Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/answers/Article/3323627/Microsoft-President-Brad-Smith-Why-We-Urgently-Need-a-Hippocratic-Oath-for-Software-Engineers?src=hn <comment><USER3> I'm not a fan of comparisons to the Hippocratic oath. The greatest risk to AI ethics is not the ethics of software engineers but the ethics of the software engineering process. By the time tasks are handed to engineers, most of the ethical decisions have been made by product managers, designers, and business stakeholders who are focused on their own goals. Software engineers are accountable to their bosses before their users, no matter how high minded we like to pretend to be. To say it's on the engineer to do no harm puts them in the tenuous position of doing the job or being replaced by someone who will. That isn't setting us up for success.

The Hippocratic oath sounds more altruistic than the alternatives, but good legislation, including business audits and incentives, will have far more impact than a software engineer swearing they won't be evil.

<comment><USER4> In sufficiently complex systems, you can always blame someone else if you're motivated to do so. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IssR_J0QWr4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IssR_J0QWr4)

But ultimately there's always a software engineer involved in the creation of software - and that's not true of any of the other roles you mentioned. Since software engineers are necessary and sufficient to produce software, they should _always_ be held responsible, and any oath should fall on engineers.

> _To say it's on the engineer to do no harm puts them in the tenuous position > of doing the job or being replaced by someone who will._

Well, yes - if there were no tradeoffs there would be no point in having an oath to begin with. But there are software engineers today, including some on HN, who do things more harmful and unethical than medical malpractice, and they are personally culpable for the decision to do so - just as their replacements would be if they refused. I would _also_ like to see laws criminalizing those individual engineers' conduct - maybe you're alluding to the same thing? - but an oath is a good start.

<comment><USER5> So management bears no blame for requiring illegal work be done, on pain of termination? Said another way, engineers now need to be technical and legal experts in the business domain?

(Remember employees in the US depend on the company for health insurance. Saying 'no' could cost a lot more than just ones position.)

Most software engineers are not like doctors. We have little autonomy over what is created. Our responsibility is primarily the how. And with devops sometimes the actual deployment and maintenance itself.

<comment><USER6> > Said another way, engineers now need to be technical and legal experts in > the business domain?

Consider something like the 737 MAX debacle – did the programmers writing the MCAS code actually have enough aviation domain knowledge and understanding of where the component fit in the overall system to realise it was a threat to people's lives?

I don't know, but my guess is the most likely answer is "No".

<comment><USER7> From my limited information the MCAS code was primarily causing problems in association of incorrect readings by damaged sensors. Of course one could argue that this is an engineering failure because the MCAS failed to account for wrong sensor input but when you consider the legal implications of a MCAS fallback there is actually not much that can be done on the software side.

The MCAS is an optional component that reduces certification and training costs. It is definitively possible to fly the plane without accidents even with a disabled MCAS. So why can't the MCAS be turned off automatically when sensors fail? Because that changes the classification of the plane and therefore requires pilots to be certified for a new machine and receive new flight training for both MCAS and no MCAS modes.

If the software engineer was under a hippocratic oath then he would have to refuse to build the MCAS entirely but not because the idea of an MCAS is inherently unethical, no, he would have to refuse because the company he works at wants to use the MCAS for a non ethical purpose (namely operate and hide the existence of MCAS even when it is unsafe to do so).

This is basically a reverse audit but the software engineer has no authority conduct such an audit and even if he was allowed to, the business has no obligation to give him the necessary information to determine whether the MCAS will be used unethically.

<comment><USER6> > he works at wants to use the MCAS for a non ethical purpose (namely operate > and hide the existence of MCAS even when it is unsafe to do so).

You think a programmer, handed a spec and asked to implement it, can be expected to know that their employer (or the employer's customer) wants to use it for a "non ethical purpose"?

Again, I can't know for sure, but I doubt the programmers who wrote MCAS (who most likely didn't even work for Boeing, but rather some subcontractor) actually knew, or could have known, how the code fit into Boeing's larger purposes

<comment><USER8> With all of that being said, were these software engineers (probably subcontractors) even given access to actual MCAS readouts or, more likely, virtualizations of expected readouts. These people probably didn't account for this type of faulty readout because the virtual machine never put out that type of fault.

Most types of development in these large companies is so compartmentalized that it's next to impossible to see the whole structure from a software engineers prospective. You need to be at a management level to understand how most of the pieces really come together, which is the only place where one of these "oaths" might make an influence. At that point, however, the selection is so goal oriented, I have a doubt as to whether or not people would take that oath.

<comment><USER9> Generally, there is somebody (typically in software assurance or systems engineering) who is supposed to ensure the fidelity of the simulator. Additionally, the hazard analysis or failure modes effects analysis should trace to specific test cases.

Of course, there's all kinds of pressures that make these fall through the cracks. I vaguely remember an article stating some of these documents in the case of MCAS were not up to date

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about a Hippocratic Oath for business leaders? This is shifting the responsibility from management towards the engineers. It's not the engineers who pulled the trigger at Facebook - or Microsoft. They build the weapons. Management fires them.

This is a hypocritic ode. If somebody is acting unethically at MS then it is management. All the innovation that is not happening because MS is abusing their position. Two times they have killed a universal software platform to preserve theirs: Java and websites. Ironically they are pushing websites now that the platform has shifted to mobile with objective c and Google's variation of Java.

>According to Brad Smith, just like it is the Pope's job to bring religion closer to today's technology, it is the software developer's job to bring technology closer to the humanities.

The Pope is to religion as is the President of the biggest software company to software development. It is his responsibility, not theirs. Or does he see himself as that software developer? I guess it is more a Balmer developer and he means software engineers.

He could start by handing out software licenses / EULAS that take full responsibility for any damage the software does cause, like any other sold product has to do. Then, by business processes, management will take care of the ethical issues to minimize risks.

<comment><USER11> Why isn't this the top comment?

Microsoft executives seem more in need of lessons in ethics than their engineers. Just one example from last year:

>'We did not sign up to develop weapons' say Microsoft employees protesting $479 million HoloLens army contract

[https://www.pcgamer.com/we-did-not-sign-up-to-develop- weapon...](https://www.pcgamer.com/we-did-not-sign-up-to-develop-weapons-say- microsoft-employees-protesting-dollar479-million-hololens-army-contract/)

>They build the weapons

Talking of weapons, while we speculate about what AI might be used for, Microsoft executives have literally decided to build actual weapons.

<comment><USER12> Building weapons is immoral? Tell that to the WW2 industrial complex that supported the war.

Not building weapons for the war effort is not always right. That is an intentional double negative because I think it's the most clear if you read it twice. Building weapons for the war effort is sometimes right would be the boolean negative of that statement.

>Microsoft executives have literally decided to build actual weapons.

Yep. Literally they did. Clearly all US weapons are evil in your opinion because you disagree with all US weapon usage I'm guessing? You have to combine the argument that they are literally making weapons with the fact that those weapons are being used in a way you don't agree with.

Keep in mind that most of these advanced weapons they are literally making are not designed against the current wars you most likely disagree with. They are built, to include AI, to keep pace with advanced threats from other countries. Allowing us to fall behind technologically, due to perceived moral black/white issues of current wars, could lead to a whole new world in 40 years as you make your arguments in a well protected environment. Not researching advanced topics will lead to an asymmetric fight... not in our favor... if the enemy so chooses.

Reference our usage of nuclear weapons. If you think that was evil, then you wouldn't want an evil country / group of people to gain such an asymmetric advantage. If you think it was necessary, then you want to have an asymmetric advantage when it is necessary against an evil group. Yes I recognize the inherent cyclical issue with the above statement. Either way, allowing all people to gain an asymmetric advantage while we just discard all research in hopes that others will follow is ignorant of history - war theory is a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doctors no longer take the Hippocratic Oath (because it is incompatible with a lot of difficult situations doctors are placed in).

But more to the point: Why are we trying to shift focus from the wrongs large multi-nationals do to individual software engineers? Plus what would the result be if this "oath" conflicts with a manager's instructions?

Maybe we should start with Microsoft, Google, Comcast, Oracle, and similar taking an oath to do no harm, before we push engineers under the bus for not fighting hard enough against what they're ordered to do.

<comment><USER14> > Why are we trying to shift focus from the wrongs large multi-nationals do to > individual software engineers?

Because software engineers are the ones doing the actual work. By imposing an ethical standard on the people doing the real work the multinational executives then either accept that limitation or knowingly accept risks from intentionally violating the spirit of that limitation.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure when someone gives you the choice between continued employment and following the ethical standard you'll choose to follow the ethical standard.

I mean, don't get me wrong, there are clear scenarios where I think many of us would choose to lose the job. For instance, I'll go unemployed vs directly causing someone to die. But those slightly more ambiguous scenarios are where we need to be enforcing it on a legislative level and the onus should be on ALL levels of the company (engineering and management).

<comment><USER16> I've told upper management directly, in front of their employees, that they're breaking the law. That was a fun day; my director directly told me to not be a trouble-maker and to knock it off if I wanted to keep my job. Ultimately, upper management elected to follow federal law, and I was dismissed for no reason a year later.

It wasn't about whether or not I got to keep my job; upper management was effectively disenfranchising other employees with their policy. Who cares about _my_ job if it must come at the expense of my _team 's_ jobs?

Moreover, managers aren't somehow better people than engineers. They don't get to be less moral just because they have less to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's hard to see this as anything but a way for executives to foist responsibility upon software engineers when things go wrong (and of course, claim credit and profit when they go right) as other commenters have pointed out.

That said, this might actually work! If a software engineer can suffer personal harm by working for a business with iffy ethics, then they are incentivized to play it safe by avoiding working for those types of businesses -- thus correcting the market by internalizing the externalities. I doubt anyone would work for Facebook in a world with a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers that has real teeth.

Put another way: pointing to decision makers instead of individual engineers is a simple rephrasing of the Nuremberg defense, "I was just following orders!" It is _obvious_ that we should hold leaders accountable. The question here is whether we hold individual software engineers accountable too (they're not mutually exclusive) and the answer is probably yes.

