“ethics training” at almost every organization I’ve worked for has meant “don’t plagiarize and record your hours correctly” and never “don’t build immoral systems”

let’s dissect this a little

companies want to claim that they have high ethical standards, but these standards are almost always just rebranded legal liabilities. dangers in the workplace are unethical, but they’re also a violation of OSHA. this is largely reflective of the way ethics is discussed in STEM

even in school when we talked about ethics, it was almost always process-specific: is the workplace ethical? did we plagiarize? were our means ethical? but never “should this product even exist?” I’ve heard some claim this isn’t the role of engineers, but it should be.

re: prop. 22 in California right now. there was a ton of attention during the 2018 Uber gender discrimination lawsuits (process), but almost no analysis about whether ride share corporations should exist (consequence).

They refuse to treat their drivers as employees (and spent $185 million to do so), have literally thousands of sexual assault allegations against their drivers, and have been cited for racial discrimination in their (non transparent) dynamic pricing of rides.

look, Uber is convenient - I use it all the time. but if the only way it can exist is at the expense of others - should it?

I have no particular ax to grind with Uber, but it’s indicative of the type of ethical analysis almost completely devoid from public conversations about ethics in STEM. we should *all* have these conversations, but *especially* the engineers responsible for building these things.