Reading-notes

Code of Ethics :

• Computing professionals’ actions change the world. To act responsibly, they should reflect upon the wider impacts of their work, consistently supporting the public good. The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (“the Code”) expresses the conscience of the profession.

• The Code is designed to inspire and guide the ethical conduct of all computing professionals, including current and aspiring practitioners, instructors, students, influencers, and anyone who uses computing technology in an impactful way. Additionally, the Code serves as a basis for remediation when violations occur. The Code includes principles formulated as statements of responsibility, based on the understanding that the public good is always the primary consideration. Each principle is supplemented by guidelines, which provide explanations to assist computing professionals in understanding and applying the principle.

GENERAL ETHICAL PRINCIPLES :

1. GENERAL ETHICAL PRINCIPLES. 1.1 Contribute to society and to human well-being, acknowledging that all people are stakeholders in computing. 1.2 Avoid harm. 1.3 Be honest and trustworthy. 1.4 Be fair and take action not to discriminate. 1.5 Respect the work required to produce new ideas, inventions, creative works, and computing artifacts. 1.6 Respect privacy. 1.7 Honor confidentiality.

2. PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES. 2.1 Strive to achieve high quality in both the processes and products of professional work. 2.2 Maintain high standards of professional competence, conduct, and ethical practice. 2.3 Know and respect existing rules pertaining to professional work. 2.4 Accept and provide appropriate professional review. 2.5 Give comprehensive and thorough evaluations of computer systems and their impacts, including analysis of possible risks. 2.6 Perform work only in areas of competence. 2.7 Foster public awareness and understanding of computing, related technologies, and their consequences. 2.8 Access computing and communication resources only when authorized or when compelled by the public good. 2.9 Design and implement systems that are robustly and usably secure.

3. PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES. 3.1 Ensure that the public good is the central concern during all professional computing work. 3.2 Articulate, encourage acceptance of, and evaluate fulfillment of social responsibilities by members of the organization or group.

4. Tech Company Principles 3.3 Manage personnel and resources to enhance the quality of working life. 3.4 Articulate, apply, and support policies and processes that reflect the principles of the Code. 3.5 Create opportunities for members of the organization or group to grow as professionals. 3.6 Use care when modifying or retiring systems. 3.7 Recognize and take special care of systems that become integrated into the infrastructure of society.

5. COMPLIANCE WITH THE CODE. 4.1 Uphold, promote, and respect the principles of the Code. 4.2 Treat violations of the Code as inconsistent with membership in the ACM.

6. Microsoft AI Principles
   • We put our responsible AI principles into practice through the Office of Responsible AI (ORA), the AI, Ethics, and Effects in Engineering and Research (Aether) Committee, and Responsible AI Strategy in Engineering (RAISE). The Aether Committee advises our leadership on the challenges and opportunities presented by AI innovations. ORA sets our rules and governance processes, working closely with teams across the company to enable the effort. RAISE is a team that enables the implementation of Microsoft responsible AI rules across engineering groups.

### Ethical OS Toolkit

• As technologists, it’s only natural that we spend most of our time focusing on how our tech will change the world for the better. Which is great. Everyone loves a sunny disposition. But perhaps it’s more useful, in some ways, to consider the glass half empty. What if, in addition to fantasizing about how our tech will save the world, we spent some time dreading all the ways it might, possibly, perhaps, just maybe, screw everything up? No one can predict exactly what tomorrow will bring (though somewhere in the tech world, someone is no doubt working on it). So until we get that crystal ball app, the best we can hope to do is anticipate the long-term social impact and unexpected uses of the tech we create today.
• Google AI Principles
• Objectives for AI applications Be socially beneficial.
• Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.
• Be built and tested for safety.
• Be accountable to people.
• Incorporate privacy design principles.
• Uphold high standards of scientific excellence.
• Be made available for uses that accord with these principles.
• AI applications we will not pursue
• Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.
• Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.
• Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.
• Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.

Principle 1: PUBLIC

Accept full responsibility for their own work. Moderate the interests of the software engineer, the employer, the client and the users with the public good.

• Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment. The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good.
• Disclose to appropriate persons or authorities any actual or potential danger to the user, the public, or the environment, that they reasonably believe to be associated with software or related documents.
• Cooperate in efforts to address matters of grave public concern caused by software, its installation, maintenance, support or documentation.
• Be fair and avoid deception in all statements, particularly public ones, concerning software or related documents, methods and tools.
• Consider issues of physical disabilities, allocation of resources, economic disadvantage and other factors that can diminish access to the benefits of software.
• Be encouraged to volunteer professional skills to good causes and contribute to public education concerning the discipline.

Principle 2: CLIENT AND EMPLOYER

• Provide service in their areas of competence, being honest and forthright about any limitations of their experience and education.
• Not knowingly use software that is obtained or retained either illegally or unethically.
• Use the property of a client or employer only in ways properly authorized, and with the client’s or employer’s knowledge and consent.
• Ensure that any document upon which they rely has been approved, when required, by someone authorized to approve it.
• Keep private any confidential information gained in their professional work, where such confidentiality is consistent with the public interest and consistent with the law.
• Identify, document, collect evidence and report to the client or the employer promptly if, in their opinion, a project is likely to fail, to prove too expensive, to violate intellectual property law, or otherwise to be problematic.
• Identify, document, and report significant issues of social concern, of which they are aware, in software or related documents, to the employer or the client.
• Accept no outside work detrimental to the work they perform for their primary employer.
• Promote no interest adverse to their employer or client, unless a higher ethical concern is being compromised; in that case, inform the employer or another appropriate authority of the ethical concern.

Principle 3: PRODUCT

• Strive for high quality, acceptable cost and a reasonable schedule, ensuring significant tradeoffs are clear to and accepted by the employer and the client, and are available for consideration by the user and the public.
• Ensure proper and achievable goals and objectives for any project on which they work or propose.
• Identify, define and address ethical, economic, cultural, legal and environmental issues related to work projects. Ensure that they are qualified for any project on which they work or propose to work by an appropriate combination of education and training, and experience.
• Ensure an appropriate method is used for any project on which they work or propose to work.
• Work to follow professional standards, when available, that are most appropriate for the task at hand, departing from these only when ethically or technically justified.
• Strive to fully understand the specifications for software on which they work.
• Ensure that specifications for software on which they work have been well documented, satisfy the users’ requirements and have the appropriate approvals.
• Ensure realistic quantitative estimates of cost, scheduling, personnel, quality and outcomes on any project on which they work or propose to work and provide an uncertainty assessment of these estimates.
• Ensure adequate testing, debugging, and review of software and related documents on which they work.
• Ensure adequate documentation, including significant problems discovered and solutions adopted, for any project on which they work.
• Work to develop software and related documents that respect the privacy of those who will be affected by that software.
• Be careful to use only accurate data derived by ethical and lawful means, and use it only in ways properly authorized.
• Maintain the integrity of data, being sensitive to outdated or flawed occurrences.
• Treat all forms of software maintenance with the same professionalism as new development.

Principle 4: JUDGMENT

1. Temper all technical judgments by the need to support and maintain human values.
2. Only endorse documents either prepared under their supervision or within their areas of competence and with which they are in agreement.
3. Maintain professional objectivity with respect to any software or related documents they are asked to evaluate.
4. Not engage in deceptive financial practices such as bribery, double billing, or other improper financial practices.
5. Disclose to all concerned parties those conflicts of interest that cannot reasonably be avoided or escaped.
6. Refuse to participate, as members or advisors, in a private, governmental or professional body concerned with software related issues, in which they, their employers or their clients have undisclosed potential conflicts of interest.

Principle 5: MANAGEMENT

• Ensure good management for any project on which they work, including effective procedures for promotion of quality and reduction of risk.
• Ensure that software engineers are informed of standards before being held to them.
• Ensure that software engineers know the employer’s policies and procedures for protecting passwords, files and information that is confidential to the employer or confidential to others.
• Assign work only after taking into account appropriate contributions of education and experience tempered with a desire to further that education and experience.
• Ensure realistic quantitative estimates of cost, scheduling, personnel, quality and outcomes on any project on which they work or propose to work, and provide an uncertainty assessment of these estimates.
• Attract potential software engineers only by full and accurate description of the conditions of employment.
• Offer fair and just remuneration.
• Not unjustly prevent someone from taking a position for which that person is suitably qualified.
• Ensure that there is a fair agreement concerning ownership of any software, processes, research, writing, or other intellectual property to which a software engineer has contributed.
• Provide for due process in hearing charges of violation of an employer’s policy or of this Code.
• Not ask a software engineer to do anything inconsistent with this Code.
• Not punish anyone for expressing ethical concerns about a project.