<comment><USER18> Wouldn't offshoring lower liability? If you can blame the developer why not offsource that or better outsource and remove any responsibility from the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct has been around for a while and surely is a good start. But if you read through it, you'll quickly come to the conclusion that unless leadership buys into it your only real option is to quit your job if asked to do something you shouldn't.

[https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics](https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics)

<comment><USER20> The ACM itself also won't put its code on the right side of the kind of wrongs being perpetrated in China.

<comment><USER21> What do you mean?

<comment><USER20> They don't want to alienate Chinese members so they go to great lengths to prevent the code of conduct from outright prohibiting participation in the creation of things like the systems used to control and oppress the Uyghurs, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The way I see it, the likely, big ethical issue with AI isn't some Terminator/Butlerian Jihad scenario, or even mass surveillance - it's that the wealth created by the technology will benefit the already wealthy much, much more than everyone else. This is generally true of most technology and even more so of the software industry (high scalability, "low" headcount, IP makes profit shifting and tax evasion trivial). But AI is unique in potentially enabling mass unemployment at a rate and scale never seen before in human history. This should be a joyous event, since humanity is finally free to enjoy the fruit of its labor without the labor part - but the way the world works today means most of us would not be allowed any bites of that fruit anymore.

When Bezos fires every single warehouse employee, what happens if the job they start retraining for also gets automated away before they can even start? And the next one, and the next one. If nobody is making a salary anymore, then it doesn't matter how much lower the prices are on Amazon (due to being produced in automated factories and shipped from automated warehouses) unless Jeff decides to reduce those prices all the way down to 'free'. At that point the assumptions underlying the world's economy would break down in a way that makes a corona shutdown look like a mild hiccup.

No software engineer is going to be able to do anything to help alleviate this. If you want to do something about this, you need to go into politics, not tech.

</comment><comment><USER23> > There are no common ethics codes to determine how lethal autonomous weapons > and systems that are developed for the military should be used once they end > up in the hands of civilians.

It's interesting to me that this just presumes developing these autonomous weapons systems in the first place is ethical. I understand there is a difference of opinion on this ethical point, but it immediately frames the discussion pretty far away from the Hippocratic oath's requirement to abstain from causing harm.

<comment><USER24> > pretty far away from the Hippocratic oath's requirement to abstain from > causing harm

So does abortion and euthanasia, and probably plenty of other practices as well. Both of those are without doubt harm-causing practices, with their related points of controversy primarily revolving around whether the harm that is caused is worthwhile in the context of the alternative being a potentially greater harm.

Putting aside the fact that the Hippocratic oath is not actually a relevant part of modern medicine (modern doctors are accountable to comprehensive, codified sets of ethics), the fact that there is no such thing as a set of common ethics by which people choose to live their lives kinda points out the futility of this idea.

One person could say developing weapons is bad because they cause harm, another could say it's good because they can be used to reduce harm that would have otherwise been caused. Who's right? Neither of them. That's just two people with different opinions. I would personally suggest that establishing moral authorities like can often be harmful, because lacking any objective truths, it's a topic people should generally be left to make up their own minds about.

Am I right or wrong? Who's to say? I'm just a person with an opinion, and so is anybody who would want to agree or disagree with me.

<comment><USER25> > So does abortion and euthanasia, and probably plenty of other practices as > well.

A less controversial example would be something like chemotherapy. In fact, a lot of treatments for terminal and chronic ailments are pretty harmful.

<comment><USER24> All 3 of those examples are actually covered by the "original" Hippocratic Oath (which probably wasn't written by Hippocrates, incidentally).

> Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will > I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to > cause abortion.

Chemo is obviously a bit different though, because the potential harm caused by denying abortion or euthanasia is (generally speaking) the potential to deny somebody the right to exercise a form of personal agency over their body/life. The controversy isn't really a medical one.

The Oath also doesn't really address treatments that have potentially harmful side effects, and it's debated whether the oath allows doctors to perform surgery. It's basically not fit for purpose in 2020. If you wanted to suggest that software engineers adopt a code of ethics similar to that of doctors, what you'd be really suggesting is something like "We need a AMA Code of Medical Ethics for software engineers". Which obviously doesn't have the same broad appeal and simplicity of an oath.

<comment><USER25> That was essentially my point. With euthanasia and abortion you will find plenty of people who would call them unambiguously harmful and think they should be banned outright, regardless of context.

You'd be hard pressed to find people who want to abolish the entire field of oncology on the grounds that the treatments are horrible.

It's absurd to take the above-stated "requirement to abstain from causing harm" as a hard restriction out of context without taking into account the main point of the profession which is to help the sick.

The logical conclusion of considering "do no harm" as inviolable above all else is that doctors would have to restrict their treatments to homeopathy and compassionate smiles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So reading the comments. I am on the side of having business owners taking some kind of oath, not software engineers. If a software engineer was programming IE around the time that MS was hit by regulators years ago, and this "software engineer" oath was in place, would the software engineers being asked to code a web browser be at fault for the wrong-doings of the company?

It just seems wrong for someone that has been asked to "write a web browser" to be at fault for anything.

What about someone asked to code up a voice prompt on something that answers the phone for a telemarketing company. And said company later uses the code to do illegal spam robocalls instead of what they told the developer they were doing with it?

What about if a software developer that writes code to turn off and on a sprinkler system by phone is later convicted of writing the code for a bomb that blows up a building?

What about if a software developer writes code that matches human faces for the purposes of automatically unlocking his door at his home, ends up being open sourcing it, but the developer is arrested for that software being deployed on a drone that murders specific people?

What about if a software developer that is asked to install the above Face Rec system on a drone but is told it's designed to take pictures of people it knows at a birthday party, and is later switched out to trigger a machine gun.

<comment><USER17> There are not two sides, because _both_ management and engineering should face consequences for building harmful software. And I'm not sure it's appropriate to test these "what ifs" as if looking for logical flaws in such a system, because a well-functioning court and jury should easily be able answer these questions, and I'm sure you had the "correct" answers in mind when you wrote them. Whether or not our courts and juries are currently well-functioning enough to support something like this is a different question, but we should strive for it.

In any case, we already have laws like this! And they're not controversial! If you commit war crimes by killing people with a shovel under the orders of your superiors, _both you and your superiors are responsible_ , but the manufacturer of the shovel obviously isn't responsible for what you did unless they advertised the shovel's skull-bashing capabilities.

<comment><USER26> But what is harmful software? Today, while there are arguments about facebook being too addictive, it's really just competition between platforms, it's not everyone's opinion that the software engineers at facebook should be liable at this point for making an addictive algorithm. At some uncertain point in time, there's the possibility that facebook will be sued for the addictiveness and lose. Should that happen, I don't see why the software engineers should be partially to blame.

<comment><USER17> If Facebook gets sued for its addictiveness and loses, then that would be a pretty solid judgment of its harm, wouldn't it? And it'd be up to the court to decide whether the engineers (and which ones) were complicit. There is room for nuance here.

> I don't see why the software engineers should be partially to blame.

Because they chose to build it! Software engineers aren't ignorant and helpless executors of instructions. They are responsible for what they build.

<comment><USER26> That makes no sense. That's the exact angle I'm trying to argue isn't feasible. It should absolutely be the corporate entity that takes the blame for things like that. If we were to change things to make the engineers directly responsible, we're just adding an entire industry that's not necessary.

We'll end up creating an entire class of insurance for software development liability. It doesn't really change anything except again, raise the cost and shift burdens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Brad Smith has been with Microsoft since 1993, and is one of the lawyers that enabled the business practices that made Microsoft notorious, and the target of multiple legal actions. Microsoft only settled with the DOJ in 2002. The company pursued policies of forced upgrades to Windows 10 and aggressive use of telemetry whilst he was president.

Feel free to tell us how your professional ethics as a lawyer enabled you to make change at Microsoft before you were general counsel and president, Brad. Or after you got the top jobs.

<comment><USER28> So you're saying that since Lawyers have been around longer as a profession then they should demonstrate the equivalent oath and how to make it work before software engineers.

Sounds brilliant!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Perhaps Brad Smith can let us know when we live in a time when it's not true that all three branches of the US government, to pick on just one country, are daily disrespecting their oaths to uphold the constitution. And then we can talk about the efficacy of oaths.

In other words, oaths aren't worth much in the real world, apparently, as much as we might like to think they should be.

It would be troubling if Brad Smith isn't aware of this. He wouldn't be the first once-respected person to go off the deep end: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins).

I have to give Brad the benefit of the doubt and assume something was lost in translation; possibly he is being misquoted or quoted out of context.

But even assuming we could agree on a shared, always-in-sync definition of harm, and even assuming oaths worked all the time, there are plenty of competent people, whatever label we give them, who will design and implement systems without having sworn any such oath, and countries and organizations (including DAOs) that will employ those people. And the first two assumptions are already a bridge too far.

</comment><comment><USER30> We need a Hippocratic Oath for those that manage and deploy capital.

A Hippocratic Oath for only Software Engineers is addressing the symptom, not the cause.

Most of us don't wake up and think, "How can I make user's life worse today?".

We need to fix the incentives if we want to fix the behavior.

We need to give Software Engineers writing spyware the option to say no and still feed their families. We need saying," This is unethical and I can't help," to be a valid second option.

<comment><USER31> The key incentive is cash. As long as doing sinister things can pay, there will be people doing it.

<comment><USER32> Or maybe, just maybe, ethics isn't at all universal? If my time in other countries has taught me one thing, it's that different people and different cultures have very different ideas on right and wrong.

Ultimately (like, really ultimately), the very idea of ethics is a meaningless fabrication in the absence of God. Without an ultimate arbiter of truth, morality cannot exist.

<comment><USER31> While ethics are very far from universal, there are things that are universally accepted, i.e. that impaling everyone on Earth is bad.

God is not the only possible foundation of ethics, and not the most sound at that.

<comment><USER33> > God is not the only possible foundation of ethics, and not the most sound at > that.

