After reading the articles, I do believe that coding is the new literacy. Computing, data analytics, and artificial intelligence are all going to be incredibly large parts of our society's future, and I believe it is essential that future generations of kids should at least have some knowledge of what coding is and what it can potentially do. While I do not think we should necessarily force students into taking higher level coding courses, I do believe that it is necessary to have students at least be exposed to some sort of coding class at a young age. Similar to how schools require PE, Music classes, and Art classes, I believe that coding can simply be another elective that would at least provide children with early exposure before they can make the decision to further develop coding skills in a future class.
The arguments for introducing everyone to coding revolve around the fact that our society is naturally becoming more technologically advanced and involved, and that other nations around the world have head starts in this regard. Furthermore, introducing computing to everyone will provide them with valuable skills that they can use later on, regardless of what industry they choose to go to. This should enable larger amounts of diversity within coding, especially as the percentage of women and minorities has shrunk in this industry over time. The arguments against this are that it would be too costly and unnecessary to teach so many students these skills, especially if they will not apply them later in life. Schools will be faced with hardware challenges of providing students the opportunity to code on computers. They will also be faced with finding suitable CS teachers that are capable of teaching students correctly. All of this would increase the costs for schools to provide this education to students. I think that at least one computer science class should fit in as a requirement and that more advanced classes should be saved for electives that students can choose. Just like a PE class or an Art class, an introductory coding class would at least provide students with exposure that they normally would not have had access too. It would definitely be an addition and does not necessarily have to replace any existing subjects. In this curriculum, I think that basic computational thinking, programming, and logic should be stressed as these can be simplified into basic topics that are relatively easy to learn yet have high value as a skill. I believe that anyone can learn to program and that everyone should at least have some exposure to it. I do not necessarily think that everyone should be a CS major or be involved in the technology industry as a programmer, but I think everyone should at least be aware of the growing aspect of technology in our society and understand the logic behind how it works. There are still tons of different industries and subjects that students should choose to learn if they are interested in them, but there is no denying that it would not hurt to at least have some understanding and knowledge of coding as an adult.
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Patents are licenses provided by the government that enable protections for the making, using, or selling of an invention for a set period of time. Ethically and morally, patents allow people incentives to come up with new ideas and inventions as they are rewarded with protection from the government with a monopoly that lasts up to 20 years. Economically, this should enable individuals to cash in on their hard work and creativity while also spurring new inventions and innovation in the economy. Socially, patents should enable more entrepreneurs and inventors to work hard and continue to innovate for society to make things easier and better for people in general.
Yes, I think that patents should continue to be granted; however, I hope that the government does a better job of providing patents that are truly beneficial for society and clearly are worth providing. Overall, and at parts throughout history, patents have been incredibly important and powerful in pushing innovation forward for society. By ensuring that people's inventions are protected, individuals are more incentivized to continue creating and innovating. While some patents may hinder the creativity of others, they are still ultimately provided with good intentions in mind and promote innovation to an extent. Personally, I believe that patents on software should be granted. I believe that intellectual property does not necessarily have to come in the form of a physical device or invention. Depending on the software in question, there have been multiple examples throughout history of software enabling and spurring creativity in others. These inventors should be rewarded for their services, even if the devices are not physical. Finally, the existence of patent trolls is definitely a troubling sign of the state of patents in today's world. In many ways, we have come to a point where patents have become more hindering of creativity than helping. However, I would argue that the system is not necessarily broken but in need of reform. Patents are still intended to ultimately protect and incentivize inventors. The intention is noble and justified, but the practice has become increasingly harmful. The motivation for developing and building self-driving cars is fairly obvious. Not only would they revolutionize the way in which humans are transported, but they also hold the promise of added convenience and safety. Self-driving cars would enable individuals of all ages, including those who are too young or too old to drive to access places where they would normally not be able to go. The arguments for self-driving cars are that they would be more safe and more convenient for the millions of drivers that have a daily commute with cars. The arguments against self-driving cars are that they would introduce moral dilemmas and may have problems with safety. Overall, and in the long run, I believe that they would make our roads safer; however, there is certainly a cost of human lives, money, and time before this dream scenario is possible.
