From an outside perspective, the idea of a patent seems absurd. Why should a law grant monopoly power to a company? We have discussed in class about how monopoly power is abused in various industries and how that leads to restrictions on innovation. We discussed how Microsoft abused it’s power and was able to prevent other businesses in the same industry from even having the capability to compete. Having a legal means by which to gain that power seems like it is a legal loophole meant to provide businesses with an unfair advantage in the industry just because they were the first to make it to the patent office.
However, there is a reason why patents make sense economically to incentivize corporations to innovate. For instance, consider pharmaceutical companies. Upon the release of a new drug, the company can file for a patent where they have monopoly power over the the market for that drug for 20 years. This isn’t so that a company can get rich after creating a drug. However, the cost of the research needed to create that drug means that for a period of time, these companies had to invest money for potentially no reward. What would incentivize a company to do this other than the allure of monopoly power, even for a short time. It seems like these pharmaceutical companies are unethical because they charge high prices for drugs which people need to survive, but they need to be able to make up the investment they spent on the research or they wouldn’t be incentivized to create these drugs at all. I believe the same applies to any company which needs to invest a significant amount into innovation to make a product. The issue with monopoly power is that in the long run, it stifles the growth of the market and prevents innovation. We saw this happen in the Microsoft, and if that’s the threat with having patents apply to programming, then wouldn’t not providing incentive to innovate be more of a limit to innovation? The more concerning question concerns patent trolls. These are individuals who purchase patents and then use the patent to blackmail smaller companies into paying patent fees. These companies won’t fight this because the legal fees to fight the litigation are too extreme. This limits the capability of smaller companies because they can’t fight the legal fines. While this appears to be going around the system, the original developers are still being compensated for their development costs. Even if they do not control the patent, they still receive something for their work. To that extent, I think that the patent serves its purpose. It wouldn’t be worth purchasing if the rights to the patent weren’t transferable. To limit the power that patent trolls have, the better option would be to provide a more accessible legal method by which small companies can determine if they are infringing on patents. Additionally, not every program is deserving of a patent. I don’t know if there’s a clear line to be drawn, but a program is deserving of a patent when it’s a unique process or system that took time and money to develop. This protects companies and enables them to develop systems without fear of being cheated.
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Artificial intelligence is the new business buzz word. Despite this, it seems as though not many people actually know what it means. In my experience, it’s usually a word that’s used to describe technology as it improves the human workplace or business environment by employing different strategies to optimize various processes. Not many people interpret artificial intelligence as mimicking human interaction. The prominent displays of the artificial intelligence world started with games. At first, it seemed silly that a computer could understand chess well enough to beat a champion, or the play what’s considered one of the most strategically intensive games. But, artificial intelligence in these games have demonstrated that a computer can outlast humans in very complex scenarios. Although games may be a very focused area, the ability of computers to succeed in these games demonstrates their intelligence.
