Ethics as a skill of software engineer?

Abstract

One problem of the increasing intelligence of the systems is that the number of decisions having an ethical component is increasing, too. Traditionally, the designers of the system seldom made ethical decisions; the ethics was left for the user. However, when the system itself makes decisions, the ethical consequences have to be solved when the system is made. Since these decisions are mostly implemented by software, it is often the programmers that have to make these decisions. Another problem is, if a programmer is asked to make illegal or unethical software. The well-known example of emission faking by car manufactures is an example of such software, but this seems to be far more common than this. We have several ethic codes as the ethical guidelines for engineering. They give full ethical responsibility to engineers on the design and implementation of systems. The specific problem with software is that the programmers do not necessarily realise the ethical nature of the system; either they do not understand the application area enough to see it, or they do not know the full context of the piece of software they are implementing. The conclusion discusses how to embed the awareness of ethical questions in software engineering education.