ethics and the promise of open source
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CAN OPEN SOURCE
SAVE US? (from ourselves)
Presented at #MSOSSDAY Toronto, May 7th, 2016
!@MOR10
Does ‘ought’ imply ‘can’?
“if the moral law commands that we ought to be better human beings now, it inescapably follows that we must be capable of being better human beings.”
Immanuel Kant
What happens when people are asked to make moral choices?
Kant’s Categorical Imperative:
“Act only according to what maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”
Deontological Ethics
The tech world needs a lesson
in classic moral theory.
Does ‘ought’ imply ‘can’?
In the tech industry, ’can’ typically means ‘ought’
We can, but ought we?
Self-driving cars
Exhibit One:
The Trolley Problem
What happens when moral judgements are left to a car?
Self-driving cars will reduce accidents.
Who decides we are willing to pay the price?
Would we have self-driving cars if we started by asking
whether we ought to have them?
We can, but ought we?
Internet of Things
Exhibit Two:
The Week http://goo.gl/jUXCW9
“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”
Samsung SmartTV Privacy Policy
The Guardian http://goo.gl/U6TA7F
“In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”
James Clapper Director of National Intelligence
The Internet of Things will simplify our lives.
Who decides we are willing to pay the price?
When the devices that surround us have different priorities from ours
we end up with results that benefit the devices
or their creators over our own best interests.
Would we have IoT if we started by asking
whether we ought to have them?
We can, but ought we?
Virtual Reality
Exhibit Three:
Using technology to replace reality
with an ideal world.
What could go wrong?
The Internet of Things is augmenting our perception
of reality.
Virtual Reality will make life more interesting.
Who decides we are willing to pay the price?
Would we have Virtual Reality if we started by asking
whether we ought to have it?
Industry puts ‘can’ before ‘ought’ because they put
profit before people.
In Open Source, people come first, and so can ‘ought’.
What happens when people are asked to make moral choices?
They make informed moral choices!
Because we can!
Ethics + Open Source
The Revolution:
How do we know if our actions
and their consequences are good or bad?
From the Greek ethos, meaning “character” or “custom”.
: rules of behavior based on ideas about what is morally good and bad
ethics
From the Latin mores, meaning “customs”.
: concerning or relating to what is right and wrong in human behavior
morals
ethics ≈ morals
Open Source is built on a foundation of
moral principles.
Virtue: The attainment of perfection, the complete realization of one’s potential, in Greek, arete.
Virtue Ethics
To be virtuous, you must act as a person who has virtue.
Yes, this is absurdly circular.
Virtue Ethics
“To ensure people can continue to express themselves freely and safely on Twitter, we must provide more tools and policies. (…) It requires a multi-layered approach where each of our 320 million users has a part to play, as do the community of experts working for safety and free expression.”
😧
https://goo.gl/HusmFf
“For beings that can think and learn, sharing useful knowledge is a fundamental act of friendship. (…) Friends share with each other. Friends help each other. This is the nature of friendship.”
Richard Matthew Stallman “Grandfather of the Free Software Movement” https://goo.gl/YZC5Oh
😇
Duty Ethics: Goodness is the ability to understand and act on moral obligations.
The intent to obey the rule is more important than the outcome.
Deontological Ethics
Religious overtones:
Love thy neighbour as you would love thy self.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Deontological Ethics
Apple Inc. http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
“Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks (…) No reasonable person would find that acceptable. ”
😧
BBC http://goo.gl/ywWiZ1
"There are many ways to investigate whether or not these killers had accomplices besides forcing Apple to create software to undermine the security features of their own phones,”
"It is potentially a gift to authoritarian regimes, as well as to criminal hackers.”
Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
😧
“Why do we need a Code of Conduct? We want open source to be safe and welcoming for all interested participants, but unfortunately that is not always the case. Our intent is to provide clear information about desired and undesired behaviors in our communities, and to enable community members to take action toward making these spaces better for everyone.”
😇
http://citizencodeofconduct.org/
The consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.
Consequentialist Ethics
Utilitarianism is a classic consequentialist theory holding that the best moral action is the one that maximizes utility.
Consequentialist Ethics
😧
“The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users.”
😇
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.en.html
Open Source is built on a foundation of moral judgements.
• Is it improving the common good?
• Is its true purpose transparent and obvious?
• Have secondary / tertiary effects been considered and accounted for?
• Are we setting reasonable expectations?
• Who benefits most?
Ethics Checklist for Tech
• Is it improving the common good?
• Is its true purpose transparent and obvious?
• Have secondary / tertiary effects been considered and accounted for?
• Are we setting reasonable expectations?
• Who benefits most?
Ethics Checklist from Open Source
Put ‘can’ before ‘ought’ and deal with the consequences.
tech industry:
Put ‘ought’ before ‘can’ and build a better world.
open source:
CAN OPEN SOURCE
SAVE US?
We ought to. Let’s see if we can!
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