I think the Turing test is a limited test of the intelligence of a computer. Just comparing it to a human just tests its ability to mimic human intelligence. In my opinion, trying to mimic human intelligence is not good enough. A computer should desire to achieve more. Additionally, I don’t know if it matters if a computer can be distinguished from a human. In my opinion, the purpose of artificial intelligence is to allow a computer to optimize a process. However, this doesn’t need to be how a human would do it. In fact, if a human could do the same job, why would I want a computer to do it. The reason why artificial intelligence is great is because it’s better than a human. Additionally, I’m not sure whether the Chinese Room situation matters. Who cares which process the computer employs. What matters is that the computer is correct and that it is more effective than a human at the job its task its employed to do. Should we be worried about the day when computers revolt against us? Perhaps. But I don’t believe it’s realistic. Artificial intelligence doesn’t usurp the importance of human input but enables people to optimize processes so that they’re more beneficial. I think the warnings about the overuse of artificial intelligence are absurd. Just because a computer can mimic a human doesn’t mean it would make a lot of sense for a computer to do so. These processes employed to optimize processes are limited to specific functions and at the level they are at now, pose no realistic threat to our society. A computer is programmed with a specific goal in mind. These goals are determined and justified by humans who possess the ethical concerns. A computer’s ability to do that goal is a measure of its success, but the computer doesn’t have its own mind. The programmer determines the process and the computers goal is to optimize this process as best as possible. To this degree, a computer cannot replace the purpose of a human in the artificial intelligence sphere. As a philosophical question, as humans we are probably designed with goals in mind and we seek to do them as best as we can. To this extent, we probably cannot be easily distinguished from computers. If a computer and a human both are similar (or the same), then we should assume that a computer has the same ethical choices that a human would have. As a programmer, we have the responsibility to produce programs that act ethically. At least until computers can think for themselves. Fake NewsIn the popular media, "fake news" or misinformation which is spread over a number of different social media platforms, is treated like a joke. Our president frequently uses the term to describe news portrays him in a negative light as "fake news". The overuse of the word is desensitizes us to the real meaning of the word. While Trump uses it as a one-liner to disenfranchise all those who speak out against him, realistically it means widely publicized spread of misinformation. Ironically, Trump's insistence that the Russia investigation is "face news" was actually fake, given the outcome of the investigation thus far. The insistence of "fake news" is both beneficial and harmful. In one respect, the recognition that we should not trust all information reported to us (either from reputable news sources or from less than reputable sources). It is important that we don't trust all sources of information. To a certain degree, all information or news comes with a level of falsity. Everything is an opinion and nothing objective. Recognizing that not everything should be taken at face value is very important. Just as we shouldn't trust every phone call from a individual claiming to be an IRS agent, we shouldn't trust all the information that we find on the news. Despite that, we should be able to trust news sources to provide relatively objective information about the news. The article about WhatsApp describes how misinformation led to the murder of five individuals because there were suspected of crimes based on purely a rumor of involvement. The spread of misinformation and lies shouldn't lead to death or unlawful imprisonment. However, this seems like a idealist viewpoint. We can hope that our justice system will see the truth beyond the lies, but more often than not, that doesn't happen. It's not impossible to be framed for a crime and convicted of it. The recent proliferation of fake news makes this more possible. Our justice system should recognize that rumor shouldn't be cause to accuse an individual of a crime. As much as I would love this to be enough, I know that we will still fall for lies. Unfortunately, I don't know what Facebook or other social media tools could do to weed out the truth from the lies if the justice system can't. In my opinion, that decision should be left to the justice system and not to a private company. The rise of fake news isn't new. History is filled with examples of stories of half-truths. We prefer to view our news as truth, but in reality nothing was ever objective. The rise of the term "fake news" just made this more prevalent. Social media made it so that lies could spread like wildfire, but it didn't create the lies. Social media is merely a tool which makes the spread of information faster. If a company wants to limit the sort of information they display or populate, they can do so. As long as they are transparent about what information they are blocking or filtering out, I am not bothered by it. My issue is that these sites are filtering out information while claiming to be an open source of unfiltered information. I believe that hypocrisy is more of an ethical concern than limiting information.