Programmers should address the "social dilemma of autonomous vehicles" by ensuring that the final decisions be made or preset by humans. In the end, I believe that programmers should be honest and upfront about road conditions that their software may not be prepared for and should have the driver be engaged with the road when encountering these scenarios. This way, the driver can make the decisions for himself. Artificial intelligence should approach life-and-death situations incredibly cautiously and according to the demands set by the programmer. I think that the user of the car and the software being used should both be liable for when an accident happens, especially if the user has access to controlling the car himself. I believe the social impact of self-driving cars is fairly obvious. Many more people will be able to commute around without the need to learn to drive. Furthermore, it will allow easier commutes and ways for people to meet up. Economically, it can completely change many transportation industries such as truck driving, taxis, Uber, and Lyft. It will essentially take out the need for human labor and can be hurtful in this regard. Politically, new laws and regulations will need to take place regarding what happens in regards to accidents. The government should play an essential role in regulating self-driving cars, especially in regards to safety. However, I also think that the government should do its best to be more technologically aware to ensure fast innovation and involvement with tech companies. Yes, I would want a self-driving car. The overall convenience and way in which it would change one's productivity is absolutely worth the potential risks. Additionally, I have enough faith in technology to believe that the overall safety and regulations involved will be updated well enough to be much safer than if I or other humans were to drive. Artificial intelligence refers to intelligence demonstrated by machines, typically by demonstrating their perception of an environment and taking actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals. It is different from human or natural intelligence in that it must be preprogrammed to learn and be constantly stimulated with activities to learn and adapt. Natural intelligence does not have to be preprogrammed and can hold meaningful conversations, and at this point, adapt more quickly to unique situations. Artificial intelligence is like human intelligence in that it eventually recognizes patterns and is set to succeed at a specific task, just as humans do in their daily lives. I believe AlphaGo, DeepBlue, Watson, etc. are all proof of the viability of artificial intelligence. Having computers analyze, learn, adapt, and defeat world-class humans at each of their tasks is no small feat and shows a glimmer of the potential that AI has in offsetting current human tasks. If AI can always win at complex games like Go or Chess, then why bother with hiring expensive human labor for tasks that can be easily achieved with a computer. These programs and demonstrations all show that AI can have a real impact on our lives. I think the Turing test is a good measure of AI, but not necessarily a valid one. I think the Chinese Room is a great counter argument that really demonstrates the limits in which we interpret AI’s capabilities. Programming AI usually involves a single task that the user is wanting the AI to completely master. This typically results in a skewed viewpoint where success from the user’s perspective is different than true understanding and success from the AI’s perspective. While it may seem that the AI is fully comprehending and succeeding at a specific task such as learning a language, it may only be running through a select series of steps anyone could follow, albeit at a much slower pace. Yes, I do believe there are growing concerns over the power of AI. While I believe we are much further away from machines taking over, I do think there are real implications on how AI will affect the job market and the economy. So many of the jobs individuals hold today can be automated or switched out for AI, and it is only a matter of time before corporations choose these cost-savings measures over human labor. I think at some point when both hardware and software reach a huge milestone, computing systems can be considered to have minds and morality. In a way, humans truly are biological computers with a set of hardware that is incredibly expansive and far above what humans are currently able to create with silicon. The ethical implications of these ideas are that we must be careful in how we begin defining what is alive and what has consciousness. It is up to us to ensure that we tread lightly when creating these programs. Fake news refers to any content on the internet that is not rooted in fact. For the most part, I find this information to be rather annoying, but it is not harmless and can be dangerous. I think that technology companies should monitor and suppress fake news. No, my feed and my friends and family’s feeds do not contain any fake news. If I did see them, my response would be to ignore them.
I am comfortable with a private entity censoring information if said information is not rooted in fact and has malicious intent. I think it is the responsibility that people that use the internet be informed with honest, factual news, rather than fear-mongering or hate inducing news. I am also comfortable with content aggregators such as Facebook and google regarding information as fake, especially since these companies have enough data to make rightful conclusions on whether a post is rooted in fact. If the user that posted has an issue with their information being censored, they can easily try to find information to back that post up. If not, then it is fake news. I believe that fake news did play a small role in the presidential election. But I believe that it is up to voters to be more informed on how to discern whether the information they are reading about is true. The current focus on fake news is absolutely warranted if it resulted in the deaths of individuals and is overall harmful to people. I do not rely on Facebook or twitter for my news. I would say that I am living in an echo chamber of sorts regarding the news that I am subscribed. Ways to break out would be to find news sources that have differing schools of thoughts from my own or to talk to people that have differing ideas than my own. No, I do not think that the rise of social media and fake news means we live in a post fact world. We can still discern fact from fiction and use our best judgment to decide crucial decisions. Truth still does stand a chance, but it is up to us to make sure that we hold it to a higher standard by ensuring that the internet is not bogged down with untruthful statements. Net neutrality refers to a set of rules and regulations that prohibited internet service providers from giving preference to certain content or websites and charging more. It inherently protected consumers and all content providers from experiencing a disjointed experience on the internet where some websites may load faster than others or require payment to be accessed. The arguments against net neutrality are that some content providers utilize much more bandwidth than others and is thus unfair for internet service providers who must provide equal access to these higher bandwidth sites, regardless of how much more hardware they take up. Repealing net neutrality would enable these ISPs to "more fairly" charge content providers based upon their usage and thus allow these ISPs to invest more in better technologies that would end up helping consumers. The arguments for net neutrality are that it allows the internet to be an essential utility that does not pick and choose what consumers can easily access. It would allow for equal opportunity for content providers and prevent a paywall that consumers would have to pay for content. After examining the topic, I am definitely in support of net neutrality.
