Dr. J's Contemporary Issues in CS Lecture Notes

Risks of Technology

• Bill Joy's Why the future doesn't need us, Wired Magazine, April 2000. Assignment for this week is to read the paper and write a short response on bblearn. It used to be we had one existential threat: nuclear annihilation. Joy proposes three more: genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. Are these threats looking more plausible, or less plausible in the year 2018 than they did in 2000?

Announcements

• No class next week, Monday September 3 (Labor Day)
• September 10 will be a talk from Dr. Linyun Fu of Twitter
• As of 1:12pm, I had 32/42 submissions on HW#1. If you have submitted your HW#1, thank you. If not, I want to know why not.

Bill Joy's Risks

the Risk of Genetic Engineering Apocalypse?

What is it?

Engineered plague? This risk is that humans will use technology to create a biological weapon so successful that it kills us all.

How likely is it?

Are there related risks?

the Risk of Nano-Technology Apocalypse?

What is it?

Gray goo? This risk is characterised by the notion that micro-devices capable of self-replication will run amok and cover the earth.

How likely is it?

Are there related risks?

the Risk of Robotic Apocalypse?

What is it?

Welcome our new robotic overlords? The usual version of this risk is that AI will enslave or more likely eliminate humans.

How likely is it?

We are already dependent on many machines, including computers, to scale our production (e.g. of food, and energy). Do you agree, or disagree, with the assertion that we are likely to drift further into complete dependence on machines?

Are there related risks?

Do you agree, or disagree with the notion that even if the machines don't take over, further automation will place more power in the hands of whatever tiny elite controls the machines?

Other Risks of Technology

Risk that technology will enable a (Country|Supervillain) to take over

Risk that technology will put us all out of work

ethics are the moral principles govern behavior or activity

So ethics in computing are the moral principles that govern our professional computing activities: inventing software/hardware, coding, documenting or administrating a computing system, billing

OK, but what are moral principles?

values, rights and wrongs

And, what do we mean by "govern"?

• avoiding what is illegal, so that you don't go to jail (explicit, external government)
• avoiding what society considers to be wrong, so that you don't have negative external consequences, such as getting fired, or hurting your company or personal reputation. (social government, still external)
• restricting your own behavior based on your personal values (self government)

Choices

• sometimes it is choosing between good and evil
• sometimes it is just choosing the greater good, the lesser of evils, or the overall best moral cost/benefit ratio

Interestingly, one of the early pioneers of computer ethics, AI researcher Joseph Weizenbaum, claimed A/I would be good for making decisions, but not choices.

Maner's Hypothesis

"ethical decisions are much harder to make when computers are added"

Do you agree or disagree? Can you give an example in support of this claim?

Ethics vs. Politics

Examples of Ethical Issues in Computing

• a software engineer is asked to write software to cheat a government regulation (VW; could cause hundreds or thousands to get sick or die, but not immediately)
• a software engineer finds out someone else is breaking a law (whistleblowing)
• a computer researcher realises the best way to get a promotion is to patent an obvious mathematical idea
• a computer researcher gets help (or code) from others, but is tempted not to give them credit (or not to pay)

Reading Assignment

• Children's Access to the Web (what are the ethics issues here?)
  • Cyber patrol
  • Peacefire and its Censorware page
  • Net Nanny
  • PICS
• Ethicscodescollection.org seems to have every code of ethics in the world, including various Computing Societies that you might never have heard of.
• CopyRight
  • Benedict.com's Copyright Website
  • Stanford's Copyright & Fair Use page
  • Ethics with Robots
• Computer Ethics Institute
• this overview is hosted at Clarkson U., adapted from this article
• this article is from someone at Notre Dame, and includes links to related articles

Ethical Conundrum of the Day

Bases for Ethics

Atheists will say: natural selection has bred ethics into our genes.

Nature is completely full of violence. It is eat or be eaten. Some conjecture that ethics was bred into us on a group, tribe, or societal level, but there is no evidence of natural selection working on such an aggregate basis. Why do (most) humans insist that there is right and wrong behavior? Was it simply taught? Is it purely environmental/cultural conditioning? Or do humans know "right" and "wrong" implicitly?

To the atheists' view, existentialists will add: there is an external entity (society) to which you must answer, and your ethics is simply the cost/benefit equation applied to whatever society will reward or punish.