Net NeutralityEvery time the topic of net neutrality comes up, most people I know just ignore it or tell me that they don't understand what the big deal is. I think the for the most part people don't understand what they're giving up. The way we have all lived with the internet, everything is on the same playing field. Every website works at the same speed. Netflix loads just as fast as Hulu, or YouTube. Nobody needs to pay for access to different websites and no website is blocked by the ISP. For the most part, when I tell people about this, they can't comprehend how different it would be if individuals had to pay for access to different websites. If we had to pay for access to Google, or Yahoo. The internet as it is now is a blank slate. Every website has the same opportunity to be viewed as any other. The best way to describe the internet without net neutrality is the way TV currently works. For instance, TV providers act just like ISPs, they provide access to TV. But TV providers, such as Comcast or DirectTV, provide different channels. My Dad, for instance, pays for special access to the sports channels. This would be one example of how ISPs would change how the internet works. Premier sites would be an additional charge. Some sites would be faster than others, others would be much slower. We can't understand what this would be like because our only experience with the internet has been free of restriction. However, Ajit Pai claimed these were merely "hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom." He suggested that net neutrality limited the innovation in the internet. However, this doesn't make sense. Economists claim that a market is most innovative and free when there are less restrictions placed on the market. It doesn't make sense to me that innovation can be limited on restrictions preventing unfair distribution of the internet. I don't fully understand how the prevention of restrictions on the internet could potentially restrict innovation. The ability of companies to utilize the internet as their blank playing ground with equal opportunity doesn't seem restrictive. In my opinion, the internet will be far more restrictive if we enable people to charge for premier service or for service at all. Enforcing net neutrality is not complex, as long as every ISP provides access and similar speeds to access every website, they would be conforming to net neutrality. If one website is able to be accessed way faster, it is being given an unfair priority over others. If one website cannot be accessed at all, it is being unfairly blocked by the ISP. Checking to see if these conditions are met should be sufficient to determine if an ISP is conforming to net neutrality guidelines. I am a member of a generation of individuals who has lived with the internet only as a free resource. I think that many of us couldn't possibly understand the value of the internet being free. This is something that we all take for granted. I think that ensuring that no company can pay for a fast lane actually protects the freedom of the internet market, which only fosters more innovation. Even if the internet could be optimized by allowing faster access to specific sites, the freedom of all websites to have a spot and equal access is more important that a faster load time on a website funded by a company with deep pockets.
When Corporations Commit Crimes Before it was removed from Netflix, I used to watch a show called Leverage. It's a TV show that follows the antics of one man who chooses to break the law with a number of other criminals to get justice for people who have been harmed by big corporations who don't care if they break the law because they don't face the same punishments for their crimes as individuals would. Although it is a dramatized version of this type of ethical dilemma, it does pose the same type of question. Clearly not punishing corporations for making illegal actions as if they were people makes it possible for large organizations to essentially get away with murder. If their only punishment is a fine, it not effectively stopping a company with millions of dollars from committing a crime. However, as awful as it sounds that a corporation is not legally liable for it crimes just as a person would be, it is also impossible to insist that all the individuals in a corporation are to be held liable for every mistake. Corporate Personhood ensures that a company or a corporation has the same legal right to free speech, political affiliation, religion, etc. as any individual would have. Essentially, it treats a corporation as if it were a person. However, this does not extend into the criminal justice world. Corporations who commit crimes are fined and sometimes executives are arrested, but the punishment is nowhere near as severe as it would be for an individual to commit those crimes. In the articles concerning IBM and Germany during WWII, IBM's role in assisting with the Holocaust was evident. Not only did they provide equipment and tools to Germany, but they worked with Hitler and various other Nazis to improve and maximize the efficiency of their technology to effectively maximize Germany's ability to commit war crimes. Had an individual done this, they would have been executed after the war. Many of the key players who helped to orchestrate and design the extermination were executed. However, IBM faced no real criminal backlash for their participation in the Holocaust. In fact, the only punishment IBM appears to have received was a bit of bad publicity following the release of the book IBM and the Holocaust, which made IBM's relationship with Nazi Germany public. This is a huge example of a situation where a company has essentially committed war crimes and participated in the execution of millions of individuals, yet has faced little to no punishment. As a corporation, IBM has the right to choose who they sell to. IBM had every right to choose to sell to Nazi Germany, just as an individual has every right to their own opinion. It may be hard to imagine, but the US Government didn't openly protest Nazi Germany until well into Hitler's rule. It may be easy to point the finger at IBM for clearly aiding in the mass murder of millions, but it's hard to blame IBM for being involved when Americans shared many of the same anti-Semitic views (although not necessarily to the extent of mass murder). Although I believe IBM should have been held accountable for their part in helping Nazi Germany, it is also important to recognize that IBM was not acting far outside the bounds of American society. To a certain extent, IBM's participation may not have even been viewed as morally repugnant in American society until the extent of the Holocaust became clear. I don't believe this should change anything, IBM should have been held accountable just as we hold businesses accountable for third party suppliers who commit crimes. IBM should have done the due diligence to ensure that Nazi Germany was not using their technology to murder millions of people. However, even if IBM truly knew the extent of how much their technology aided Germany, I don't know how it would be possible to prosecute them. We may act as it a corporation is an individual, but it's hard to draw the line between individuals who were liable for the crimes and those who couldn't have known. A corporation should have the right to choose their opinions, dictate their choices, have free speech. All of those aspects of Corporate Personhood I believe are important to the company. However, it is difficult to draw the line between those who are liable and those who didn't know when a company commits a criminal act. A corporation should not just be able to pay a fine and get on with their day. The individuals who knowingly involved themselves in a criminal act should be persecuted for their crimes (not the company). The company cannot be punished as an individual does. In my opinion, a company as a whole does not commit crimes. The individuals who run the company should be liable for the inner workings of that company and should be liable for the crimes committed in the operation of their business (both criminally and financially).
