11 points jreynar 38 minutes ago 3 comments
glimshe 12 minutes ago | parent
gustavus 2 minutes ago | parent
In fact the biggest issue with safety he has seems to be the use of tech in military drones, which 1) wouldn't really be prevented by a "code" and 2) isn't an issue of engineering, it's a whole separate philosophical debate and question of values. I mean remember the guy who invited the process for mass producing nitrogen which led to fertilizer production vastly increasing and is largely responsible for ending world starvation, for which he won the novel prize, was only doing it because he wanted to figure out how to speed the production of TNT for wartime uses, he also later went on to become the father of chemical weapons in WW1.
So if your hope is "if we give every software engineer an ethics 101 course then everyone will hold hands and sing cumbaya" is hopelessly naive. In the meantime for a lot of the industries where your software can kill people there is already heavy rules around it.