Communications of the ACM Asks: Is It Ethical To Work For Big Tech? (acm.org) 71
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:
Back in January, Rice University professor and former CACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi wrote of the unintended consequences of social media and mobile computing in "Computing, You Have Blood on Your Hands!" To close out the year, Vardi addresses the role tech workers play in enabling dubious Big Tech business models — including now-powered-by-AI Big Tech Surveillance Capitalism — in an opinion piece titled "I Was Wrong about the Ethics Crisis."
Vardi writes: "The belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis. In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure. To take an extreme example, Big Tobacco surely does not support the public good, and most of us would agree that it is unethical to work for Big Tobacco. The question, thus, is whether Big Tech is supporting the public good, and if not, what should Big Tech workers do about it. Of course, there is no simple answer to such a question, and the only reasonable answer to the question of whether it is ethical to work for Big Tech is, 'It depends.' [...] It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, said the writer and political activist Upton Sinclair. By and large, Big Tech workers do not seem to be asking themselves hard questions, I believe, hence my conclusion that we do indeed suffer from an ethics crisis."
Vardi writes: "The belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis. In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure. To take an extreme example, Big Tobacco surely does not support the public good, and most of us would agree that it is unethical to work for Big Tobacco. The question, thus, is whether Big Tech is supporting the public good, and if not, what should Big Tech workers do about it. Of course, there is no simple answer to such a question, and the only reasonable answer to the question of whether it is ethical to work for Big Tech is, 'It depends.' [...] It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, said the writer and political activist Upton Sinclair. By and large, Big Tech workers do not seem to be asking themselves hard questions, I believe, hence my conclusion that we do indeed suffer from an ethics crisis."
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Its also shifting blame in a really disingenuous way. The idea that big tech companies are doing something comparable to tobacco companies is pretty rich. Well, this person who wrote this article breaths air. Hitler breathed air. Therefore this author is responsible for the holocaust. See how silly that is. This is an ideologically temper tantrum from someone who is mad about the outcome of an election. Are all the folks who work in big tech angels, no of course not. But does getting folks to argue on the Internet, really cause the same harm as AGW or tobacco companies? That's a really hard argument to make. Especially since those Internet discussions really only impact the chattering class and not normies nor actual public policy.
Straight to Godwin's law, huh? You lose.
So you are saying that allowing or creating bias in search and social media algorithms does not cause harm? How about using the wealth generated by said algorithms to influence an election? If the "Chattering classes" are so ineffectual, why do the tech companies and media companies spend so much money cultivating and influencing that bias?
You are disingenuous with your false analogy and false dichotomies here.
Re: Needs to be a cooperative effort (Score:2)
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So you are saying that allowing or creating bias in search and social media algorithms does not cause harm?
Maybe, but who they decide to work for really isn't your business. Here we have formerly liberal progressives who are pushing their shitty morals on actual liberals. The engineers in these positions...well, put it this way, the fact that they have google or fecebook on their resume alone means they can practically work wherever they want. If they really wanted to that badly, they would do exactly that. Obviously, for whatever reason, they prefer to be where they're at.
I personally wouldn't even work for goo
Re: Needs to be a cooperative effort (Score:2)
Godwins law invoked.
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The idea that big tech companies are doing something comparable to tobacco companies is pretty rich. Well, this person who wrote this article breaths air. Hitler breathed air. Therefore this author is responsible for the holocaust.
The article gives examples of how tech companies are like tobacco companies. That is, they both do things that are widely considered unethical and illegal.
He doesn't say all big tech companies are bad to work for. Just that if you're working for one that is doing unethical/illegal things, then that's an ethical problem. Even in that case, he didn't say quitting is the solution.
But I guess reading the article was too much for you, huh?
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Tech workers have some power, but it's limited. Google's employees, uniquely, were able to push back on involvement in military projects, but lately the balance of power has swung back towards management
You always have the ability to become a whistleblower.
Betteridge's law (Score:3)
No
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Sure, but it's too late to worry about that now. Trump's new friends in Big Tech seem eager to replace as many US programmers as possible with H1-B workers willing the do the work for half our normal salaries. Of course, they'll probably try to replace your job with an AI assistant instead if at all possible first.
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Re: I'm Sorry? (Score:3)
I'm white and I have worked in big tech most of my career. Next.
s/Big Tech/technology in general/ (Score:4, Insightful)
My F/OSS has directly been used to kill people. It has also been directly used to save lives. It is all but guaranteed to have been used to plan and commit innumerable crimes. But 99% of its users have used it for everyday banality like reading email and watching cat videos.
What exactly is this F/OSS? A linux driver for a once-popular 802.11b wifi chipset.
If you have _ever_ contributed to any F/OSS, no matter how good your intentions you're still no more than two steps away from folks using it for "bad" purposes.
Any technology can (and will) be abused. All we can really do is try our best.
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That's like blaming a hammer for a murder.
Yep. Just like the janitors that clean Google's offices are moreally responsible for Google AI's ambitions.
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Re: s/Big Tech/technology in general/ (Score:2)
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Your hypothetical is kind of abstract. Do you have an example of that happening? The example in the article is that Uber was doing a number of illegal and unethical things, many people inside the company knew about it, but no one acted as a whistleblower for many years.
