Summary Reflection- Shubham Sinha

Posted on May 19, 2014 by shubhamsinha

Before taking this class I never thought about the topic of ethics and morals in engineering. I always have had a problem solving attitude towards engineering. If someone were to ask me what engineers are I would simply exclaim with the answer “We are problem solvers” and if someone were to ask me “What about ethics in engineering?” I would have almost given a blank stare. The class has taught me a lot of about ethics and values and its importance in the field of engineering. Moreover, I got to learn about various kinds of ethics such as virtue ethics and normative ethics and ethics as described by various modern and old philosophers.

The following were my learning objectives for this class:

Understand and analyze the overlap between engineering and humanities
Truly feel the need to be an ethnically responsible engineer
Understand the importance and relevance of building or providing ethically sound products and services

There is truly a huge overlap between engineering and humanities in the area of ethics. It is imperative of engineers to be ethical in designing their products however, it is experts in the field of humanities who judge our ethical decisions. How do engineers know what’s ethical and what’s not? They obviously use their subjective views however, sometimes it tends be a little unilateral and biased and requires the opinion of non engineers to evaluate it.

Through the EITN presentations and the critical reflections I truly understand the importance of ethics in engineering. Previously my view of engineering was narrowed down to the idea of problem solving however, after having written a critical reflection on Pawley’s paper I understood how ignorant I had been. Furthermore, by speculating an imaginary conversation with philosophers such as Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart, Henry Ford to name a few, I was able to explore their understanding and opinions on the topic of morals and ethics. I previously also thought that ethics was simply the notion or idea of what’s good and what’s bad. Now, when I look back I chuckle at the simplicity of that definition and how it barely covers what ethics truly means. Ethics, previously to me was a humanities concept with little application to engineering. However, after having read the paper by Kaplan and Garrick about risk analysis and having written a critical reflection on it, I realize the importance of ethics even in very mathematical/technical concepts. The risk analysis failed to account for human emotions and how engineers would act under certain ethical dilemmas. Such a glaring oversight could easily cause massive errors in the calculating the risks.

An ethical engineer is someone who doesn’t simply understand the notion of right or wrong but truly holds a philosophical understanding of ethics and morals and is willing to analyze situations objectively. It is of utmost importance for an ethical engineer to be unbiased and not completely driven by emotions. An ethical engineer should be uncompromising of his personal code of ethics and should be consistent in following them in every situation. The following should be engineer’s role in society:

Solemnly pledge to design ethical products.
Discourage the use of unethical experiments and research in academia.
Be morally responsible for products once they are out in the market for public use.
Proactively fix products to make sure that they uphold society’s ethical standards.
Aware fellow engineers about the importance of ethics in engineering.
Report unethical products that could potentially be dangerous to the public.

Such level of commitment is only possible through introducing ethics classes in undergraduate curriculum. If the importance of ethics in engineering is embedded into the future engineers minds then they will have a much better grasp of it in the professional world. For instance, every engineering class could have a mandatory ethics class which in a way would force students to learn about ethics. Personally, I feel very accomplished having learnt a lot about ethics in engineering and such an understanding will always make me consider ethics in any software or hardware I design.

The art museum trip made me realize, we use modeling and mockup designs in engineering all the time. Models enable us to build real products such as the uc berkeley campus or the art museum itself. Every big design is first represented as a model or a mockup. It helps me explain that a mockup or prototype helps engineers determine its ethical credibility. When I design a product I can foresee the ethical problems it might create or it might solve.

Last but not the least my future learning plans for this class is keep abreast with the current debates in the field of technology. The technology section in bbc news, techcrunch and reuters very often contains articles that are very relevant to ethics in engineering. Reading these articles would be a constant reminder to me about the importance of ethics in engineering. I have also been reading this book on ethics called “Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases” which has excellent case studies on the same topic.

E125 Summary Reflection

Posted on May 13, 2014 by brapponotti

Before I took E125, I had a fairly limited understanding of what constituted engineering ethics. Still, I had an opinion of what it was. I had an understanding of engineering and ethics as well, and combining them didn’t seem to be too hard. I viewed engineering as a practical fusion of math and science for the purpose of creating new technologies or architectural structures for the benefit of humanity. And I had discussions about ethics, and how ethics differs itself from the idea of morals, in English class in high school. Ethics was very much a societal implementation of values, like codes of conduct, to help serve as a guideline for people, engineers included. Going back to what I wrote about what I hoped to gain from the class in my learning proposal:

“I hope to gain some knowledge in being able to more concretely shape my idea of what engineering is, and of what engineers do. This class will hopefully help me gain some experience as well in the ethical practices of engineering and in discussing in small groups during discussion about articles pertaining to ethics in engineering.”

Were any of these assumptions challenged or changed? Why or why not? (Refer to  specific assignments that are in your ePortfolio.)