I would implement or enforce net neutrality by supporting lawmakers that were not in favor of its repeal and strive to preserve the internet as an open and equal resource. Banding with content providers that are also in favor of net neutrality would also help with ensuring that it is protected. As for concerns over possible over-regulation, burdening corporations, or preventing innovation, for the most part, only the ISPs are the companies that may be negatively affected by these concerns. Over-regulation is not even a valid argument as net neutrality serves to ultimately protect consumers and content providers from possible discrimination by the ISPs. While this is a form of regulation, it is a preventative measure protecting companies from harm. While it is true that net neutrality may burden ISPs from being able to charge consumers more money for content that they want, it is still a worthy tradeoff that protects the Internet and content providers to have an equal playing field that any individual with access to the internet can view. Finally, while it may prevent innovation for ISPs, it definitely enables innovation to be preserved for content providers which is ultimately what allowed the Internet to be so successful in the first place. Sure, ISPs may have less money to invest in better technology, but data seems to show that even with more money, ISPs may be reluctant to upgrade their equipment. I definitely believe that the Internet is a public service and that fair access is a basic right. The Internet has always served as a place where anyone's voice can be heard and ideas can be spread, even if it is sometimes negative. By restricting this from a monetary perspective would only be damaging and against the values of what makes the Internet great. While I do have some level of trust in a free market, I think it is important that the government has stepped in to protect this service that has enabled so many to have a voice that can be shared with the rest of the world. Corporate personhood refers to the idea of corporations having similar legal rights and responsibilities as natural human beings. This concept has huge legal, social, and ethical ramifications on the interactions between businesses and its employees and the law. Legally, corporate personhood allows corporations to exercise religious identities and rules for all employees within its workplace. The example given in the articles points out how the Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby declaring that corporations can have a religion that the government could not interfere in the practice of. Socially, this automatically can lead to individuals being excluded to work for companies that have religions that differ from individuals' own religions. From an ethical standpoint, this could be seen as companies interfering with individual human being's own religious rights which was a huge controversy after the Supreme Court ended up siding with Hobby Lobby during this case.
No, I do not believe IBM was ethical at all in doing business with Nazi Germany. Corporations should absolutely be responsible for immoral and unethical use of their products. If the Supreme Court is willing to treat corporations as having human rights, then it is imperative that corporations be held responsible as humans would be held responsible. In this case, IBM should definitely be charged with war crimes as they almost deliberately helped Hitler identify and locate individuals using IBM's technology. I believe that corporations should refrain from doing business with immoral or unethical organizations especially if the crimes being committed can clearly be deemed immoral, regardless of one's religion or beliefs. Yes, if corporations are afforded the same rights as individual persons, then they should definitely be expected to have the same ethical and moral obligations as individual persons. The reasons are simple. If corporations can get away with doing business with other illegal organizations, then more and more individuals would be incentivized to conduct business as corporations where blame does not fall on one individual's shoulders and where laws would not affect them. If corporations want to have similar rights to religion and speech, then they must act in a way where they should be held to moral standards that ensure they do not infringe upon the rights of others. The motivation for developing and building many Internet connected devices is that it enables users to interact with their devices remotely and allows the devices themselves to interact with other devices and share data between them. The arguments for IoT is that it adds convenience to products that we already interact with everyday. For example, cars will always be updated with traffic and maps and can be remotely started and locked. The arguments against IoT is that it is unnecessary and adds security concerns which hackers could hack. They can be incredibly dangerous since they tend to be objects or devices that individuals interact with on a daily basis. Yes, in theory they would make our lives easier. Imagine remotely starting coffee every morning or washing your clothes from work after you forget to start it at home.
