Question

What do you think about the following paragraphs?

I really enjoyed watching the video about the ethical impacts that a code can make in real world. Clarissa explained many points with proper reasoning and examples that really persuaded me. The first point she made that I found appealing was that the programmers should think about the worst case scenario that their program can create and write the code according to it. She provided the example of the "Volkswagen Scandal" in which the engineer had designed a code to fool the emission testing machines. This action caused many people to lose their lives. Programmers should worry about the harm it does to the real world, they just not only follow their boss's order and design something that can do something illegal.

The second point that she makes is that If you have the power to make powerful tool then you also have the responsibility to keep it from being used for bad. I absolutely agree with this argument. World is being more digitized and many ethical issues are put to jeopardy. Fundamental human rights are being violated by machines and different softwares because the coders who made it were not smart enough to analyze it's misuse. Programmers need to think twice about the bad possible outcomes that may occur in future.

The third point that i found fascinating in the video is that Computers are unaware of the ethical consequences and they lack morality, so it is up to programmers and developers to think about the worst case scenario that their program might cause. Softwares and websites can act racist, discriminative and can bias based upon the behavior or race of the user. Clarissa gave different examples to elaborate on this subject, for eg: Google photo recognizing ability and housewares advertisement.

I have to admit that I totally agree with Clarissas's arguments in the video. People make mistakes and coders should be aware of that fact, so their program should be fixable if there is any mistake made by the operator (like a false alert saying that missile is headed your way) so that we can avoid the false panicking of the people which may endanger their lives. Software building companies should hire from diverse ethnicities and minorities to bring up the small issues and fix them to make them more friendly. Websites should be more discrete and open for all communities. We the coders might be responsible for most illegal incidents that happens nowadays in our society, we should be more responsible and think ethically about the code we wrote and it's possible negative outcome.

Answer 1

I agree with all of the points the author makes in the paragraphs above. It is important for coders to develop an inclination towards making ethical decisions independently. Coders are bestowed with a powerful responsibility as the world is becoming increasingly dependent on technology. Sometimes the impact of a faulty code maybe minor, but in other cases, it can even lead to death. As pointed out above, I believe that conceptualizing the worst case scenario would be a practival measure.