I was first introduced to the concept of Big Data by one of my technology teachers in high school. He started by telling us a story of the first loyalty programs at Safeway. He and a few of his friends figured they would try to trick the system. So, they purchased bundles of rope, duct-tape, and shovels. All designed to make it appear as though they were intent on kidnapping someone. His friends did this in an act of protest, demonstrating how much information a company like Safeway could pull from a few small purchases. Safeway was one of the first companies to implement a loyalty program that allowed them to track purchases and keep track of user data. This was only the first of a number of different privacy violating programs. After this, companies like Facebook and Google mastered the art of collecting information. The amount of information that can be gained by these companies is impressive, but knowing the reality of how much about your life is exposed by the little information these companies are able to glean from likes or searches or location data. Even considering how much information each of these companies have, it always makes me wonder if it's even possible to avoid. Or, do we even want to. Many of the articles in this week's reading were about how revealing out searches are (how much they expose about our private lives), but it also works in our favor. Loyalty programs have you give up information about yourself in exchange for lower prices. In my opinion, that information isn't of significant value to us as individuals. I honestly don't care if Safeway knows what I purchased. If giving them that information gets me a discount, I'll take that deal. The article The Convenience-Surveillance Tradeoff discusses how these matters are largely out of our control. If privacy loss to these companies is inevitable, what's the issue with getting some sort of benefit from the entire situation? If a company has more gain from using private information than the individual, it makes economic sense for the company to use that information. But, given the chance that information will be misused, it seems wrong for a company to have that much information about a person. Ethically, a company should not have that much information, even if it makes sense economically.
SnowdenWhen Snowden first fled to Russia, it was all over the news. I remember hearing about it on a daily basis, although I never pieced enough of it together to have an educated opinion on Snowden's actions. Looking back on it, I see Snowden's actions as much more extreme. I don't know if it is largely because after the reports were released, but it became almost common to assume that the government was spying on us. I know that all of that became common knowledge because of what Snowden revealed to the world. However, after all was done, it looked like it was only a good thing on the surface. While Snowden revealed how much of out privacy had been sacrificed in the name of national security, he also had his name spread across national headlines and he was protected from the political fallout by the Russian government. Whether or not I believe that his actions were beneficial in a way, I cannot ignore that from the way things ended, Snowden released national secrets, violated US laws, and got away clean. But he didn't do so because he was exonerated in a US courtroom. He was (and is) accused of treason. Reports state that Snowden stole classified intel that compromised the capabilities of US intelligence gathering. In the article about why Obama can't pardon Snowden, the author discusses how much of what Snowden stole was Level 3 classified intelligence. It could take years for the NSA to recover from that level of a leak. In my opinion, Snowden took it upon himself to decide what was correct, even after layers of oversight and congressional decisions decided that the NSA was permitted to surveil the country. Snowden had no authority to decide that was wrong. What the NSA was doing was legal. Even if it didn't seem moral, or if Snowden didn't agree with it, the NSA was given the legal authority to surveil the country in the name of national security. How does one man know better than congress? I don't believe that Snowden had any right to make the decision for congress that the public needed to know about all those details. I believe that the public benefitted from knowing what the NSA was spying. I don't believe that Snowden was right to release that information. He released more than just information about the lack of privacy. He released information about how the United States monitors other nations. The releases damaged our relationships with allies who believed that we were spying on them and also endangered our nation by revealing how we gathered our intelligence about other countries. Snowden revealed way more than he needed to in order to prove a point: that the NSA had access to too much private information. If that was his goal, he took too much. 1.5 million documents are not necessary to prove the NSA was accessing information it shouldn't have been. I respect that it likely took a lot of courage and determination in his beliefs to make the choice to steal information and reveal it to the public. But if the reason he took it was to make it clear that the NSA was violating the privacy of citizens, he didn't need to expose the intelligence process of the entire country. He didn't need to risk lives and the security of the nation.