Absent God (or some sort of other mind-body dualism that's largely suspect otherwise), I don't see how ethics can approach anything that resembles "universals." The ontology of morality in a naturalistic or materialist worldview seems committed to something like emotivism, unless one feels like attempting to bridge the is/ought divide. How can we ascertain what the "universal" is when so many rational beings can hold diametrically opposed moral values? Is it democratically decided?

If one is examining morality as the values of different groups of people, and another is debating what we _ought_ to consider universally moral, there isn't going to be much consensus, and probably a fair bit of confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am little worried this will sound glib, but how about we have an oath/pledge ( w/e you want to call it ) for decision makers at the company. Otherwise putting onus on engineers is, at best, silly.

</comment><comment><USER35> Software engineering isn't medicine. It isn't that difficult to learn and you can wield many of the advantages without much training. If software folks refuse to assist with morally questionable tasks, those tasks will be compartmentalized and the unethical components will be handed off to people willing to do the job.

Sadly, just about everyone in ML/AI is contributing to an easily weaponized technology. Every time you make it easier to train a network, every time you make it faster to train a network, every time you improve an image recognition algorithm, every time you improve the latency/jitter of inference... you're contributing to the pile of knowledge which will be leveraged to control populations or enable military action. Most people stay unaware of it and just focus on the benefits. Some of us just grow to accept it.

<comment><USER36> > Software engineering isn't medicine. It isn't that difficult to learn

I would never hire someone that treats software engineering as something easier that medicine or other branches of engineering.

<comment><USER37> Easy to say when you've never hired anyone.

The parent is right. Software engineering is advantaged by a much more simplistic feedback loop. Software's "Hello, World" is validated in milliseconds. Medicine's "Hello, World" could take 30 years of clinical trials to ensure that you haven't killed anyone. It is easy because it is quick, allowing a greater understanding within an equal amount of time.

In fact, the adage of years of experience comes from learning that actually take years to encounter different circumstances and see the results play out in order to fully understand what you're dealing with. This is almost never a problem for software engineers, especially in the learning phase. Software engineers can gain "years of experience" each day by seeing the results of what they are doing in practically real-time.

<comment><USER36> > Easy to say when you've never hired anyone.

Funny how you can make that statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think a lot of the recent focus on "AI ethics" is just self-aggrandizement.

I also think a lot of people here are overestimating how broad the agreement is on what is ethical and what is not (and thus what would be prevented from happening under such a "Hippocratic Oath").

Examples being: Microsoft/GitHub's work with ICE, Google's China search engine, use of AI in military applications

I personally have a strong opinion on some of those, but I'm not delusional enough to think that there are no competent software engineers that disagree with me.

<comment><USER39> For each of those examples, there are also positive social justice arguments if you look at them in different directions:

\- Microsoft/GitHub's work with ICE [prevents illegal migration, saving those workers from a life of wage slavery]

\- Google's China search engine [gives more information than otherwise would've been available]

\- use of AI in military applications [can save lives by no longer bombing civilians where it can be avoided]

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The relevant difference between medicine and software development is that doctors provide a service and software developers create a product.

A doctor's responsibility is solely to the patient. When the treatment ends, the doctor has done their job. They may be responsible for long-term damage from the treatment, but that's still about something the doctor did themselves. It's like being responsible for your software randomly running amok and deleting random files on a user's computer.

When a software developer has developed some software, that product continues to exist and can be used by anyone who can run it, to do anything the software is capable of.

Turning this around, given that the doctor's "product" is a healthier patient, it would be like making doctors responsible for the evils committed by patients that they have saved.

It's easy to come up with obvious unethical scenarios, but a lot of harm can come from less predictable unethical uses. If you make your software easy to use, the result is that people outside of any ethically-aware, license- controlled bubble can use it. Where does the responsibility end?

The developers of Excel and Access have almost certainly indirectly contributed to evil software.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is there evidence that doctors and lawyers are, by virtue of their oaths, codes of conduct, and background study of ethics, more ethical, moral, and upright than members of the general population?

Also, whose ethics would such a Hippocratic Oath advance? For every privacy- conscious person saying that encryption-everywhere is good, there is a law enforcement officer speaking of reduced abilities to solve crimes.

Imagine a software engineer who has been asked to place a backdoor in some software. Is there any piece of uncontroversial advice which you can give them?

And like several previous commenters have asked, could this be a way to shift responsibility from institutions and their management cadre to individual developers?

<comment><USER41> > Imagine a software engineer who has been asked to place a backdoor in some > software.

I imagine such an engineer just gets a development plan and doesn't get to see the bigger picture, implying the backdoor. It might only get enabled on integration into a larger codebase, and nobody out of the loop will be able to extrapolate its existence from what they get to know for sure.

Hence I completely agree with the argument of shifting responsibility to the developers. Seems like MS is selling more of that eyewash again.

<comment><USER42> I disagree. I only have one point of data from past experience (not a backdoor, but working on a potentially unethical system), but I would say most developers know exactly what they are doing, or they know deep down but don't try to clarify in order to absolve themselves.

If we go back to backdoors, yes, sometimes, in the simplest cases (e.g. a "root" account), it might get in prod through trickery. But anything more complex and you need to know what you are trying to achieve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm guessing Brad Smith hasn't seen the _Tethics_ episode of _Silicon Valley_.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfRUQh_EHoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfRUQh_EHoQ)

</comment><comment><USER44> It just seems pointless to me. Microsoft collaborates with the PRC, including governmental projects that go well into deeply questionable territory. Presumably Brad Smith would stop those if he could, since he's selling himself as an ethics guru. But if the President of Microsoft himself is unable to scrub out these ethical blackspots, what would software engineers taking an ill-defined oath do?

<comment><USER45> Microsoft itself imposed their OS by very questionable means, unethical means, I will not be lectured about ethics by any Microsoft bigshot to begin with, as a software developer. Especially when none of the Microsoft execs made amend for their little schemes in the 80's and the 90's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think we also should finally abandon the idea that companies are only here to make a profit and should ignore all other factors when doing business. That doesn't mean they should make no profit at all but it means that they also should consider external costs as if they were internal ones. This is true for the environment, privacy, data protection, employees, and many other things.

<comment><USER47> I think something like this would be more easily 'enforced' if the current punishments weren't so low they got factored into the "cost of doing business."

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> IMO having a hippocratic oath for software engineers is entirely pointless. There are plenty of people who would say the words with no intention of living up to them - not everyone is going to share your values.

I can't say for sure, but I have a feeling that the hippocratic oath is not what's stopping an unethical doctor from behaving unethically. Instead, it's the risk of lawsuits and loss of their license to practice medicine that keeps them in line.

I just don't think software could match the very real consequences to unethical behaviour that doctors face. We don't have a concept of a "licensed software engineer", and even if we did, there's nothing stopping an unethical engineer from working on their own. Doctors can be blackballed from hospitals, clinical trials, etc. Are we going to blackball software engineers from touching computers?

The above being said, I do believe that software engineers should try to be ethical. However, I do not think there's any mechanism that could be implemented that could force this behaviour, and any attempt to do so is simply a way for its promoters to say "look how good I am", and less so an honest attempt at making the world a better place.

<comment><USER49> For sure, I am one of these people you mention. I feel very little to no loyalty to any company I have ever worked for. The reason is that they can and would fire me at any time if the conditions where right.

Hence, I am ready to move to another position at any time if the conditions are right (pay, benefits etc). If they want me to take an oath I would probably not take the job today but if they would pay me a ridiculous amount for example, I would most likely take the job and just say the oath or whatever you have to do and just never care about it again.

Just because I am forced to say something doesn't mean I believe it. Maybe it's because I am a natural rebel that hates to be told things, despises "mission statements" or "company values" but I feel like there is a lot of people like me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> _It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter._ -Nathaniel Borenstein

<comment><USER51> static void destroyBaghdad() { destroyCity("Baghdad"); }

Here, it's done.

<comment><USER28> 20% success rate there.

[https://geotargit.com/called.php?qcity=Baghdad](https://geotargit.com/called.php?qcity=Baghdad)

<comment><USER51> No, no, it's working as intended. Product Management failed to properly define the spec, the software works as defined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> we already have one that is pretty close - Ted Nelson from his 1974 book Dream Machines:

The purpose of computers is human freedom.

I am going to help make people free through computers.

I will not help the computer priesthood confuse and bully the public.

I will endeavor to explain patiently what computer systems really do.

I will not give misleading answers to get people off my back, like "Because that's the way computers work" instead of "Because that's the way I designed it."

I will stand firm against the forces of evil.

I will speak up against computer systems that are oppressive, insulting, or unkind, and do the best I can to improve or replace them, if I cannot prevent them from being bought or created in the first place.

I will fight injustice, complication, and any company that makes things difficult on purpose.

I will do all I can to further human understanding, especially through the new visualizing tools of interactive computer graphics.

I will do what I can to make systems easy to understand, interactive wherever possible, and fun for the user.

I will try not to make fun of another user's favorite computer language, even if it is COBOL or BASIC.

</comment><comment><USER53> We should aim for having a "Hippocratic Oath" in place for the CEO's, board, and other business leadership too.

They're the one's who's "interesting" ethics are responsible for the things mentioned in the article.

The engineers wouldn't generally even attempt to implement the concerns in the article unless directed by their organisational higher-ups.

<comment><USER34> Quite. Some of the most egregious ethics lapses come from 'management decisions'. Some infamously immortalized by Challenger story ( [https://freakonomics.com/2011/06/01/launching-into- unethical...](https://freakonomics.com/2011/06/01/launching-into-unethical- behavior-lessons-from-the-challenger-disaster/) ), where manager effectively overruled engineers, who explicitly told him it was a bad idea. Oh yeah, he called it a 'management decision' too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> The challenge here is the entire software engineering compensation and career model.

Let's consider Boeing. Aviation is complicated and takes a long time to learn. Good software engineers are constantly moving jobs to boost compensation, so Boeing would retain them for 1-2 years at most unless it were willing to radically increase its compensation year over year.