So a true existential atheist should be fine with murder, so long as you don't get caught. But this is a real rare person. Most atheists will agree that killing and stealing are wrong. Whether or not you can get away with it, they violate someone else's human rights. But who says there is any such thing as human rights?

Early legal systems (e.g. code of hammurabi) are the origin for the that "external rules of society define our ethics".

They were developed in civilizations that were very religious: "priest kings" in ziggurats form one basis for the "it was taught/conditioned into us" theory.

Some religions assert that right and wrong, and our basis of ethics, are completely defined by an external supernatural being, and that being will judge your behavior and reward or punish it.

If I extrapolate a bit here (so this is me, not your priest/rabbi/imam talking):

• some of them would assert that us "knowing" that murder is wrong (for example) is because our DNA was programmed with ethics rules that run contrary to natural selection by some kind of creator/programmer.
• A bit further out on the limb, perhaps the whole point of this world is to see, given free will, what ethical (or unethical) choices we make. The movie "The Matrix", aside from advancing the field of CGI, features interesting philospical and ethical questions. It is too bad about the sequels!

Ethics in the ACM/IEEE/USENIX Codes

• The ACM/IEEE Software Engineering Code of Ethics
• The USENIX System Administrators' Code of Ethics

Highlights of ACM/IEEE:

• 1. I will act consistently with the public interest
• 2. I will act in the best interests of client/employer, except when that violates rule 1.
• 3. I will write (code, etc.) to the highest standards possible.
• 4. My professional judgement will have integrity and independence (no brown-nosing, kowtowing, or being a yes-person).
• 5. I will promote ethics to my bosses.
• 6. I will advance the "integrity and reputation of the profession"
• 7. I will be fair to and supportive of colleagues
• 8. I will keep up with the field.

Highlights of USENIX:

• it isn't just "treat people fairly", it is "treat people fairly when you don't feel like it"
• honesty includes owning your limitations and mistakes
• avoiding conflicts of interest includes disclosing your biases
• with great power comes great responsibility, especially if you are a system admin. don't look, and especially, don't disclose
• know the laws!
• I will communicate! I will listen!
• I will keep my computers as secure and available as I possibly can!
• I will keep learning, and keep teaching
• I will be a good netizen
• I will lead by example, and "encourage" good computing ethics, including lobbying (management, or government) for them
• I will make a safe environment.
• I will accept and give criticism
• I will credit the contributions of others

CPSR's 10 Commandments of Computer Ethics

1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
2. Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work.
3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's computer files.
4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
5. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
6. Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which you have not paid.
7. Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization or proper compensation.
8. Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output.
9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you are writing or the system you are designing.
10. Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that ensure consideration and respect for your fellow humans.

Internet Privacy and Access

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Discussion of Term Paper

• CS 400 students get to write a three page term paper with 3+ references, while CS 501 students get to write a six page term paper with 6+ references.
• Format: use an IEEE standard two-column template.
• Topic: you must receive instructor approval for your topic. It may be any issue relevant to contemporary issues in computer science, including any topics from any of the speakers, or current research of your own.
• Content: this paper should be deeper than your talk summaries. It should include analysis, evaluation, and implications of the issues for the topic that you choose. You should form an opinion and state a thesis on the topic, and support that thesis with evidence, including consideration of opposing views or alternate explanations.
• Alternative: if you talk me into giving you one of the remaining class days, you may give a 50 minute presentation in lieu of a paper.
• Due Date: 12/7/2018, 11:59pm.
• How to pass: write a good senior or graduate-level paper. Unless you are gifted writer, you are encouraged to write and submit one or more drafts well before the due date. Read instructor comments, discuss them with the instructor as needed. Then revise your draft to improve it, and resubmit.

Reading Assignment

• Internet Bill of Rights
• a federal privacy bill
• On internet privacy, be very afraid
• Google location history fiasco

Internet Privacy and Access

• Our talk today is about privacy
• While reading about privacy I kept hitting the topic of net neutrality. They are intertwined in the following way:
• We give up privacy in order to get access -- same with security.
• Do you want the various governments watching you? Predicted by George Orwell's book 1984. Implemented to varying degrees by modern governments.
• How about the corporations? Google, et al. Kochava?
• Hardware support for spying: in the 1980's and 1990's there were a series of hardware initiatives to try and push spy hardware out into our phones and PC's. Carnivore. The Clipper chip. It was controversial. Now (since 9/11) it is assumed.
• For a groovy 1960's prophecy of all this, check out "The President's Analyst", starring James Coburn

What's Up with Net Neutrality?