Looking back and reading through my learning proposal, I definitely know that my presentation and communication skills were tested. I made sure not to speak with notes to help me speak on the fly; I prepared beforehand, so I did know what I was talking about. Also, the article Alice Pawley wrote, How Engineers Define Engineering, really broadened my understanding of what engineering is. Moreover, visiting the Berkeley Museum of Art seemed to coincide with the idea described in the article. Engineering, like art, is a very broad topic: art can be functional, and like engineering, can bring about discussions about ethical issues. The aesthetics of art don’t need to be the only thing connected with engineering. Still, art isn’t really the entire purpose of engineering, nor is it the most important.

What does it mean to be an ethical engineer?

Being an ethical engineer is not simply following a code of ethics. In fact, during interview presentations, I noticed that a few people had said that their interviewee did not really use a code of ethics when being faced with an ethical decision. Mostly, they had followed their own ethical code, their moral code, if you will. The examples of the BART and the Challenger were also examples of ethical engineers trying to stand up and say that some engineering project was not safe. In fact, even if their fears were not vindicated, as in the case of the BART or the Challenger dilemmas, legitimately questioning the safety of a project is an important part of being an ethical engineer.

How does (or should) ethics fit into the larger engineering curriculum?

Ethics is involved with every design and decision in engineering, and thus, shouldn’t simply be taught as one unending chunk. It needs to be broken up and discussed regularly in engineering curriculum, just like it should be in the workplace.

What is/are the engineer’s societal role(s)? Or, what should the engineer’s role be?

Just like the case of the BART, or another case from the Ethics textbook, the case of Johan van Veen, in the section on human welfare, engineering designs can have devastating effects if they fail. The professional code of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) states that “engineers shall use their knowledge and skill for the enhancement of human welfare.” This definition, although short, gives a very fair societal role.

What is your future learning plan?

One great way to incorporate a future learning plan is to read other ethics blogs. Because engineering is built around collaboration and discussion, reading the opinions of others allows you to imbibe new perspectives of others. There may be people in specific fields focusing on nuclear engineering ethics of bio-engineering ethics, so you can diversify yourself as well. http://abutec.com/ is just an example of a link to a blog I can visit. In fact, simply reading books and listening to debates on issues not even relating to engineering can help built an ethical framework. As was stated before, ASCE states engineers should use their knowledge and skill for advancing human welfare. Thus, understanding where human welfare needs enhancing is important, and being politically aware, of local, national, and even global politics can create opportunities for social and economic benefit via the introduction of engineering projects, such as water filtration systems to poor countries where people are dying of lack of potable drinking water. These seem like lofty goals and initially they are. Discussions about ethics with friends is a lot easier and more informal, This propagates a culture of ethical discussion, which is very important for guiding us towards a more ethical frame of mindset when doing engineering, amongst other fields.

Ethics in the news (final analysis): Seeds of Change

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Shawn Nirody

Humans have modified crops and livestock for centuries; however, these changes accumulated over many generations of artificial selection. This effectively limited the degree of change that could be achieved per generation and had a balancing effect on the traits that were to be enhanced. For example, consider the potato. The wild ancestors of this staple crop were nearly inedible because of moderate levels of solanine, which acted as a natural pesticide and deterrent. After centuries of modification, the potato is safe for consumption, with some strains retaining their natural pest resistance. This was my initial opinion on genetic modification—it seemed to be simply a new spin on a (very) old idea.
However, while genetic modification as we know it today is similar in principle, it is radically different in practice. An example from the 70’s, is when Berkeley scientists isolated a mutant strain of a bacteria, the wild-type of which contributed to frost formation. The rarer mutant strain produced a defective version of the culprit protein, causing no damage to the plants. The mass-use of this “ice-minus” strain was scrapped for two reasons: (1) environmental activist groups destroyed the test sites in a public outcry, and (2) it was soon realized that little had been done to systematically assess the GM bacterial strain’s effect on the environment. The combination of lack of knowledge on the part of the public and poor risk assessment due to conflicts of interest was fatal. This story emphasizes how powerful, and potentially dangerous the ability to “speed up” evolution to such a massive degree truly is. To me, it primarily points out the dire need for government-funded, well-tested research before such technologies are implemented. Additionally, the public must be properly educated about the things that are going on around them, both for the sake of progressing science and to have a system of “checks and balances” (that does not consist only of the board members of the company developing the technologies) in place.
As with any technology of great consequence, there will always be those who will use it at the expense of others. Many issues about gene flow between GM and organic crops have recently come to light. In a 2011, the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association sued the food giant, Monsanto, for filing numerous lawsuits against farmers whose organic crop became contaminated with Monsanto’s patented genes. The case reached the Supreme Court, and though Monsanto won, it was ordered not to sue farmers for traces of patented genes less than 1% in non-GM crops.
It is possible that such litigation over seed patents and ownership will become more common in the future. Already, large companies such as Monsanto control over 80% and 90% of the corn and soybean markets respectively. Such a fight, between a powerful giant (who often have legislators in their back pockets) and the common man, is never fair, especially in our society. A legislation system where the wrongs of the mighty are almost totally obscured by money is tantamount to sending David off to battle Goliath without a sling.
Nature will, in many ways, always be a final frontier in engineering. Few engineering fields involve the design and manufacture of products (organisms and genes) that can replicate themselves to achieve near infinite lifespans. However, to assure that these technologies are used to the benefit, and not the detriment of both mankind and our environment, we cannot leave all the decision making in the hands of a few powerful people with conflicting interests. Rigorous research on these technologies needs to be funded, not by the companies who are developing them, but by the government. And most of all, the public needs to be better educated about their choices, so that they can actually, fully, understand what they are choosing.