I have spent 1 year in my job at a parking software organization. I have learned very little about how the business works and couldn't tell you much about the software I work on beyond the features built while I have been there. Most of my team has been there just a year or two and they don't know either. Give me all the training you want, but I know very little about how any of this fits into the business model or how it is going to be used and I will probably never know before I leave. And if we use the median tenure of engineers for my organization, I am arguably scheduled to leave.

A friend is at a medium sized tech company. He spent 6 months on one project, spent 6 months on another, and now is interested in moving to a third. He works on "some cloud service, not quite sure which."

Another friend is just fed tickets, completes the tickets, and otherwise isn't even sure what his software is used for and what kind of companies buy it. He has been there a year.

So, sure, you can create an oath, but how many software engineers are going to ever know enough to object to something? It is maybe 50%?

To understand the bigger picture in many cases, engineers would need to stay on their projects to for 2-4 years. They would need to be there from the design phase to the implementation and deployment phase, as well as the day to day use phase. They would need to know a lot more about what the business actually is in many cases. In aviation, they would need to have engineers stay for 6-8 years.

How does that happen when 3 years at a company is considered a long time and plenty stay 1-2 years?

</comment><comment><USER55> "It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a `DestroyBaghdad` procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a `DestroyCity` procedure, to which `Baghdad` could be given as a parameter.

\--- Nathaniel S. Borenstein, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Borenstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Borenstein)

</comment><comment><USER7> The way I see this is that someone is trying to shift responsibility away to someone who has even less power and is now in a vulnerable position.

Smells like diesel gate where executives claimed that they did not know about the cheating device. It is entirely possible to force subordinates to do things in secret in a way that cannot be traced back to the original decision maker. If there is money to be made it's going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER56> What an asinine suggestion. Of all people a president of microsoft punting responsibility down to the people simply following your orders. This comes across as a scheme to corner out newcomers to AI and make it so only well connected multinationals are able to control this tech.

</comment><comment><USER57> this is absurd. We should not be putting the onus on the engineers to practice their trade ethically when they often have no control over the decisions being made at their company. Additionally, those software engineers do not profit from unethical practice nearly as much as the decision makers and executives.

This is especially rich coming from a faboulsy wealthy executive of a company engaged in many unethical activities

</comment><comment><USER58> Why should software developers take the oath? Half of us are already working for morally bankrupt companies. The companies should take those oaths and stop building products that ultimately produce negative externality.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think what we should focus on, instead of ethics or humanity, is things like transparency, open discussion and clear feedback, etc. We can't really tell what's exactly ethical or human when the situation is changing this quickly. What we can ensure, though, is that a process exists that can spot and fix issues at hand in a timely manner, publicly. It's a bit like OODA for ethics. I think a similar system would be needed for the US police system too. Be it a company or police, when its secrecy is of its utmost importance, ethics cannot be expected.

</comment><comment><USER60> The Hippocratic Oath is mostly irrelevant, so, no, we don't need it.

If he means we need a professional code of ethics, and the organized professional discipline that makes such a code meaningful, sure, maybe.

But it's odd for a software executive to make that case, since the only reason such a code would be necessary in software would be to provide a countervailing force so that developers resist unethical demands from their employers. IOW, if it weren't for the lack of ethics by Smith's peer group, their subordinates wouldn't need new constraints.

</comment><comment><USER61> "The fish rots from the head", comes to my mind.

What we need is ethics in management.

</comment><comment><USER62> Well, it sure is tough to know the outcomes of what you create, however many oaths you take. Long ago, someone invented a pencil; people have written a lot of terrible things with pencils. More recently, people invented neural networks to recognize handwritten digits; now people are using networks like that to do terrible things. An oath won't solve the problem; we need laws and governance and more to ensure society uses technology safely and for good.

</comment><comment><USER63> Kind of sounds like the P.ENG designation.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Engineers_Ontar...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Engineers_Ontario) [https://www.peo.on.ca/licence-applications/become- profession...](https://www.peo.on.ca/licence-applications/become-professional- engineer/professional-practice-exam)

</comment><comment><USER64> "Engineering ethics" is a fallacy as it implies that engineers have high level influence on the goals set by organizations. If lockheed martin trained all of its missile engineers in ethics would they suddenly start building bombs that burst with flowers? Obviously not. Engineers are paid to design things against a very specific set of requirements. If an average engineer pushes back on ethical grounds they will simply be replaced.

<comment><USER65> Ethics are subjective and always evolving. I think Engineering ethics is not to tell you what to build or not to build but rather to tech you what is the likely outcome if you decided to build x or not to build x. Based on that its up to you to decide whatever to do or not do it.

<comment><USER64> I'm not sure what your engineering experience is, but I'm pretty certain that >80% of engineers are not in a position to refuse to work and quit their job without a severe impact on their career. And the same goes for managers and directors, all the way up to the top. Fail to explore a new technology your competitor is already working on? You've just damaged your company and all your employees. The only way to deal with these kinds of issues is regulation. Classic tragedy of the commons.

<comment><USER65> Of course every decision in life will always have its own trade off.

Sure it can have severe impact on their career but its still a choice whether to do or not to do, quit or not to quit

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Why should this concept be limited to just AI? How many developers knowingly enabled or directly wrote software for predatory companies like Facebook, (sometimes/mostly?) Google, sometimes Apple, historically often Microsoft, many of the large banks, Verizon and ATT and Comcast (and probably other major telcos), debt collection agencies, payday lenders, and on and on.

I'm quite certain that many HN readers knowingly contribute to companies that do plenty of evil. Heck, some of the HN crowd have created startups that specifically do gray things just for money.

Practically speaking, there's no way to know that your efforts will not somehow result in doing harm to others. Rather than taking some oath which frankly has little meaning without full knowledge of the outcomes, I think it would be more beneficial for everyone to make a concerted effort to get out in the world - see places that are in severe poverty or political turmoil. Meet other people who are very different from our bubble. Then we start to have an idea how even some of our good intentions can result in worse situations for others (such as giving lots of clothes away to have shipped to Africa).

<comment><USER67> So true. I'd say much, much more harm has been done by regular CRUD programmers than any others. You really think AI is going to introduce regulation around this?

They're just going to treat it like munitions, because that's all the lawmakers know.

<comment><USER66> I suspect this is somewhat a problem of age and experience. When you are younger (at least typically speaking... ignoring the rare exceptional people), you get caught up in the job at hand. It is new to you, and the environment is exciting. You focus your attention and your effort narrowly.

If you have someone to shake you from your myopia, or you get older and start to gain perspective, you question your efforts and their potential outcomes.

To be fair though, at the lowest CRUD level, it's no worse than someone who builds roads or cooks food. We cannot reasonably consider nor police the use of those roads or the meals we make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> To my mind there are two types of ethics around being a software engineer. The first is just normal ethics, and it applies equally to everyone else - am I working towards something I think is ethical? For this reason someone might choose not to work at PornHub, or Facebook or Boeing or whatever. That's a personal choice. If you want to change the world so PornHub doesn't exist anymore, the solution isn't to force software developers into an oath that forbids it, but to do normal, boring politics.

There are professional ethics, but they are much more tightly bound - <USER2> comparable to an accountant's ethics than a doctor. For me that will be along the lines of

\- I will not use trickery in a demo to decieve others about the progress of a project

\- I will report all bugs and mistakes I find and make, regardless of any personal cost this may bring on me.

\- I will be honest in my dealings with non technical people, and do my upmost to accurately represent the work I have done and the work I plan to do.

\- I will make decisions and advocate for changes for the benefit of the codebase and organisation, not for the benefit of my own CV

... And so on - you can pretty quickly get into controversial territory I'm sure.

<comment><USER69> >I will not use trickery in a demo to decieve others about the progress of a project

This is a good starting point. All those who've used dodgy marketing to convince investors that their machine learning is AI and so we're _' first generation of humans to endow computers with the ability to make decisions'_ have lent their words to a culture war with no basis in fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I hate to be a debby downer but this is nothing but virtue signaling.

How can we enforce this? Strong individual ethics without ability to do anything about it will simply make engineers feel helpless. And that's just going to hurt happiness at the workplace.

<comment> UK-Al05 You would need a software professional body that can ban people from practising professionally

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> The Order of the Engineer is instructive here: [https://order-of-the- engineer.org/](https://order-of-the-engineer.org/)

The oath states:

"I am an Engineer. In my profession, I take deep pride. To it, I owe solemn obligations.

As an engineer, I pledge to practice integrity and fair dealing, tolerance and respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and dignity of my profession. I will always be conscious that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making the best use of the Earth's precious wealth.

As an engineer, I shall participate in none but honest enterprises. When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given, without reservation, for the public good. In the performance of duty, and in fidelity to my profession, I shall give my utmost."

The Order of the Engineer started in Canada in 1925 as the Iron Ring. It was imported into the US in 1970, with many changes.

Worn on the pinky finger of the working hand (depending on dis/ability), the ring is meant to drag on drawings and leave subtle marks as it ages and rusts. It's facets are meant to be noticeable, to remind engineers of their duties and obligations. Though I cannot find the source, I have always heard that the original Canadian Iron Rings were made out of steel from a collapsed bridge that was lethally designed.

The US version is significantly different, as engineers are licensed _very_ differently in Canada and the US.

The US based Order of the Engineer is fairly accommodating to change and updates. Bioengineers are welcome to take the oath, for instance.

Perhaps the US based rings for software engineers should be made of the Uber car that killed that poor woman in Arizona, Therac-25, or Theranos machines.

</comment><comment><USER72> Translation: we need to increase barriers of entry to working in this field by spreading the social cancer that is vocational licensing to software engineering.

<comment><USER73> How do you hire an architect to design your house? Pick a doctor? Pick a lawyer?

<comment><USER72> That's a bad faith question asked in an attempt to setup a straw man argument and you know it, and I know it, so cut the crap. Worry about the guy writing software for all the nuclear power plants we're not building, not the guy who makes webshit, word processors and compilers for a living.

Architects, Doctors and Lawyers are closer to one extreme, you can make as strong a case for licensing them as you can for not licensing them. Software engineers are vocationally with the florists, where licensing is less a matter of ethics or workmanship or safety as it is an artificial government sanctioned means of preventing new competition from entering the market, or only allowing it in a controlled and revocable manner.