• Is the internet an information service, or a telecommunications service?
• According to Wikipedia, net neutrality means "all data on the internet must be treated equally."

Internet Privacy and Access, Part 2

Discussion of Reading Assignment Papers

Federal Privacy Bill

• Amazon, AT&T, Apple, and Google agree we need a federal privacy law!
  • Is this like big pharma agreeing we need a war on drugs?
• This is all about mitigating future risk and preserving status quo
  • A) They want to emasculate a new California law
  • B) They want to pre-empt other states from drafting similar laws
• Should Congress Actually Do Something About Privacy?
• If so, what will it take for Congress to actually do something?

Be Very Afraid

• We give up privacy semi-consensually to corporations, for convenience
  • For example when I used Google Maps I expect google to use my location
• We got used to it, like the animals at the zoo
• But is it consent, or just powerlessness on our part?
• EU is in somewhat better shape than us on this
• Snowden's relevation has caused little change.
• The public became more aware of what computer scientists already figured, which was that the government was able to surveil almost everything
• webcams should all have a physical shutter, closed by default
• The writer, like several computer scientist friends of mine, eschews all social media. Their cost/benefit analysis is different than most.

Google Location History

• Google tracks my location even if I turn it off in settings.
• Legal, but not ethical.
• Article requests companies at least disclose what they are doing
• Option A: resolve via capitalism
• Option B: resolve via government
• Option C: ?
• This is not just location. Our phones listen to everything we say, whether we give permission or not. This weekend I said an highly unusual compound noun in conversation, and then I started to type a search for it...there it was in autocomplete.
• Have you all spent quality time with myactivity.google.com?
• Google's "solution" to the "disclosing what they are doing" problem: do so much, and disclose so much, that the user is helpless
• I tried to find my unusual compound noun...but it was obscured by the hundreds (or thousands) of minutiae that Google had collected. WAY more than what I'd googled: EVERYTHING I'd done within earshot of my phone. Wow.
• I wonder how difficult it would be to autoscrub my activity? I bet even if I scrub it, they've still got it.

Resumed Discussion of Net Neutrality

• One interesting webpage webpage (that I did not assign as reading because it didn't know how to spell "tenet") said we need net neutrality because of the following:

  paid prioritization

  this is when one provider can pay the internet provider to prefer them over another provider.

  website blocking

  this is one an internet provider can refuse service, for example to a competitor

  throttling

  this is when the amount of data used by a given user or connection is artificially limited

  interconnection

  this is about under what circumstances internet providers transmit data to each other across network boundaries.

• Arguments

  Arguments For

  Arguments Against

  "pro"-consumer, or "pro"-freedom pro-small business, pro-startup, will lead to more competition and better services prevents companies from bad behavior eliminates (?) filtering by the internet provider ("need best info available in order to decide/act")

  discourages private investment by telecoms ignores that different data types have violently different sizes, priorities, and real-time requirements. For example, phones might be higher priority than streaming. government interference to prevent some bad behaviors might encourage others enforcement will have costs, borne by consumers less flexibility to make unique products and bundling partnerships

• On the face of it, equal rights for data sounds absurd.
• Yet some will argue that net neutrality is actually very important. Why?

Redneck's-Eye-View

• Net neutrality's politics is largely about money.
• It is about monopolies being threatened.
• It is about the Cable monopoly trying to maintain itself in the age of Netflix and Amazon.
• That same monopoly somehow insists that I pay a heck of a lot more for bad internet than what I would get in South Korea.
• will net neutrality encourage better internet, or not?

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Freedom of Speech

• is Freedom of Speech a social studies topic? Under what circumstances is it a Computer Science topic?
• There has always been a limit as to what society deems freedom of speech, beyond which speech is censored. Can someone give a non-computer example ? Can someone give a computer/internet example?
• Does "freedom of speech" only mean freedom of certain types of speech? What kinds of speech does it include, and what would you exclude?