From the readings, what were the root causes of the Therac-25 accidents? What are the challenges for software developers working safety-critical systems, how should they approach these projects, and should they be held liable when accidents happen? Fatal FlawsSoftware bugs often seem insignificant in comparison to issues with mechanical or electronic systems. It's hard to imagine comparing the flaws in the design of bridge that collapses with the flaws in the design in a software program that can be exploited to misuse a system. However, the Therac-25 accidents demonstrate that flaws in software design are often harder to pinpoint and recognize, yet can be just as dangerous. Although the Therac-25 accidents may appear to be extremes, after reading the articles I was able to recognize a few similar situations in the management of a large control system while I was working at my internship. One of the key things that made the Therac-25 accidents appear to be blatant negligence was the apparent lack of testing that was performed on the system and the inability of the engineers to replicate the bug to determine the root cause of the overexposure. The bug was due to a race condition between two different agents who were attempting the change the location of magnetic spreading plates (which were able to direct the radiation between the two different modes). If both agents tried to change the locations of the plates at the same time, the system would be unable to determine the locations of the plates and would not be able to control the dose of radiation properly. This type of error is difficult to pinpoint because it is an issue between the timing of different agents. Thus, it could only be replicated through the fast application of a specific set of commands so both agents were trying to access the same item at one time. Although from an outside perspective, it seems like it would be an easy bug to test for with automated testing and it seems that it would be easy to recognize when this sort of flaw happened. However, after working with mutexes in OS, I know that my experience has taught me that race conditions are notoriously difficult to detect or even to replicate. Although I do agree that testing should have been implemented in the design and production, rather than assume that the software from the previous version was effective even without the hardware controls, it's hard to concretely say that testing alone would've prevented the bug from becoming a issue. The fact that engineers were unable to replicate the bug in a controlled environment (after reports of overexposure) proves this. Although it is easy to say testing needed to be implemented, it also may not have stopped the problem. The bug actually existed in versions of the code in the Therac-20 systems, however the Therac-20 implemented hardware controls that led to a fuse being blown when the magnetic plates were out of position. The hardware controls were eliminated in the newer Therac-25 systems, thus the flaw in the code wasn't protected by the hardware controls. I believe that the removal of these controls in combination with the assumption that the code was already tested were the largest mistakes made leading to these accidents. Knowing that the hardware controls protected against user error by using mechanical interfaces, the removal of these controls needed to happen with the assumption that the hardware control were necessary because the software alone didn't protect from dangerous overexposure situations. In other words, the hardware safety controls could be removed only because the provided no additional protection. Because when running the software, the hardware controls still needed to be utilized, the hardware controls were still necessary. In my internship I experience scenarios where automated testing of the software alone would indicate that the software was correct, even if it didn't provide the proper hardware output in the system. Automated testing of software alone is not enough to ensure that the system and its hardware is functioning properly. If a company produces a product which has a flaw in it, that company becomes responsible for their design and the flaws associated with it. Just as a car manufacturer is forced to issue a recall when there's a flaw in their design, a company is responsible to their shareholders to disclose the flaws in their design and take responsibility for the product.