<comment><USER74> Writers of open source software are winding up to one day spin in their graves reading the comments of the authoritarians demanding software licensing in here.

<comment><USER72> Agreed. There is no professional class so enlightened that it won't use whatever means available, governmental or otherwise, to insulate itself from competitive pressures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I'm not against the idea, but analogizing to medicine isn't great. There are a number of challenged that need sorting before an oath is feasible:

* Medicine is thousands of years old. Software is decades old. There's still a lot we don't know.

* Medicine involves a lot of repeat situations, do you can set precedent and learn over time. Software isn't always new, but there are more novel applications than in medicine.

* The patient is, generally speaking, at the center of a doctor's ethical universe. It's not clear who the "patient" is for engineers. Users are often malicious. You can just say engineers must consider "society as a whole" but that's kind of a cop out, and not useful for trickier situations.

<comment><USER18> The patient is the company.

So the oath would be to do no harm to the company.

<comment><USER75> I don't think that's what the original article is getting at though. It talks about user privacy rights for instance, and it would be harmful to certain companies to not spy on their users, even if it's the right thing to do for society at large.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> "Don't be evil" [until it's inconvenient not to be]

</comment><comment><USER45> How about we make the executives and managers take an oath?

Engineers mostly do what they are told, it's too easy to let them carry the moral burden while higher ups can ask whatever they want out of them. It's too easy to shift the blame on developers.

</comment><comment><USER77> There's the Archimedean oath [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_Oath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_Oath)

Considering the life of Archimedes of Syracuse who illustrated the ambiguous potential of technology since the Antiquity, Considering the growing responsibility of engineers and scientists towards societies and nature, Considering the importance of the ethical problems stemming from technology and its applications, Today, I commit to the following statements and shall endeavor to reach towards the ideal that they represent:

I shall practice for the good of humankind, respecting human rights1 and the environment.

I shall recognize the responsibility for my actions, after informing myself to the best of my abilities, and shall in no case discharge my responsibilities on another person.

I shall endeavor to perfect my professional abilities When choosing and implementing projects, I shall remain wary of their context and their consequences, notably in their technical, economic, social and ecological aspects. I shall give particular attention to projects with military applications.

I shall contribute, to the extent of my abilities, to promote equitable relationships between people and to support the development of economically weaker countries.

I shall transmit, with rigor and honesty, to discerningly chosen interlocutors, any important information, if it constitutes a gain for society or if its retention constitutes a danger for others. In the latter case, I shall ensure that the communication yields concrete action.

I shall not let myself be governed by the defense of my own interests or those of my corporation.

I shall endeavor, to the best of my abilities, to lead my company to take into account the preoccupations of the present oath.

I shall practice my profession in complete intellectual honesty, with conscience and dignity.

I solemnly take this oath, freely and on my honor."

1\. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations (10 December 1948)

</comment><comment><USER78> Here's an anecdote echoing many of the other comments:

I attended an event about AI ethics a couple of years ago, many of the panelists were getting very excited about the upcoming AI eithics guidlines from the IEEE and how it would set a gold standard for state level AI development. They were completely unaware that the IEEE already has a general code of ethics[0], which many governments implicitly require engineers in certain roles to ignore.

[0] [https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html](https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html)

</comment><comment><USER79> The missing point:

You can't become surgeon by Googling and slicing things

While you can become /Software Engineer/ entirely by yourself (self taught)

<comment><USER54> BloodOverflow:

"The inflating red bag stopped inflating. What do I do?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> This seems like "noble virtue signaling" for software executives.

It isn't taking a five why's approach to the problem of ethical failures in the industry. It won't fix root cause problems.

We don't need a Hippocratic oath for Software Engineers. We need laws and regulations around some things. And then the government needs to penalize C-level execs, the board, and major shareholders for violating them.

The problem is that laws apply to individual without significant financial resources, sporadically to the truly wealthy, almost never to corporations, and never to the shareholders.

Trying to fix a broken system with a "Hippocratic oath" for software developers is like trying to fix school shootings by making sure the doctors will save the school shooters as much as the victims.

Microsoft could still be profitable and fix way more bugs in the software than they do - they choose the higher profit margin over "the good of humanity" all day every day, and it is the executives and major shareholders that make that own that decision.

</comment><comment><USER81> In Greece, we do take an engineering oath to graduate: in summary to nurture and expand science and to improve and protect human welfare. In a similar fashion, in Canada they have the iron ring [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring).

IEEE and almost all of the serious engineering organizations have a code of ethics.

Accountability of the management is what is missing. If a hospital management instructs their doctors to skip costly steps in a procedure, they are going to jail. If any engineering company screws up and lives are hurt, lost or damaged somehow (e.g. privacy), they issue a public apology; rinse and repeat.

Which is ironic, as "a doctor might screw up and kill a few patients, but if you as an engineer screw up you can kill thousands." Because you are not there holding their hands when people get hurt, get their identity stolen, their money or lose their lives due to a bug or critical error, does not make you less responsible.

The problem with our field is that i) it has immaterial direct results, ii) big failures have big money behind them. The first makes it hard to impossible for the public to understand the implications and does not excite terror if you are not directly involved. How many people run in fear hearing about "x credit company got hacked"? The latter reason implies that there is an incentive for no punishment -- similarly to banking institutions in 2007.

I think we are unfortunately a lot of the times swaying between being a statistic ([https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death- statistic/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/)) or having insignificant or incomprehensible impact for us to gain legal power to push back. Recall that deep learning, distributed ledgers, etc are magic or demonized by the public.

P.S. One could argue that not all software developers are trained engineers etc, but I am not buying that. As a lot have noted even if a person is not academically trained they can take an oath, but nothing is going to change in the responsibility realm.

</comment><comment><USER82> How about an oath for tech CEOs? Or better yet, some strong, comprehensive laws on data collection and ownership?

<comment><USER83> How about renewed enforcement of anti-trust laws? Tech CEOs love to make a big stand about issues but they are the root cause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> All traditional degrees that have "engineering" in title are usually regulated professions in every country, same as those of doctors and lawers. You have to learn the local law that applies to your domain and are qualified and recognized by the state after you get a degree to work locally there.

Software engineering is one of the few where word "engineering" is not really engineering. Software engineers neither know the law, not are trained for that, work globally and have no idea what laws apply. This has its own benefits and drawbacks (such as, less protection - anyone can take your job, no matter the degree, but you can also work anywhere).

For "software engineers" to be real engineers in order to take any oath, the education system and degrees for software need to change and match those of other local protected engineering degrees, with all benefits and drawbacks of a state recognized profession that can by carried only locally. None of current developers matches any of that.

It could be a possible future, but it may also kill talent as know it in software. The software market dynamics of today exist because everyone that can write code can claim they are "software engineers" and they only need to write code to prove that. You cannot claim you are a doctor, just because you think you have skills to heal people and prove that by healing out a few.

</comment><comment><USER85> Yeah ok. Only if it works as an escape clause for NDAs. If we can't talk about the chain of management decisions that led to being asked to implement something unethical, then a personal oath is only something to be used against us. If an ethically conflicted engineer ever asks "why" they always get the same answer, "because it's what the client/department head/CTO wants." I have never worked at a company that takes any moral implications of technology seriously. Money rules all.

</comment><comment><USER86> Should probably start with a Hippocratic Oath for the c-suite execs.

</comment><comment><USER87> Great, if we will take software engineers to task over their ethics, let's form a professional regulatory body that licenses them and a union or advocacy org while we are at it. Tech companies have benefited tremendously from the way the profession is currently setup. I'd love to see how they respond when they can't make SWEs dance like monkeys in their interviews to get a job. Suddenly, outsourcing the work would become a lot less possible too.

</comment><comment><USER88> Doctors can't be told how to practice medicine by non md managers.

</comment><comment><USER89> Sure, let's let the decision makers off the hook because they're untouchable anyway thanks to the system they created - a system we keep agreeing to everytime we buy their products and vote for their puppets.

But it's not the decision makers who should be targeted. The workers told selling the product aren't a problem. The workers marketing the product aren't the problem. No. The workers told to make the product.

These workers have such easy, stable, and wealthy lives that they cannot be pressured in any way to make something harmful. They are so intelligent, so smart, so perceptive that the truth can't ever be hidden from them. In a world governed by relative and fuzzy morals and ethics, with few absolutes and a plethora of grays, these guardians of the righteous should take an oath to be better; to take responsibility; to uphold these virtues; to lead by example; to let no more evil pass under their gold hands as they type in the language of the creators (perl).

All you have to do to become one of these divine creatures? Take an online programming course and tick a box stating you read and understood the ter... uh... oath. Yeah. Oath. Because that's what's gonna solve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER90> > If you look today at who is studying an AP course for computer science in an > American high school, what you will see is a group of people that are more > male, white, urban, and more affluent than the country as a whole. That is > what we need to address

As a male, white, urban, and affluent, perhaps he could demand to get replaced by a POC like some corporate board members have done, instead of endlessly yapping and proudly showing off his self-hating racism.

</comment><comment><USER91> Maybe we need a hippocratic oat for microsoft CEO's. Or maybe there already is one, like the one we have for bankers. But somehow they are still corrupt, big surprise. Let's just accept people do bad things and empty promises are worthless. the penalty for oathbreaking in ancient greece was death or the extinction of the family line (harsh, i know). that's very different from modern 'oaths'.

</comment><comment><USER92> No, we need no such thing. Any such "Hippocratic Oath" would just become a statement of loyalty to the politics of the people in charge of drafting and administering the oath. The recent and still-raw experience of activists in tech companies damaging their coworkers and their company under the guise of "ethics" should tell us that this word is just a sneaky disguise for politics.

</comment><comment><USER93> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring)

<comment><USER94> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring)

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> We also need a Hippocratic Oath for CEOs and investors and shareholders. We need a Hippocratic Oath for Corporations, for they have personhoods too!

</comment><comment><USER96> It doesn't work for doctors in the U.S. (see opioid epidemic, pharmaceutical company deals, etc.), why would it work for Software Engineers?

