DeepAI AI Chat
Log In Sign Up

An analysis of Principle 1.2 in the new ACM Code Of Ethics

10/16/2018
by   Christoph Becker, et al.
0

The new ACM Code of Ethics is a much-needed update, but introduced changes to a central principle that have not been discussed widely enough. This commentary aims to contribute to an improvement of the ethical standards we want computing professionals to aspire to by analyzing how changes introduced to Principle 1.2, Avoid Harm, affect the Code as a whole. The analysis shows that the principle is now internally inconsistent in structure and externally inconsistent with Principle 2.3. It condones intentional harm too broadly and does not oblige those responsible to seek external justification. The existing Principle 2.3 clearly suggests that Principle 1.2 is unethical. As a consequence, the change introduced to Principle 1.2 in the new Code of Ethics nullifies the good intention of the code; counteracts the many good changes introduced in all three drafts; and places the ACM in a dangerous moral position. This short paper explains why and recommends concrete actions.

READ FULL TEXT

page 1

page 2

page 3

page 4

10/04/2020

Deep Just-In-Time Inconsistency Detection Between Comments and Source Code

Natural language comments convey key aspects of source code such as impl...
05/02/2022

HatCUP: Hybrid Analysis and Attention based Just-In-Time Comment Updating

When changing code, developers sometimes neglect updating the related co...
08/31/2005

Component Based Programming in Scientific Computing: The Viable Approach

Computational scientists are facing a new era where the old ways of deve...
01/17/2022

Numerical Analysis of the Causal Action Principle in Low Dimensions

The numerical analysis of causal fermion systems is advanced by employin...
11/02/2021

A proposal to integrate Data Envelopment Analysis and Le Chatelier principle

The article aims to estimate the short and long run efficient production...
01/13/2018

The Efficiency Gap Does Not Satisfy the Efficiency Principle

We prove that the efficiency gap does not satisfy the efficiency princip...
04/04/2018

Pigeonring: A Principle for Faster Thresholded Similarity Search

The pigeonhole principle states that if n items are contained in m boxes...