Programmers should address the security and privacy concerns regarding IoT by ensuring that the devices have up to date securities and unique passwords and encryption that hackers cannot get into. Manufacturers for those IoT devices should be liable when these breaches happen as it is their products that are placing consumers at risk. I believe the economic impact is clear. As groups of devices that can connect with each other increase, companies with products in multiple industries such as Samsung will benefit the most as their fridges, washers, and dryers can all interact with each other within one household. Socially, it will enable families to spend less time with daily tasks such as manually making coffee in the morning. Politically, IoT will most likely have to be regulated to ensure security breaches are held to a minimum. The government should ensure that any devices that are connected to the internet are secure and hold its user's data to the highest priority. Yes, I think a pervasively connected world with billions of internet capable devices is slightly scary to think about as it indirectly ensures that almost all aspects of our lives can be touched by another individual on the other side of the world. At the same time, I do think this makes sense from a technology perspective as it will allow many mundane tasks of today to be much more efficiently completed. However, the overarching security risk is still an incredibly large con that could have devestating consequences. Based off of the readings and from my own opinion, I personally don't think that tech companies should purposely weaken their own encryption or implement back doors in their products. Companies like Apple are absolutely ethically responsible for protecting the privacy of their users far more than they are of preventing violent or harmful activities. Apple touts its products to be secure, and even though sacrificing that privacy may make it harder for law enforcement, it is not Apple's duty or any other consumer tech company's duty to act as members of a national security team. These two conflicting goals are incredibly hard to balance as both free-flowing communication and terrorism become more rampant. But the potential consequences of Apple creating a backdoor into their products are, in my opinion, perhaps far more devastating than certain matters of national security. If Apple weakened encryption, this could potentially affect millions of individuals in incredibly negative and even life-threatening ways across the US.
The concerns regarding national security are definitely devastating, but there is a bigger picture to be concerned about, particularly as more and more of our data moves to the internet. Personally, I believe that there could be a way to somewhat compromise where an incredibly secure and highly-qualified group within each of these tech companies could devote time in helping matters of national security while ensuring no back doors are leaked. But, this is somewhat naive, and even the 1% chance that this back door leaks could be devastating to millions of people and entire governments. Yes, saving lives is worth a little less individual privacy, but when creating these back doors it's one or the other. Sacrificing one terrorist individual's privacy is impossible for Apple to do without allowing the potential for everyone's privacy to be affected. The argument "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" holds true for most individuals, but for those select few that work in high government positions or have important data that should not be leaked to the public, it could be incredibly detrimental and harmful to all parties involved. The root causes of the accidents seem to be human error, poorly designed code, and a lack of analysis from third parties independent of the original code developer. The challenges for software developers working safety-critical systems is that it's hard to hypothesize and be aware of all of the different types of possible human reactions that may happen when an individual is using your code. For example, many times, doctors would not understand the severity of error messages or incorrectly type a command out of convenience. It would be beneficial for all parties if clearly designed code that makes command consequences more clear to the user were utilized more often. Coders should approach these projects with the mindset of the user in mind, and should be held liable only when it is clear that their code is insufficient or definitively unclear.
The root causes of the Challenger disaster were that O rings seals had gotten eroded after being utilized in unusually cold temperatures which engineers recommended not to launch in. However, this warning was overridden, ending up in a disaster. Yes, I believe that Boisjoly was ethical in sharing information with the public. The public had the right to know that poor decisions were made in the background that placed human lives at risk. It is understandable that the company would retaliate against him as it puts them in a very poor light. While they may be justified in terms of being angry, they are not justified in trying to lock him out of an industry, especially since he is essentially doing the right thing. Whistleblowing may not be worth it, but it at least lets the public know the truth, which is a step in the right direction. If the agreement that the employees signed states leaking documents to the media as wrongful, then Boeing is justified in its handling of its computer security employees. If the workers were concerned with wrongdoing on the part of Boeing or if they knew of something that would protect the public, then they were ethical. But if they were only doing something for media attention/money then they were not. Their firing may not have been rightful, but it was warranted as they violated company guidelines. I think Whistleblower protection laws should be more open as to the sources of who one is allowed to speak to when leaking harmful material. Personally, I feel that Manning was not justified in her decision to leak sensitive information to WikiLeaks. While it is clear that the video she leaked shows the US military engaging in wrongful actions, it is not up to a single individual like her to leak controversial videos for the public to see. I believe that this could set a dangerous precedent for others in similar shoes as her who will leak videos based on whether or not they violate one's own code of ethics. It is too dangerous and unjustified to place that responsibility in your own hands. As a result, I think her subsequent sentencing was a bit too harsh but somewhat justified, and what she did violated her duty. I'm not sure what if I can label her as a traitor, but she is definitely not a revolutionary hero by any means. I am also unsure if the Whistleblower protection laws can be applied in this scenario as while what happened in the video is definitely unethical, in the grand scheme of American security, hard decisions must be made that grays the line of what's right and wrong. |
AuthorHello! I'm Dane Jeong, and this is my blog for the Ethical and Professional Issues Class. ArchivesCategories |