Computer Technology Poses New Ethics Quandaries
Sep 17th, 2007 • Posted in: NewsNEW YORK
The world of technology spawns ethics dilemmas as quickly as new computer applications. From the top news of last week:
- ComputerWorld writer Tam Harbert examines a growing issue in the world of information technology: the ethics role of IT specialists. In a major article in last week’s edition, Harbert speculates on the IT professional’s obligation in incidents such as discovering pornography on an executive’s computer, monitoring computer behavior of employees who break company rules, and using or abusing the power that comes with being at the nerve center of corporate communications. He notes that many dilemmas fall into legal gray areas, but “ideally, that’s where corporate policy takes over, governing ethics in the workplace and clearing up gray areas. A good policy removes personal judgment from the equation as much as possible.” Harbert quotes a warning from John Reece, the former CIO for the Internal Revenue Service and for Time Warner: “If you haven’t published a corporate law of ethics, if you don’t set out your policy and your guidelines, if you don’t make sure that people know what they are and understand them, you’re in no position to hold [individual workers] accountable.”
- A group of futurists met last week to discuss the question of what happens when machines become smarter than we are, reports the Canadian Press. The “Singularity Summit” brought together hundreds of Silicon Valley experts to ruminate over the ethics guidelines necessary to ensure that self-programming computers and human brains supercharged with microprocessors do good instead of evil. One attendee told the CP that his greatest fear is that a brilliant inventor will create a “self-improving but amoral artificial intelligence that turns hostile.”
- Breaking up may always have been hard to do, but it’s getting progressively more sinister in the information age, reports the New York Times. Reporter Brad Stone notes that divorce litigation has taken “a decidedly Orwellian turn, with digital evidence like e-mail messages, traces of Web site visits and mobile telephone records now permeating many contentious divorce cases. Spurned lovers steal each other’s BlackBerrys. Suspicious spouses hack into each other’s e-mail accounts. They load surveillance software onto the family PC, sometimes discovering shocking infidelities.” Stone points out that many programs used to collect evidence of infidelity and other indiscretions are cheap and readily available.
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