Faulty software is the bane of everyone’s lives. It is tolerated because it is so pervasive, but such inferior quality work products would never be tolerated in any other form of engineering. If cars broke down as often as software, if bridges collapsed as often software crashes, the world would be in uproar about it, and rightly so.
Quite simply, software development needs to become a fully fledged engineering discipline, complete with process models that if followed allows the engineer to create software that fulfils the user’s needs, meets the specification, on-time, within budget, and with an absence of defects. Currently, very few software developers do this, and that is the main reason why software is such poor quality.
For every one professional software engineer, there are a hundred programmers who may know how to write programs, but who lack any real engineering discipline or knowledge of defined software development process. They muddle through projects somehow, often making it up as they go along. No wonder so much software is faulty, and no wonder so many software engineers work in safety critical areas (like aviation, medical and defence) where software defects can be fatal.
In software engineering, the software development process models that have become the de facto standard are these:
=> Capability Maturity Model, Integration (CMMI, developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and
=> ISO/IEC 12207 Standard for Information Technology-Software Life Cycle Processes developed by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). This standard has also been adopted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers to become IEEE 12207.
These process models can be understood as the collective wisdom of thousands of senior software developers who have distilled what they learned into a best practice guide. Why not leverage off their experience? History does not have to repeat itself. The problems of software development can be overcome by applying this higher level thinking. As Albert Einstein observed, it is insane to think we can solve problems with the level of thinking that created the problem. We need higher level thinking to solve the endemic problems of software development.
The ethical technologist
How can we instil an ethical do no harm mindset in technologists? For the past six years I have been trying to do that with IT students at Griffith University. Such a process must go beyond the teaching of professional codes of conduct, though this is a good place to start. It must reach into every area of a proto-technologist’s life, drawing the different compartments of their lives into an integrated self-aware whole. They must appreciate the human consequences of their actions, even when they occur at a distance, beyond their senses and the cubicle-constrained world in which they work.
We talk about moral philosophy and the various theories that have grown up over the past two and a half thousand years since the Classical Greek philosophers first turned their minds to the task. Some students find this interesting, but for many it is a struggle, not only to appreciate the nuanced thought of the great philosophers, but also to see the relevance of it to technology students such as they. Students who seek the comfort of knowing there is a definite right and wrong answer, are uncomfortable with shades of grey.
We review the common denominators of moral behaviour in philosophical and religious thought, those persistent recurring truths that find expression across time and cultures. We discuss how to become aware of the cause and effect linkages that permeate our lives. How one’s decisions in this moment determines what happens to us in the future. Accepting that one is ultimately responsible for what happens to us as a necessary step towards self-mastery and a constructive future.
This is a theme well-explored in the literary world as well. American writer John Steinbeck said this in Chapter 34 of his 1952 novel East of Eden:
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too -- in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite changes we might impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well -- or ill?
Steinbeck seems to be saying that all human endeavours, all of our thoughts and actions, can be distilled down to a single theme, the on-going struggle within us between good and evil. Our challenge is to develop enough insight into the web of causality that we are able to consciously choose the course of action that will involve good consequences. And in so doing gain more effective control over our life and where you want it to go.
How does this apply to technologists? I propose the following two simple principles for ethical IT practice. It is simply expressed because I follow Einstein’s advice that the greater the truth, the more simply it can be expressed. Complex theories are beloved by academics but are lost on most students. It is simplicity that gets the message across.
A technologist’s action can be said to be ethical if the person(s) affected:
=> Gives their informed consent, and
=> Is not de-humanised in the process
There has been extended debate in tutorials on whether informed consent alone is required. If a person does not mind being de-humanised or harmed then that is their choice and this should be respected. Arguably though, it is better that we do nothing to de-humanise others since to do so will likely result in our own dehumanisation and so impair our ability to act ethically in the future.
In other words, technologists (and people generally) need to have enough awareness of the web of causality to let them consciously choose the course of action that will involve good consequences.
Humanising technology
So the two important aspects of ethical technology development are that people be made aware of the consequences of use and give their informed consent before using it, and that the technology does not de-humanise the person in the process. Ideally, technology should enhance a person’s humanity, but at the very least it should not diminish it.
The humanising influence is a more complex idea. What do we mean when we say technology must not de-humanise those that use it? It is remembering that the technology is a means to an end, and not an end in itself. People before technology. Technology the servant, not the master of people.
It is not uncommon for technologists to fall in love with the technology they create, and overlook that this beautiful artefact is not an end in itself, a thing of beauty in which they have invested themselves. Many technologists I have known regard themselves as part technician, part artist. If this tendency to regard technology as an end in itself is not curbed, it will produce a world in which people increasingly serve the needs of technology.
A humanist perspective in technology development therefore keeps the technology user-friendly, life-affirming.
The idea that technology can be a de-humanising influence in the world is not a new one. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his influential 1954 essay The Question Concerning Technology suggested that technology is an expression of the human tendency to exploit and mechanise the natural world. Over time, we are de-humanised in a world where efficiency and exploitation rule, and an appreciation of Nature for its own sake is diminished.
From an evolutionary psychology point of view, we humans have throughout our long past made tools that improve our chances of survival in a hostile environment. We made tools that change and control our natural environment. After hundreds of thousands of years, we became so good at it that the tools became an end in themselves. The part of the human mind that had become so good at dominance and control grew too influential, at the expense of a person’s gentler nature.
So technology should not be an end itself. It is there to help people to live their lives more fully, to achieve their human potential. As Kelly points out, technology at its best can help people express their true selves and highest potential. Imagine Mozart in a world before the technology of the piano had been invented, or Van Gogh in a world before inexpensive oil-paints had been invented, or Hitchcock before the technologies of film. Today, there are millions of children being born for whom their technology of self-expression has not yet been invented.