  Includes	Excludes
  political speech religious reverse engineering white hat hacking	lies spam malware cracked copies of copyrighted works

• Although we are protected from the government infringing on our free speech, the government has been allowed to restrict the time, place and manner of free speech.
• Note: While looking for 'Freedom of speech on the internet' under Google scholarly articles, much of the first page was taken my articles behind a paywall (HeinOnline), which suggests that just because you have freedom of speech does not mean anyone will hear it unless you are paying for your soapbox. Thus freedom of speech is another source of inequality, tied to the size of our pocketbooks.

Censorship

US government censorship

We generally censor obscenity and defamation. Interestingly, the US does not consider a work obscene if it contains artistic, literary, political or scientific value.

Paypal, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Silicon Valley censors persons and groups that they disagree with, i.e. those that are not left-wing progressive. Our constitution only limits government censorship, it does not protect freedom of speech against corporate censors.

China, Iran and other repressive regimes

Whole countries attempt to censor the entire internet. Some censor as data crosses their borders; others censor after the fact, by threat of prison or worse. Different countries have different extents and topics of censorship, depending both on culture and on the purpose of censorship. Is it to prevent damage to individuals? to society? to the government?

ISIL and similar groups have been successful at recruiting using social media

Should such groups be censored? Why or why not?

• In the beginning, there was property. It was real, made from atoms, and its value was proportional to its scarcity. Possession (or perhaps "might makes right") was most of the law regarding property.
• "Property" derived from the work of the human intellect is called intellectual property.
• For most of human history there has been no notion of intellectual property. People studied, and copied, whatever they could access. Ripping off inventors/creators was the norm. Inventors had to be super secretive, so secretive that many inventions are lost entirely.
• Various laws have been created to protect the work of inventors, authors, and corporate brands.
• In the age of the internet, new problems have emerged

Some Kinds of Intellectual Property Protection, Applied to CS

patent

An inventor receives a patent by disclosing an invention to the government, in exchange for which they are granted a temporary monopoly on the use of their invention. Many professors and researchers in industry are highly motivated to go after CS patents; for example it may earn you a promotion, a raise, a large bonus, or a percentage of the profits from your invention.

The question of what is patentable has been a sore subject for many in the software field. Traditionally, "ideas" including math have been unpatentable. The idea has to be embodied in a physical process. So for a long time, software patents would consist of an idea, attached to some absurd piece of hardware that included that idea. But now that requirement has been relaxed somewhat. For awhile, unfathomable myriads of software patents were issued, so many that any reasonably complex piece of software might violate a host of them without even knowing it.

In addition to being not-just-an-idea, patentability has traditionally included the notions that a patent has to be non-obvious, and not created previously by others. Unfortunately, the U.S. Government patent office has historically been under-staffed and lacked the expertise to accurately assess "obviousness" when it comes to computer software. Many patents have been issued for very obvious software ideas; some have been thrown out after painful court challenges in which prior art was brought forward.

Two-part patent eligibility test for software:

1. determine whether the claims are for patent-ineligible concepts, and
2. if so, determine whether the claims transform the nature of the claims into something patentable.

Patents cost thousands of dollars, making them easier for for-profit institutions to pursue, than individuals or free software entities. Litigation based on patents is simply outside the realm of ordinary people. Thus, they exaggerate the monopoly power of giants at the expense of the small developer.

copyright

Copyright is the primary means of protecting computer code. Do you know how to protect code so that its copyright can be enforced? Registration with the U.S. copyright office is one important step... $35, doable online.

Look-and-feel copyrights are occasionally a thing. When Apple sued Microsoft for ripping off the Mac interface, Xerox then sued Apple for ripping of their (Star) interface. Similar lawsuits have been filed over office suites that have been cloned. More recently, Apple has sued over phones at tablets that imitated the iPhone and iPad products more than the wanted.

trade secret

NDA

work-for-hire rules

"non-compete clause"

trademark

A trademark is a brand name: any word or symbol used or intended to identify and distinguish the goods/services of a provider.

A few Famous Software Patents

• Amazon one-click purchasing
• MP3 data compression
• LZW data compression
• RSA public key encryption
• "the browser plug-in"
• PS/2 "dual shock" force feedback
• the progress bar
• saving a copy of a window in offscreen memory
• network folder synchronization
• the google Page rank algorithm.