<comment><USER97> "All the nations of the world may sign up for the kinds of principles and rules we've described now, but will everybody follow them? Will everybody even sign them? Well, we don't yet know. But if you get these kinds of laws or principles adopted, it makes it easier to galvanize everyone to stand up and defend them. It makes it easier to hold the violators accountable."

It sounds more like a mandatory code of conduct for all software projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> We need to go far beyond that -- we need an actual profession. It always strikes me as odd that someone can go through a 4 week bootcamp and call themselves a software engineer. Robert Martin has been advocating this for point for years -- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17vTLSkXTOo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17vTLSkXTOo)

<comment><USER99> >It always strikes me as odd that someone can go through a 4 week bootcamp and call themselves a software engineer

Why? If four weeks is enough for somebody to learn enough that they can build Joe the Plumber a slightly nicer-looking website that he's happy with, what's wrong with that? A lot of excellent software engineers have zero days of formal software education. Even Donald Knuth doesn't have a software engineering degree; he has physics and maths degrees. Should Donald Knuth be forbidden from developing software because he doesn't have a piece of paper saying "software engineering degree"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> No thanks. Apart from creating unnecessary barriers to entry, such an oath would immediately be politicized and used to stifle certain views, speech, and work. More broadly, I also think licensing in general can be counter productive, constraining supply and imposing bureaucratic certifications where none are needed.

How about we start with something we need more immediately - updated antitrust laws that are enforced against giant companies like Microsoft? Brad Smith is talking big about requiring an oath for engineers but neglects his own role. Before he was President, he was General Counsel for MS. He is still today the chief legal officer and chief compliance officer alongside his president title ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Smith_(American_lawyer)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Smith_\(American_lawyer\))). Let see him and Microsoft come clean on antitrust, privacy, theft of others' innovation (like Slack) while holding a giant patent war chest, etc.

</comment><comment><USER101> I suppose the NSA will just disappear overnight, that and the military industrial complex /s.

People very much disagree on what is ethical, and the people who know they are being unethical rarely let simple oaths stop them. Am oath like this simply becomes a nuisance to the ethical free thinkers, while becoming one more useless social more for the people who don't care about ethics.

</comment><comment><USER102> I think I prefer the three permaculture ethical principles. They are much more condensed, more broadly applicable to any technology at any tech level, and much more holistic. These are:

1\. Care of Earth

2\. Care of People

3\. Fair Share

They can be applied to technology as part of the whole ecology, not just human-centric. It puts life and death in the proper context of the whole, rather than the way modernity had twisted it up.

<comment><USER103> Caring about ecology is very much human-centric.

Neither the planet nor its biological inhabitants "care" about anything. They just are (as in they exist).

The main driver for protecting the ecosystem is the fact that we - as a species - can't survive (for long) without it.

Granted, there are some who strongly believe that becoming a race of cave dwelling mole people or inhabitants of glorified snow globes in an inhospitable barren wasteland is a desirable prospect somehow. But overall humans prefer blue skies, green meadows, birdsong, trees, and diverse natural landscapes.

<comment><USER102> Care about the ecology is not just about the environment as if it were something separate, or abstracted. There is a very practical, pragmatic reason not to sh$t where you eat. At least, not without composting with charcoal, or using one of those ecovats to clean it first, before feeding it back to the garden.

As far as whether the planet or biology "care", we will have to disagree and leave it at that. While I think the word "care" is overloaded with a number of meanings, many are human-centric, I do have beliefs that there is a planetary and plant intelligence. I don't think the Universe is as uncaring as you think, though there are many, many unpleasant things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> Replace Software Engineers with "Anyone involved in the creation of software", and then it goes from a "Definitely not" to a "Eh, maybe."

Until the people pointing the software engineering departments are held accountable for their immoral behavior and goals, I don't think the engineers beneath them can really be assessed fairly.

</comment><comment><USER105> There is one.

[https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics](https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics)

<comment><USER60> That's an ACM Code of Ethics. Software Engineers aren't required to be in the ACM, so it's not, in any meaningful sense, a general code of ethics for software engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> The Hippocratic oath isn't very effective — it did not prevent the development of bioweapons, drugs to carry out death sentences, or human destruction during WW2. If doctors can have their oath circumvented in a very tangible and obvious way, why do we think programmers working at a high level of abstraction can't?

</comment><comment><USER107> The real answer is the same as it has always been: libre software.

Funny how same topic comes up every time some new issue pops up but we've had the answer nailed in the 90s.

If you want software you can trust no amount of oaths, certificates and overseer bodies will ever be enough. It's only possible to trust fully transparent software.

<comment><USER103> These are orthogonal topics, though.

This isn't about trust. Is using Libre Office Calc for operating a death camp more ethical than using MS Excel?

Is the creation and use of an armed autonomous drone justifiable and ethical as long as its firmware is open source?

Are misinformation bots and fake news generators OK, as long their source code is freely available for use and further modification?

<comment><USER108> well, then using Hippocratic Oatch is not a right metaphor. Doctors are supposed to take care of their patients and not judge their morals, even if such patient is a death camp commander.

<comment><USER107> Yup, if I'm a Libre office developer what am I suppose to do to prevent nazis using my program? It's absurd to put this weight on a software developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's unfortunate, perhaps to the point of irrelevance, that a need for ethics was raised and then summarily limited to AI.

Software, all software, needs an ethical standard and it currently has nothing remotely close in common practice. This will be a hard sell though, because most developers have no idea what ethics are, why they would be needed, or how they apply to practice. Frequently when the idea of ethics are raised the response is hostility and often framed in terms that are purely imaginative.

When people in other industries ask me what's required to be a software developer I always tell them it's just a matter of charming an interviewer. There is no education requirement, no licensing/certification, no standard skill definition, no internship or agency, and certainly no ethical standard. It's always amusing to watch their response.

<comment><USER109> Certainly we can be very happy that it is so.

<comment><USER14> When you don't have anything to compare it to I am sure its perfect and faultless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring)

>The Iron Ring is a ring worn by many Canadian-trained engineers, as a symbol and reminder of the obligations and ethics associated with their profession. The ring is presented to engineering graduates in a private ceremony known as the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer.[1][2] The concept of the ritual and its Iron Rings originated from H. E. T. Haultain in 1922, with assistance from Rudyard Kipling, who crafted the ritual at Haultain's request.[1][3]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring)

</comment><comment><USER111> Wow coming from Microsoft that is a bit rich. I do understand the problem with developers being a law unto themselves but that was largely caused by the propriety mess caused by Microsoft and others. So now they want to fix what they broke to their advantage. No thank you.

</comment><comment><USER112> No, this is a meaningless sentiment. Floating a feel-good idea like this accomplishes little in the face of how the world actually works. In the real world the hippocratic oath does not prevent malpractice, over prescription of opioids, or name your beef with the entire healthcare system let alone doctors actions.

Engineers are hired to make weapons systems that kill civilians. Engineers make software that enable ubiquitous surveillance by whomever wants to use it for whatever purpose. No a Hippocratic oath will have a hard time influencing individuals and their organizations that's what laws and the enforcement thereof are aimed at. I have little hope for oaths or laws however.

</comment><comment><USER113> Yeah, how about not abusing their market dominance with lock-in and anti- competitive shenanigans? MS could benefit from sticking to proper business practices first. Preaching ethics while the company engages in shady behavior is hypocritical, not Hippocratic.

</comment><comment><USER114> Please have a hippocratic oath for management first.

</comment><comment><USER115> I think we need to go well beyond a Hippocratic oath.

Most Software Engineering Degrees require an ethics course. Yet - we still have the issues we have today.

Asking for good intentions isn't going to change outcomes, because Software Engineers already have good intentions. Nothing will change.

How about Software Engineering Licensure? You have been found to contribute glaring security issues in widespread code? Lose your license and employment. Use dark patterns to defraud people? Lose your license and employment. Leave "debugging" endpoints open or collect unminimized telemetry? Lose your license and employment.

This seems stronger, and much more likely that outcomes will change.

But good luck getting the industry to move.

<comment><USER31> Ethics is not a hard science.

Also it's not that the underbelly asks would ask their hacker candidates for a license, or that the military/cops would care about a licensing body.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> Or we could just finally admit it: markets/buissness needs to be regulated.

And markets/businesses with a high risk of negative effects for society (and software already belongs in this category) should be strickly and proactevly regulated.

</comment><comment><USER117> That's rich coming from a lawyer who has been with Microsoft since the early 90's..

Maybe the oath is yet another hollow ritual and what Software Engineers need is what everyone else needs, a sense of morals and a spine.

</comment><comment><USER118> Looking at history, we rather need a hippocratic oath for Microsoft CEO's.

</comment><comment><USER119> We don't need a Hippocratic oath for engineers, we need it for management. It shouldn't be up to the individual engineer to guide the organization towards better morals, it should be upper management.

</comment><comment><USER120> Software engineers usually aren't in charge of the features they write. They can refuse to do their job at their own peril. Maybe we need a hippocratic oath for product managers or something.

</comment><comment><USER121> More like an oath for company directors. No single engineer will make the world destroying AI on their own it will be made by companies getting more and more desperate for people to click their ads.

</comment><comment><USER122> A better thing would be if CEOs would take that oath. Software engineers tend to be told what to do, they are more like soldiers than like doctors.

What would be good if we took a leaf out of the book of the _real_ engineers and started caring out what we put out there as though lives depend on it. But that starts with getting rid of all of those disclaimers. No other industry gets away with accepting such little liability as the software profession.

</comment><comment><USER123> Softwsre Engineers rarely get to make those decisions about privacy or AI ethics. From the engineer standing point of view, there is of little possibility of the engineer knowing exactly how his code will be used. There should be an oath for people making this decision but not so much for people doing this. The reason why doctors swears in is because they are to make those calls that could easily decides a person's life or death

</comment><comment><USER124> What we need is more ethics courses and courses on historical business frauds/schemes as a graduation prerequisite for getting an MBA. For the persons leading the groups of software engineers.

I am honestly much more worried about terrible directives coming from c-suite persons, that result in ethically questionable apps and software.