Military technology
No discussion of the need for technology to be a humanising influence in people’s lives is complete without mention of the dilemma of military technology. How can we reconcile the existence, if not the need for military technology in the world when its primary purpose appears to be to dehumanise, often in the most extreme ways?
This truly is a dilemma that remains unresolved. This chapter tries to unravel the issues so that we may see them more clearly. The military ethicist Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institute (not to be confused with Peter A. Singer who is a professor of Bioethics at Princeton University) concludes in a 2010 article in the Journal of Military Ethics that in a world of ‘killer apps’, robotic weapons that can function autonomously, it is necessary to open up a constructive dialogue on how to deal with the moral dilemmas created by this new category of weaponry.
Singer notes that throughout history, certain technological advances have been ‘game-changers’. For example the printing press, gunpowder, the steam engine, or the atomic bomb. Not only are the current military technologies game-changers, they are part of a cresting wave of advances that are coming at us thick and fast. These include directed energy weapons (Lasers), precision guided weapons (‘smart’ IEDs), nanotech and microbotics (The Diamond Age), bioagents and genetic weaponry (DNA bombs), chemical and hardware enhancements to the human body (IronMan meets Captain America), autonomous armed robots (Terminators), electromagnetic pulse weaponry (The Day After, Ocean’s 11), and space weaponry (Star Wars). These may seem to be the stuff of science-fiction, but all of them are currently in development and are likely to be deployed in active service around 2030 or sooner.
History clearly shows us that many of the technologies that we use and depend on in everyday life have their origins as military technology that has become de-classified and then commercialised. Indeed, the modern phenomenon of computer technology owes much to trying to win World War II. For example in the U.S. the ENIAC machines were developed to help the US Army with the artillery aiming by quickly calculating ballistic trajectories. In Germany, Konrad Zuse and his Z series computers were helping the German war-effort in no small way. In Britain, the Colossus computer was developed to decode the German Enigma cipher that allowed the allies to know where to find and destroy the U-boats that were taking such a toll on the cargo ships carrying materials across the Atlantic from the US to Britain.
Highly secret at the time, in the 1950’s and beyond, much of this computer technology was commercialised, leading to the world as we know it now in the 21st Century. Indeed, wars and conflict throughout human history have been responsible for rapid advances in technology. Leonardo da Vinci, known for his love of humanity, his art and science, was also a superb military engineer whose inventions helped the wealthy city states of Renaissance Italy defend themselves against being plundered.
The tendency for one group of people to go to war with another group is deeply embedded in human nature, as evolutionary psychology recognises. As a species, humans evolved in cooperative groups (extended families). Loyalty to the group was essential for survival because the scarcity of resources meant that one group would often get what it needed at the expense of another group which inevitably led to conflict. We have all heard of the term ‘us and them’ and instinctively understand the concept.
Notwithstanding these evolutionary factors, it can be strongly argued that people today should be transcending these ancient patterns of behavior by using our more recently evolved rational minds. Much of this book focuses on just this point. But realistically, one cannot wish away this aspect of our natures. It cannot be repressed either. It can only be transcended. It exists and we have to acknowledge its existence and work out how to contain it safely while we work to transcend it.
One strategy is to transcend the ‘us and them’ mind-set that makes us see ‘them’ as sub-human and therefore kill-able, with the more enlightened attitude that ‘us and them’ in the modern world is an illusion, that we are all essentially the same under the skin, all of us members of the one human family. If we widen our ‘circle of care’ as the other Peter Singer (from Princeton) suggests, from our immediately family to include an ever-widening circle of people in the world, then we will naturally come to act more compassionately towards everyone, not just our family.
Another strategy is put forward by Robert Wright in his 2001 book Nonzero: the logic of human destiny. He makes the compelling point that we are less likely to want to go to war against someone if we have an economic connection with them, such that by harming them, we harm ourselves. It does not make sense to hurt our own interests. The global economy in the 21st century is a single interconnected entity. We can no longer act in isolation. The consequences of our actions are transmitted everywhere.
Wright quotes Charles Darwin to good effect: ‘As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.’ ― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
These are two perspectives that can help us to transcend the ‘us and them’ mentality that has led to so much conflict. It will take a long time for the world to change, but change it eventually will.
In practical terms, where does this leave us now? We currently live in a world where war is still a reality. If nations are going to safeguard their interests, there will be a continuing though hopefully lessening need for military technology to support this imperative.
Singer (2010) suggests these seven questions to help a technologist decide what is an ethical course of action:
=> From whom is it ethical to take research and development money? From whom should one refuse to accept funding?
=> What attributes should one design into a new technology, such as its weaponization, autonomy or intelligence? What attributes should be limited or avoided?
=> What organizations and individuals should be allowed to buy and use the technology? Who should not?
=> What type of training or licensing should the users have?
=> When someone is harmed as a result of the technology’s actions, who is responsible? How is this determined?
=> Who should own the wealth of information the technology gathers about the world around them? Who should not? (Singer, 2010)
As a general principle, the abuse of something should not in itself prohibit the use of it. The potential for people to abuse something should not prevent it from being used in non-harmful ways. Motor cars and drugs would be two examples out of many. Military technology would be another. If the net good outweighs the net harm, an compelling argument exists to use it. Where to draw the line is often unclear. Each case must be considered individually and on its merits.
Habits of the highly effective technologist
Stephen Covey’s famous seven habits can be successfully applied to technology development. This chapter explains how (acknowledgment and thanks to Dr. Covey for the original material).
Proactive and responsible
The ethical technologist takes responsibility for doing everything they can to bring projects to a successful conclusion; on time, defect-free, within budget, a system that the users like. If they have problems in achieving this, as they almost always do, they do not blame others for what is ultimately their responsibility