Principle 6: PROFESSION

• Help develop an organizational environment favorable to acting ethically.
• Promote public knowledge of software engineering.
• Extend software engineering knowledge by appropriate participation in professional organizations, meetings and publications.
• Support, as members of a profession, other software engineers striving to follow this Code.
• Not promote their own interest at the expense of the profession, client or employer.
• Obey all laws governing their work, unless, in exceptional circumstances, such compliance is inconsistent with the public interest.
• Be accurate in stating the characteristics of software on which they work, avoiding not only false claims but also claims that might reasonably be supposed to be speculative, vacuous, deceptive, misleading, or doubtful.
• Take responsibility for detecting, correcting, and reporting errors in software and associated documents on which they work.
• Ensure that clients, employers, and supervisors know of the software engineer’s commitment to this Code of ethics, and the subsequent ramifications of such commitment.
• Avoid associations with businesses and organizations which are in conflict with this code.
• Recognize that violations of this Code are inconsistent with being a professional software engineer.
• Express concerns to the people involved when significant violations of this Code are detected unless this is impossible, counter-productive, or dangerous.
• Report significant violations of this Code to appropriate authorities when it is clear that consultation with people involved in these significant violations is impossible, counter-productive or dangerous.

Principle 7: COLLEAGUES

• Encourage colleagues to adhere to this Code.
• Assist colleagues in professional development.
• Credit fully the work of others and refrain from taking undue credit.
• Review the work of others in an objective, candid, and properly-documented way.
• Give a fair hearing to the opinions, concerns, or complaints of a colleague.
• Assist colleagues in being fully aware of current standard work practices including policies and procedures for protecting passwords, files and other confidential information, and security measures in general.
• Not unfairly intervene in the career of any colleague; however, concern for the employer, the client or public interest may compel software engineers, in good faith, to question the competence of a colleague.
• In situations outside of their own areas of competence, call upon the opinions of other professionals who have competence in that area.

Principle 8: SELF

• Further their knowledge of developments in the analysis, specification, design, development, maintenance and testing of software and related documents, together with the management of the development process.
• Improve their ability to create safe, reliable, and useful quality software at reasonable cost and within a reasonable time.
• Improve their ability to produce accurate, informative, and well-written documentation.
• Improve their understanding of the software and related documents on which they work and of the environment in which they will be used.
• Improve their knowledge of relevant standards and the law governing the software and related documents on which they work.
• Improve their knowledge of this Code, its interpretation, and its application to their work.
• Not give unfair treatment to anyone because of any irrelevant prejudices.
• Not influence others to undertake any action that involves a breach of this Code.
• Recognize that personal violations of this Code are inconsistent with being a professional software engineer.

COMPLIANCE WITH THE CODE.

• Uphold, promote, and respect the principles of the Code.
• Treat violations of the Code as inconsistent with membership in the ACM.

  The Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice

• Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice (Version 5.2) as recommended by the ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force on Software Engineering Ethics and Professional Practices and jointly approved by the ACM and the IEEE-CS as the standard for teaching and practicing software engineering.

• Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice (Short Version) PREAMBLE The short version of the code summarizes aspirations at a high level of the abstraction; the clauses that are included in the full version give examples and details of how these aspirations change the way we act as software engineering professionals. Without the aspirations, the details can become legalistic and tedious; without the details, the aspirations can become high sounding but empty; together, the aspirations and the details form a cohesive code.

• Software engineers shall commit themselves to making the analysis, specification, design, development, testing and maintenance of software a beneficial and respected profession. In accordance with their commitment to the health, safety and welfare of the public,

software engineers shall adhere to the following Eight Principles:

• PUBLIC – Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest.
• CLIENT AND EMPLOYER – Software engineers shall act in a manner that is in the best interests of their client and employer consistent with the public interest.
• PRODUCT – Software engineers shall ensure that their products and related modifications meet the highest professional standards possible.
• JUDGMENT – Software engineers shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgment.
• MANAGEMENT – Software engineering managers and leaders shall subscribe to and promote an ethical approach to the management of software development and maintenance.