Lack of ethics education for computer programmers shocks expert
One of the most valuable CS courses I took in college was my ethics course. Our honors college was pretty wide-ranging and rigorous, but CS students who weren&#x27;t in it (I think I was the only one at the time?) were mostly B.Sc. students whose schedules were crammed with (largely superfluous) CS and math courses that left very little time for stuff that&#x27;s actually useful, like the humanities. And because it was being taught by a CS prof, I went into it expecting it to be awful and boring and trite. Instead it was taught by our department head (who used to be at Watson) and Tom DeMarco (the author of <i>Peopleware</i>) and it dug into not just ethics as considered by philosophers (it was my first introduction to Alasdair MacIntyre, one that I&#x27;ve since expanded on pretty extensively on my own) but the characteristics of human, and not just computer, systems that lead people to do the wrong thing. It also introduced me to the book <i>Customers who viewed Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies</i> by Charles Perrow, which is so critical that I think it&#x27;s the closest thing to necessary reading that anyone working in any technical field should be required to read.<p>I&#x27;ve heard a lot of people pooh-poohing the notion of ethics courses, but, frankly, most of the people I&#x27;ve worked with would&#x27;ve benefited from the exposure to thinking about their and others&#x27; actions outside of the most immediately utilitarian, mine-mine-mine setting. The framework of analysis and the vocabulary of ethics create a way to ask direct questions (and effectively demand answers) from people who choose to act in one way or another. It&#x27;s valuable stuff.