In addition to ethics training and commitments from the persons doing the actual engineering work.

</comment><comment><USER125> So he suggests something like the "Hambach Declaration on AI"? When it comes to regulation we are fast in the EU ;) [https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/institutional- matters/decla...](https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/institutional- matters/declaration-de-hambach-sur-la-cooperation-transfrontaliere-franco- allemande)

</comment><comment><USER126> While I still keep in mind the words from Tron ("fight for the users") and haven't yet accepted a job where people would likely be harmed by my code one way or another (that I knew of), much of the blame still falls on management as the top comment says.

Still, I'll always try to fight for the users in any code I write and, specially, in any code I control.

</comment><comment><USER127> The Hippocratic Oath works for doctors because they have power over what happens to their patient(s). Administrators and managers run the facility, but cannot tell Doctors what to do.

It would only work for software engineers if we moved to the same model: Management run the facility but cannot tell software developers what to build.

I don't think that's a viable model for managing software development.

<comment><USER128> I think that could work but the people working there wouldn't solely be software engineers (e.g. not just code monkeys). They would be a person using software engineering to solve a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> What about Hippocratic Oath for Management and Leadership.

In all seriousness, ultimate decision making, hiring, firing, promoting, rewarding, punishing and culture building are all on management and leadership. Microsoft President happen to be on top of it. If they think companies use engineers in an unethical way, what about building management culture that ensures this wont happen.

</comment><comment><USER130> Ok sure, all for it but as a business executive, the president of Microsoft can really stay the hell out of the process of coming up with that.

</comment><comment><USER131> Get into an industry, make a shitload of money, then add regulation and qualifications to make it harder for the next generation.

A tale as old as time itself.

<comment><USER51> That's the summary for the Boomer & X'ers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> I say no. My boss says "well, then no more salary for you". I say yes. My boss smiles. I feel dirty but my kids are not hungry.

<comment><USER133> Think more like a member of guild.

In fact, I am starting to think certifications like PCI DSS are similar to oath: "I will not leak customer data, I will not leak card information". If the oath is broken, the PCI retaliation is swift: the whole company is totally cut off from processing payments. The company compliance is ensured on threat of bankruptcy.

So you push back: pushing this through means the company will fail PCI DSS audit once that comes up, and then we're all out of jobs. No salary for anyone. And the boss thinks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> This is stupid. It's like asking a blacksmith to not build a specific knife, because it'll be used in a murder. You need to prosecute the murderer not the people building the knife.

Software, as an object, is harmless. It can be used for good or evil, just like anything else. So if anybody needs an oath is the people using the software, not the people building it.

</comment><comment><USER135> Quick retort, i'd roughly sketch out the problems with software as 10% personal ethical issues & 90% as leadership/organizational/constraint/related.

Engineers want time & resources to do a good job, to make sure things are well considered. It is capital that drives us to push for expediency & convenience.

</comment><comment><USER136> Electrical Engineers, if they join the IEEE, are asked to uphold their code of ethics: [https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html](https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html)

Mechanical Engineers have a similar one (ASM).

This is not novel.

</comment><comment><USER137> I'm not a fan of the article's opening comparison to military hierarchy as an example of an organization that deploys weapons with ethics or discretion. As we've seen in (at least) the US, the military industrial complex determines when and where we fight, often at the expense of thousands of innocent lives.

</comment><comment><USER138> More usefully we need something like "engineers sign off". A railway engineer is needed to sign (literally) a document saying that a new bridge or changed line is safe and reliable - and if they don't there is no getting around it by management etc.

This has lots of implications but the big one is really very few railway deaths.

</comment><comment><USER139> Most evil is conducted with the conductor being fully aware that the action is evil. An oath isn't going to stop someone who is aware they are violating social norms in the first place.

A thief knows stealing is wrong. A murderer knows killing is wrong. You don't stop thieves and murderers by making them swear hippocratic oaths.

</comment><comment><USER140> This has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with hyping AI. "It's so good you need to listen to me. Not just on technical matters but on _moral_ matters. It's too dangerous to give to just anyone but I can protect you from it. I can harness it for good. If only you would do as I say and give me $1b"

</comment><comment><USER141> Why are people so obsessed with "don't be evil" if "be good" is a much more effective commandment. This suit had to visit pope Francis to ask him how to program a soulless machine, his time would have been better spend helping a local charity or even better a struggling family member.

</comment><comment><USER142> Absolutely not.

No.

No again.

A thousand times, no.

The reason that doctors take an oath is because their practice directly affects people. A patient puts their leg, their heart, their eyes right into the doctors hands. Any mistake, any "experiments"... this directly harms the patient in an objective way.

A "do no harm" oath doesn't work with software. A software engineer writes a piece of code. This can be used for good, or evil, but by whose standard? Once the code is out there, the software developer cannot be held liable for its abuse, except perhaps in the limited circumstance that the software was designed FOR abuse. (ie: a zero day released without responsible disclosure).

I would never take an oath that I wouldn't release "harmful software". First, because "harmful" today has become incredibly subjective. (Someone might say I'm being harmful in writing this!) Second, because it's difficult to tell how something will be used, and I don't have the time or energy to follow up with everyone using it to make sure they're using it to my liking.

Last year, someone got a lot of attention for taking down their insignificant NodeJS is_even implementation when they discovered that ICE was using it. Can you imagine what would happen if Redis disappeared, because the authors discovered it was being used by some disagreeable activists?

I'll tell you, very simply. People would continue to use it, having archived the source. The activists, ICE, you, me, everyone. Any such oath is useless posturing, and subject to the whims and pressures of what's in vogue today. Gives the appearance of doing good, without having to do any good.

<comment><USER143> There's checking people using your libs downstream (which, admittedly, is quite hard to do) and there's not writing software for cruise missiles.

> This can be used for good, or evil, but by whose standard?

Your own. The oath is taken by humans, and humans differ in opinion - no one can impose an absolute standard on you, and you follow your oath as you understand it. There's no board to deprive you of your license in IT.

> Any such oath is useless posturing, and subject to the whims and pressures > of what's in vogue today.

It's only as good as the will to uphold it. I think that's what's in short supply among the stereotypical "bro" coders.

<comment><USER51> > cruise missiles

Cruise missiles aren't necessarily evil, quite the opposite, they could be guaranteeing Liberty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER144> "Software Engineers" are not the problem. They'll do what their told. That Microsoft President should look higher up the food chain (stuff rots from the head chief). Also the analogy to having a UCMJ-type legal system for "Software Engineers" is just bonkers.

</comment><comment><USER145> Those of us with professional Engineering titles already have to do a kind of engineering oath anyway.

The problem is the lack of value of the word "engineering" in several countries, where everyone fells like calling themselves engineer after a six weeks bootcamp without suffering any issue with it.

<comment><USER51> > The problem is the lack of value of the word "engineering" in several > countries

Or the fact that "enginnering" has be co-opted and made de-facto illegal for all but the small minority who agree to pay the local mafia^Wengineering association. This is especially a problem in North America. In Europe, the problem is different as you can only declare yourself an "engineer" if you've been in the right university.

Anyway, I could be a P.Eng, but paying the yearly racket money... I'll pass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER146> This is another example of the system trying to move to individual workers the failures of the economic elite. It is not the software engineering profession that is putting in risk the world, instead it is the unscrupulous drive for more profits coming from investors and CEOs.

</comment><comment><USER147> What the Microsoft President said:

"We need a Hippocratic oath for software engineers"

What it would be useful for the Microsoft President to say:

"We need a Hippocratic oath for software engineers, marketing, sales, accounting, customer support, management, senior executive staff, board of directors, ..."

</comment><comment><USER148> Software Engineers: but your ethics aren't my ethics, and/or ethics get in the way of my paycheck.

</comment><comment><USER149> We need a Hippocratic Oath for the medical profession. How many doctors honestly "First do no harm"? Seriously, my father was killed by them and my best friend was seriosly injured. If they would have never visited doctors they would still be alive or still walking.

</comment><comment><USER150> As a Microsoft employee how could I take a Hippocratic oath and continue to work or do for Microsoft? Is DOD and ICE not harming people? It's not the engineers that need to take the oath, it's the greedy business folk that will do anything for a dollar.

</comment><comment><USER151> I think a lot of folks on HN supporting this might be disappointed to find out what it actually covers. While you may find it unethical to work for Palantir or Facebook, or require JS to view a page, this particular law isn't going to be on your side.

</comment><comment><USER152> Tangential... but who exactly is Microsoft's president? I always thought that "the president" of a company was the CEO (that's how it seems used in my native French anyhow). What's the difference here?

</comment><comment><USER153> > In the top 10 Computer Science departments in the nation, there is only one > that requires taking an ethics course to graduate

I'm not sure how well this meshes with the "you don't need a computer science degree to be a programmer" trend.

</comment><comment><USER154> Yeah sure, except if I refuse to do something my boss will fire me and find someone who will.

And hey, now that remote work is the new hotness, we're more replaceable than ever!

Before we can be expected to take an oath of any kind, software engineers need to have agency.

</comment><comment><USER155> How's this for a start: the class of people who by their particular education and talent control tech platforms shouldn't get to determine what political, scientific, and cultural content other people are allowed to consume.

</comment><comment><USER156> It won't work. There will always be an engineer willing to sell out humans for money or knowledge. Money obviously being the root of all evil.

The surveillance apparatus wouldn't exist without these types of engineers.

</comment><comment><USER157> It makes more sense to have this oath for all tech workers, not just software engineers. Software Engineers may have less visibility on matters that determine ethics.

Managers handle the context of application of a software.

</comment><comment><USER158> Software Engineers: We need a Hippocratic Oath for Microsoft Presidents.

</comment><comment><USER159> As a developer using Microsoft tools, I'll take the "Hippocratic oath for software engineers" when Microsoft releases fully bug-free tools and operating systems. Not until then.

</comment><comment><USER160> The ACM does have their code of ethics for all members... [https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics](https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics)

</comment><comment><USER161> It used to be DON'T BE EVIL until Google turned to the dark side.