Diversity or EqualityI had a conversation with another intern over the summer who was studying at Olin University; a school dedicated to engineering which boasts a nearly equal distribution of men and women across the student body. When I asked how enforcing this policy wasn't discriminatory against men, she insisted that men have an equal opportunity of getting accepted as a woman. I found myself unable to convince her that she was wrong. It seems to me that the number of students applying are not equally distributed, so enforcing a quota on acceptances based on gender is inherently discriminatory. Yet, the company we were working for also boasted a hiring policy that was evenly distributed across men and women, a practice which couldn't make sense considering the distribution of students getting degrees in Computer Science and Engineering isn't evenly distributed. I feel as though I have a version of this conversation frequently with my sister, who claims that I couldn't understand the necessity because I'm a privileged student who was encouraged to study engineering and I've never personally experienced a situation in which I felt I didn't belong. I agree with her to a certain degree: I am lucky to have parents who encouraged me to study engineering and I'm lucky to have never faced blatant sexism in the workplace or at school. But I don't believe that just because I'm in the minority means that somehow equally qualified men have to be passed over in favor of a woman who is potentially less qualified. Those two issues are so frequently lumped together into one that it becomes hard to argue against a policy intended to promote diversity because it somehow means arguing against equal opportunity and capability of women. In one case, the dominance of men in the industry and the environment of many Silicon Valley companies (like Uber) are a serious issue infringing on the ability of women to contribute to the industry. The article Why is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women claims being a woman in this industry is "like doing everything backwards and in heels while some guy is trying to yank at your dress, and another is telling you that a woman can’t dance as well as a man, oh, and could you stop dancing for a moment and bring him something to drink?" In these environments, it seems absurd to claim that a woman is on an equal stage as a man. This is less of a question of diversity and more of opportunity. Women should have the same access to promotions and jobs in the workplace as any other individual. In my opinion, addressing blatant ignorance of equality of opportunity is different from trying to demonstrate equality in hiring. In his memo, James Damore claims "Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts." Trying to artificially impose an equal representation of men and women doesn't address a lack of opportunity for women in the industry. In some situations, trying to enforce hiring or promotion quotas to satisfy diversity goals actually make the problem worse. For instance, if a company chooses to hire an even distribution of men and women, due to the inherently higher standards for men in that position, the women hired for the same role could be viewed as less qualified. Rather than trying to artificially match the number of men hired to the number of women, it makes more sense to me to cater the position and opportunities so it appeals to men as well as women. Many people I've spoken to seem to think that with increased diversity and inclusion across engineering, the proportion of men and women working in the industry will approach equal (50% men, 50% women). This makes sense, if one assumes that the interests of men and women are evenly distributed. However, if interests and skills were evenly distributed across both men and women, there would be no value in diversity. The article Why Women Don't Code states that "the entire goal of achieving gender diversity makes no sense unless you believe that men and women work in fundamentally different ways." If women and men are equal on a fundamental level, then the value achieved from diversity can be achieved in a workplace that is made of all men. The value in diversity is the difference in interest, experiences, and opinions. Thus diversity in gender or race has value because the difference in gender or race is associated with a difference in interest, experience, or opinion. It is because men are different from women in their opinions, interest, and experience that we derive value from hiring both men and women. Recognizing that difference, catering a workplace to suit a number of different interests is the best way to achieve diversity. The enforcement of quotas or incentives to reduce the gender gap only target a symptom of the issue. In my opinion, the main goal of these programs should not be to make certain more groups more represented. Instead, the goal should be to enable any individual the same access and opportunity. In other words, don't discount women as successful (or potentially successful) just because they are women. But, don't avoid discounting women by making it relatively easier for them to be successful. I believe diversity and equality don't mean the same thing. I don't expect that women will ever be equally represented in engineering or technology. I don't think that's a bad thing. The fundamental differences between men and women (whether it be social or biological) is what makes gender diversity important. Those variances in interest are what leads to women choosing to study different fields or work in different areas. As long as men and women are different, they will choose different careers and have different values. If they become equal (interest varies equally across both genders evenly), the value in diversity is lost along the gender barrier. Just to be clear, this doesn't mean that men have a greater opportunity to have these jobs or follow these career paths. I believe men and women should have the same chances to get hired. There needs to be a balance between providing women with the same opportunity to pursue the job they want and allowing their interests to impact the job they choose.
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Kaitlyn |