Re: s/Big Tech/technology in general/ (Score:1)
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F/OSS development takes place in a different context than corporate development.
If you handed your code directly and exclusively to someone you knew intended to commit harm with it, would that still be "trying your best"?
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That's a facetious question, because you don't present any context. Ones primary responsibilities are to (1) oneself, and (2) your immediate family. Folks routinely do far, far worse than "work for big tech" in order to ensure their children have food, shelter, and healthcare. Survival of the fittest, and all that.
Looks up Jainism sometime; that's what happens when prioritizing "unintended consequences" runs amok.
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Folks routinely do far, far worse than "work for big tech" in order to ensure their children have food
Dams straight. I've worked for the military-industrial complex. I know for sure that in a small way, I've contributed to wars, creation of weapons, etc. I might not have pulled any triggers, but I am just as responsible.
I can live with that, because as far as I can tell, we're the good guys, or at least that's what I tell myself.
I've also worked for big tech, who were as responsible as anyone else in society for keeping the military-industrial complex running. Just as responsible as the farmers that kept me
Really (Score:2)
The belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis. In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure.
This is kind of a strawman, in the sense that no one claims that the free market is a magical power that always serves the "public good." In particular, the example of climate change is recognized by economists [ecosystemmarketplace.com]. Also, "public good" is poorly defined. But this paragraph is also sort of a strawman, since I am not addressing the main point of the article. So here is the core of the article:
"most of us would agree that it is unethical to work for Big Tobacco... Uber skirted regulations, shrugged off safety issues, and presided over a workplace rife with sexual harassment.” Was it ethical to have worked at Uber?.. I am sure many Uber employees were not aware of Kalanick’s shenanigans, but many were, and yet they continued to work at Uber. It was only in 2022 that a whistleblower leaked more than 124,000 company files to the Guardian, exposing its misdeeds.
If you work at an unethical tech company, be a whistleblower. If it's financial fraud, we as a society have decided you ca
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Like Snowden and Manning?
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The law is written to protect whistleblowers working for corporations. That is how the law is written today, and you should take advantage of that.
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Big DEI, code.org (Score:3, Insightful)
So any company with a DEI policy, or that helps fund the hateful sexists at code.org
Re: Big DEI, code.org (Score:1)
Re:Big DEI, code.org (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not ethical to work for any company that discriminates by race or gender.
So any company with a DEI policy, or that helps fund the hateful sexists at code.org
It is unfortunate to see people openly promulgating and defend explicitly discriminatory hiring practices. It will be interesting to see what comes of Ames v. Ohio..etc.
The courts dismantled this shit for college admissions and for most of the civilized world this type of explicit discrimination is unambiguously illegal. Disappointing and sad there is still legal ambiguity over whether or not discrimination should be tolerated.
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Ah so you didn't get that well paid job at a big tech company. Must be because they hired a woman or brown person instead. If only they just had it as the old boys club like before, the bar would have been lower and you could have got that job.
No need to be sore, just work hard at buffing those skills and you might be able to compete on a level playing field.
I asked the same question about ACM and IEEE (Score:4, Informative)
About 12 years ago, as I neared retirement, I grew increasingly disenchanted with both ACM and IEEE. I felt as if I was being treated as "product" (the same way Google views me): someone to be marketed to, someone whose mailing address would be sold for sponsored seminar solicitations, and what bothered me the most was someone where the organizations I was supposed to be a -participating member- would take positions I disagreed with without any means for me to provide input or criticisms. And I clearly didn't fill any diversity quotas/attributes for the organizations, attributed that seemed to be increasingly important in their member communications and public perspectives. Most (but not all) of my career was spent in the US defense industry, and I am very proud of that fact.
So when I retired, I cancelled both memberships. No regrets!
Re: Ethical? (Score:2)
Exactly. Live your life the way you want to live it but don't tell others how they should live theirs.
And you're a judgemental A-hole. (Score:3)
There we both gave our opinion that doesn't matter to anyone else, and both have the same whiff of ignoring our own problems to focus on other people. I like my chance better than yours at being effective about my opinion though.
Oh, and many schools have zero interest in the idea that they should be responsible for the lives of every graduate and many people who don't. That you don't care if you're training them for something nobody wants. If having a degree doesn't give them a chance at a better life. Or that they're better people in general.
Guessing Rice is the same as everybody else. That doesn't seem especially moral to me either. Guess you should quit all academia, so sad you can't pay your bills now or do the other work you thought mattered.
I agree (Score:2)
And it has been bloody obvious for a while.
How much is China influencing these topics? (Score:1)
China uses asymmetric warfare in business and politics too.
They are funding environmental and advocacy groups that want to slow US progress in energy and tech.
hypocrite (Score:1)
idiot professor uses various big tech to spread the notion that big tech is bad.
\o/ (Score:1)
There's a distortion in the rubber sheet that is the business-societal continuum caused by high concentrations of the compound forged when mixing the three components: Idleness, Greed and Wads-of-cash in a test tube.