</comment><comment><USER162> I hope AI will make as much people jobless as possible. Especially lazy Europeans who took too much money away from me via huge taxes. I hate all Europeans very very much.

</comment><comment><USER163> Let's assume that the president of Microsoft said this but it was taken out of context. He of all people understands who decides what gets built and how it is used.

</comment><comment><USER164> We already have something better. It's called the AGPL 3.

</comment><comment><USER165> No. We need one for software company executives and investors.

A senior executive who wants to push this onto their employees can be safely optimized out of the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER166> I couldn't disagree more. On the contrary, there needs to be a Hippocratic Oath for Management, Marketing and CEOs.

Anything else will just be buck passing!

</comment><comment><USER167> I think more like software engineering needs to be more formalized like the other mature engineering disciplines such as Civil Engineering.

</comment><comment><USER168> "Do not create tools which can be used for evil" is rather hard to do. Metasploit is rather useful but can be used for great evil.

</comment><comment><USER83> That'd be great, then their employers could ride rough-shod over their oath the same way hospitals and insurers do with doctors.

</comment><comment><USER169> [https://order-of-the-engineer.org/](https://order-of-the-engineer.org/)

</comment><comment><USER170> Why not some sort of professional standards body with examinations for admittance like any other engineering discipline.

</comment><comment><USER171> This will not work unless the CEOs of all of these companies take the same oath too ... along with the shareholders.

</comment><comment><USER172> Do no harm, patents, copyright and proprietary software being considered harmful.

I could get behind that, dont think you will though.

</comment><comment><USER173> Some of these systems are so complicated it is hard for one person to reason about every eventuality.

</comment><comment><USER174> Stupid bullshit, we need a Hippocratic Oath for CEOs if ANY OF THIS COLOSSAL MESS IS EXPECTED TO IMPROVE!

</comment><comment><USER175> I just wrote a keylogger in Python, and billion dollar companies shouldn't be touted as arbiters of morality

</comment><comment><USER176> The minute we do that all software engineering will be shipped off to countries that don't require that.

</comment><comment><USER177> Could a software engineer writing guided missile targeting software be held accountable to such an oath?

<comment><USER178> The Hippocratic Oath is not for assigning blame or providing accountability towards society's rules - at least not in the first place. It is a reminder of basic ethical and professional standards and contributes to the common understanding of a physician's role.

This may seem ridiculous considering the responsibilities of medical professionals but it works as a baseline independent of the legal and moral standards of the particular society they live in.

So to answer your question:

Yes, the software engineer could be held accountable - yet, that would arguably be up to him- or herself in many cases [1]. There were physicians in history who have done horrible things [2] and - if not by the legal system - they were at least judged by their peers for their actions.

From my perspective, the most valuable aspect of having an oath (and that I regard for professions in general) seems to be the opportunity it offers for reflection, identity and future aspirations.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath#Violation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath#Violation) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele)

</comment></comment><comment><USER179> No, we need antitrust investigations

</comment><comment><USER180> that's a lot of words to try and move accountability from the executive level into the common soldiery.

the medical profession hierarchy is completely different to accommodate for medics own agency.

responsibility without freedom (and without just compensation, dare I say) is just bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER181> And yet they provide services to ICE

</comment><comment><USER182> Not gonna do it. Not, gonna, do it.

</comment><comment><USER183> I feel like a lot of people here are missing the point of professional agreements or organizations like this: protecting the engineer from the consequence of saying "no" to something unethical. Almost every software engineer I talk to has a story about something they did early in their career that was ethically dubious. Hell, I work at a fairly senior level in medical software and I still feel like I'm taking risks by saying "no" to things that are clearly sketchy.

Also, it makes sure we have a ethical framework to work with. Right now, it's every engineer for themselves. You won't do something that sits in a legal gray area? Companies will find someone hungry enough to do it. If we're all staking our professional reputation on it, there will be fewer competent takers.

Personally, I think it will also be a step towards better legitimizing the profession and being more inclusive. Many folks have started equating Software Engineer with hyper-rationalist orthodox libertarianism and... the stereotype isn't far off from what's typically upvoted in these sorts of communities.

Anyway, them's my thoughts on this. I definitely support this sort of notion.

</comment><comment><USER184> Hippocratic Oath is the wrong thing. Software Engineers need to act like real Engineers, namely certifications, accepted practices and penalization (revocation of certifications) if accepted practices aren't followed. Software Engineering needs live up to it's actual name and stop being just "programmers".

<comment><USER107> No please. Let's not take 1 step forward and 10 steps back. Software engineer culture is already light-years ahead of pretty much every medium in every regard ranging from inclusivity to simple fun factors.

Certifications is meaningless corporate propaganda and we should eliminate it completely unless it's free and public.

<comment><USER184> Disagree. Without standards we as a group hold ourselves there's no improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER185> How about we start with a Hippocratic oath for public company executive management.

<comment><USER37> "I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will respect the duty to increase shareholder profits by any means necessary."

</comment></comment><comment><USER186> Doesn't he mean for MBAs?

</comment><comment><USER187> I think a hippocratic oath for CXO's and other managers are more needed.

</comment><comment><USER188> Isn't that what GPL is?

</comment><comment><USER189> Please would someone remind me about how and why the Hippocratic oath began

</comment><comment><USER190> When I was taking CS Engineering UG course(IN~2008), there was an elective subject(have to be chosen by entire class) called 'Engineering Ethics'. It was a preferred elective as there was no course work and I think there were no tests as well.

I remember the professor starting the class as,

>"If a Structural/Civil Engineer builds a bridge and it goes down, he/she will go to jail; lucky for you guys there are no ethics for computer science".

Last time when I said this, I was told _there 's no way a Structural/Civil Engineer goes to jail if a bridge goes down_. May be its more common in India, could be very well be the norm because every time a bridge goes down a related Engineer gets arrested the very same day or soon under 'Causing death by negligence'; perhaps a practice from colonial era still being practiced to pacify public.

Read:

Another BMC engineer arrested in Mumbai bridge collapse(2019)[1]

Bhubaneswar flyover collapse: Engineer, director of construction firm arrested(2017)[2]

4 Engineers Arrested In Kolkata Flyover Collapse Case(2016)[3]

IIT Roorkee: Two professors arrested in bridge collapse case(2015)[4]

SMC engineer held in bridge collapse case suspended(2014)[5]

Gammon, Hyundai officials arrested, probe ordered(2009)[6]

I'm sure you can pull up such cases going back at least 200 years.

[1][https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current- affairs/02041...](https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current- affairs/020419/another-bmc-engineer-arrested-in-mumbai-bridge-collapse.html)

[2][https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bhubaneswar- flyove...](https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/bhubaneswar-flyover- collapse-engineer-director-of-construction-firm-arrested/story- qZbWHlzGgoeCQ7xbw179yI.html)

[3][https://www.ndtv.com/kolkata-news/4-engineers-arrested-in- ko...](https://www.ndtv.com/kolkata-news/4-engineers-arrested-in-kolkata- flyover-collapse-case-1621175)

[4][https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/iit-roorkee-two- profes...](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/iit-roorkee-two-professors- arrested-in-bridge-collapse-case-261726-2015-09-07)

[5][http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/38044181.cms](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/38044181.cms)

[6][https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kota-bridge- collapse-30-dead...](https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/kota-bridge- collapse-30-dead-25-still-trapped-407537)

</comment><comment><USER191> How about a Hippocratic Oath for the pharmaceutical industry first?

</comment><comment><USER192> Sounds like hiring competition with FB and Google is hotting up then

</comment><comment><USER193> Software engineers: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Tech C-Suits.

</comment><comment><USER194> We Urgently Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Executives

</comment><comment><USER195> When are we having a Hippocratic Oath for politicians ?

</comment><comment><USER154> This is like saying "we need a hippocratic oath for hands".

</comment><comment><USER194> We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Executives

</comment><comment><USER196> Okay. How about one for politicians and CEO's?

</comment><comment><USER197> For software engineering companies is more like it

</comment><comment> pi-victor the audacity of this pos. i'll take it, if we also have a Hippocratic oath for greedy CEOs and board members.

</comment><comment><USER198> We Need a Hippocratic Oath for CEOs

</comment><comment><USER199> doctors can agree on a minimal ethical standard, software engineers can't

</comment><comment><USER200> Oh yeah, WE are the problem.

</comment><comment><USER201> Software engineers do what pays the bills.

The people in charge who run the business need a Hippocratic oath.

</comment><comment><USER202> Really, Brad? Software Engineers need a hippocratic oath?

This is the most hypocritical, low-minded dirty blow, pass-the-buck mentality I have seen in a long time. That's even counting most of what Trump has said. You should be ashamed of yourself, Brad.

How dare you make that remark when your WHOLE PLATFORM is built on shady business practices and monopoly leveraging? How dare you try to shunt the blame on software engineers when YOU YOURSELF profit from lack of ethics and participate in systematic blacklisting of engineers? You earn seven figures a year AT LEAST and are trying to blame people just doing their jobs, and telling them they should look at the big picture and they should "have principles" to basically refuse to work or quit? While at the same time actively preventing these kinds of people from finding ethical work elsewhere?

Put your money where your mouth is or stop spewing Trumpian bullshit, Brad. Anybody who buys this needs to have their head examined. With a cactus.

</comment><comment><USER203> how about an oath for executives of big corporations?

</comment><comment><USER204> "First do no spam."

</comment><comment><USER205> Do civil engineers, accountants, or lawyers take an oath?

</comment><comment><USER206> Seriously? How about a Hippocratic Oath for CEOs and other corporate executives? They exist in a world that encourages sociopathic behavior, and they are coming down on engineers?

</comment><comment><USER207> No

</comment><comment><USER208> You first, management.

</comment><comment><USER209> What about the C-suite?

</comment><comment><USER210> They should start by open sourcing the operating system.

</comment><comment><USER211> Brad Smith in 2007: Linux violates 235 MS patents, and the FOSS community must pay up. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070514143032/https://money.cnn...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070514143032/https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/)

Brad Smith in 2020: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers.</comment>