Once sufficient lazy cash is in play, the person wielding it can overcome almost an obstacle, be it ethical, legal or technological.
Not all big tech is the same (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, I think it's unquestionably unethical to work for Facebook or most social media companies; their entire business model is predicated on harming people's mental health, pushing them to extremism, and doing harm in order to keep their attention.
Similarly, it's unethical to work in front-end development for any company that uses dark patterns to convince people to get stuff they don't need (Amazon, for example.)
I see less of an ethical problem working for an entertainment company like Netflix or a hardware company like Dell or an infrastructure company like Red Hat because although their products may be used for harm, I don't believe that harming their customers is a core part of their business model.
Were it so easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the vast majority of us don't have millions / billions of dollars in our bank accounts where we
no longer have to worry about things like: housing, food, healthcare, etc
We tend to work where we can in order to pay the bills and live in this society we've built over the
years that requires a certain amount of wealth to even exist at all. The working class doesn't have
the option of choosing to work for an ethical employer if they plan on eating this month.
If I had so much wealth that I no longer worried about such things, then the lack of needing to work
would negate the necessity to choose working for an " ethical " employer at all.
Until that day comes, I will always choose to do whatever is necessary to survive.
Ethics and morals be damned.
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I know PPP and I know median pay perfectly well. Try again. People have never spent such a small fraction of their income as they do today on really necessary expenditures.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/... [in2013dollars.com]
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Are you seriously contending that software developers working for Big Tech firms with TC that is often orders of magnitude higher than the average and, at least in the US, historically several times as high as similarly skilled and capable people doing similar work in other similarly developed countries, have no choice but to take those jobs and build whatever systems they are told in order to survive? Yeah, right.
No-one with the skills and experience to get those jobs at Big Tech actually needs to work on
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I can't believe the U word wasn't mentioned (Score:3)
This is one reason we need tech unions.
One employee or a small group of them taking a stance isn't going to sway big tech.
A large union with the power to strike on the other hand might make some execs think twice about taking certain decisions, or cause some of them to be reversed.
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Engineers are among the most anti-union employees, and the better the engineer, the less likely he is to apply to a unionized organization. Allowing your technology company to become unionized immediately removes the best potential employees from considering you.
In 90% of the OECD, an employer recognizing a union does not require that employees join that union. In most of the OECD, freedom of association includes the freedom not to associate. Maybe USA employment law needs to catch up.
Re:I can't believe the U word wasn't mentioned (Score:4, Interesting)
Real engineers usually have formal responsibility for their work, and with that, they may also have the authority to direct changes or even bring a halt to a whole project to make sure the work is done properly and the results meet the necessary standards. People with that authority don't need a union to help them enforce acceptable quality levels and stop something known to be dangerous or harmful from going into production.
Part of the way you know software engineering has little to do with real engineering is that software engineers have no such responsibility and no such authority. This explains a lot about the quality of software compared to the quality of bridges, and about common attitudes among managers at software companies compared to real engineering organisations.
Unions make it worse (Score:1)
This is one reason we need tech unions.
Tech unions would ensure anyone who didn't want to engage in unethical work, would not be allowed to work at all.
Re: Unions make it worse (Score:2)
Right, because that's exactly the way it works in every other country that has strong unions.
Every single company has some ethical problem (Score:1)
If you refuse to work for a company because you think it's unethical to work for a company that is in a specific category (not criminal enterprise) then you'd better go homestead on a plot of land in Montana, where such plots of land are still available. If you get far enough into any large company, period, you'll find some rat's nest of ethical problems somewhere.
What free market? (Score:2)
A free market assumes you have full information and viable alternatives. When it comes to social media, they tell you very little about how they use your data, and most alternatives are not viable - you join a particular community because that's where your friends or people you are interested in already are.
Wrong about tobacco companies (Score:2)
Who cares? (Score:3)
I don't get why people have ethical dilemmas like this. All that matters is a good salary and benefits so that I can provide for me and my family. I really couldn't care less if I work for big tech, big oil, etc.
Without "big tech" we couldn't have this dscussion (Score:2)
No low cost computers, cell phones, internet, etc. Of course big tech has had some negative outcomes but it has also had some very positive ones. That seems very different from Big Tobacco which sells drugs that slowly kill people. That said, I'm OK with someone working for Big Tobacco as well - at this point anyone who starts smoking and doesn't know the risk they are taking is a complete idiot.
Existential company X company (Score:2)
GOOG ” Do no evil” and NYT “All the news fit to print” famously abandoned morality in the face of tech.
Every individual is forced to submit or take one for the good of Humanity and follow their human conscience. United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson is the tip of society's dilemma which must differentiate the types of killing people are acceptable and honorable and those that are not.
There’s Goodwill until it’s not any more and nothing is more corrosive and toxic to humani
You need to define your terms. (Score:2)
The problem with this sentence to me is one of a lack of definitions: what do you mean by "free market"? What do you mean by "public good"?
The idea that a 'free market' would serve the 'public good' was hinged on a couple of assumptions. First, a 'free market' has a very specific definition beyond "companies relatively free to do things." It means that the market for goods or services is relatively fr