Ethics in the News (Final Analysis) : Seeds of Change

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Shawn Nirody

However, while genetic modification as we know it today is similar in principle, it is radically different in practice. An example from the 70’s, is when Berkeley scientists isolated a mutant strain of a bacteria, the wild-type of which contributed to frost formation. The rarer mutant strain produced a defective version of the culprit protein, causing no damage to the plants. The mass-use of this “ice-minus” strain was scrapped for two reasons: (1) environmental activist groups destroyed the test sites in a public outcry, and (2) it was soon realized that little had been done to systematically assess the GM bacterial strain’s effect on the environment. The combination of lack of knowledge on the part of the public and poor risk assessment due to conflicts of interest was fatal. This story emphasizes how powerful, and potentially dangerous the ability to “speed up” evolution to such a massive degree truly is. To me, it primarily points out the dire need for government-funded, well-tested research before such technologies are implemented. Additionally, the public must be properly educated about the things that are going on around them, both for the sake of progressing science and to have a system of “checks and balances” (that does not consist only of the board members of the company developing the technologies) in place.

As with any technology of great consequence, there will always be those who will use it at the expense of others. Many issues about gene flow between GM and organic crops have recently come to light. In a 2011, the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association sued the food giant, Monsanto, for filing numerous lawsuits against farmers whose organic crop became contaminated with Monsanto’s patented genes. The case reached the Supreme Court, and though Monsanto won, it was ordered not to sue farmers for traces of patented genes less than 1% in non-GM crops.

It is possible that such litigation over seed patents and ownership will become more common in the future. Already, large companies such as Monsanto control over 80% and 90% of the corn and soybean markets respectively. Such a fight, between a powerful giant (who often have legislators in their back pockets) and the common man, is never fair, especially in our society. A legislation system where the wrongs of the mighty are almost totally obscured by money is tantamount to sending David off to battle Goliath without a sling.

Nature will, in many ways, always be a final frontier in engineering. Few engineering fields involve the design and manufacture of products (organisms and genes) that can replicate themselves to achieve near infinite lifespans. However, to assure that these technologies are used to the benefit, and not the detriment of both mankind and our environment, we cannot leave all the decision making in the hands of a few powerful people with conflicting interests. Rigorous research on these technologies needs to be funded, not by the companies who are developing them, but by the government. And most of all, the public needs to be better educated about their choices, so that they can actually, fully, understand what they are choosing.

Revised Group Project Proposal

Posted on May 9, 2014 by doodoo22

Jason Liu, Shawn Nirody, Tim Brown, Paulo Fonseca

Additions and revisions to the project proposal after reading the peer feedback:

First, we’d like to answer some questions that were posed in our group’s peer review. Regarding the “blanket policy” of our project proposal, we mean that it is difficult to address all the different groups: industry, government, and universities, in a single approach. Rather than trying to approach all the different groups and bringing them together, we believe it is more feasible to approach the groups individually. By targeting select groups, for example, by targeting individual students or small research groups/engineering teams within each of these larger agglomerates, it is more likely for the people targeted to respond to our message. If we targeted a large, mixed population with a single message, the individuals within those populations might not feel so inclined to respond or reply because they might feel their response will be drowned out because there are so many other peoples’ opinions to consider. Therefore, by using different scenarios to target specific groups, we might be able to elicit a better response from our target audience.

Regarding the comment on most professionals’ ethical training, we believe most trained workers in the technical fields do have a significant amount of exposure to ethical issues related to their work. However, we believe that the breadth of this exposure is not very wide because most professionals will only have the interest and time to learn about ethical issues within their own field. Therefore, most professionals, although they may be well versed with ethics and morality within their own division, such as within government work, industry work, or university work, they might be very ignorant of how ethical issues are taken into account in other fields. Therefore, we believe it is important for students and professionals to consider learning some amount of ethics related to other areas of work.

To distribute our flyer, we would like to place them in areas of high engineering and science student traffic. For example, handing out flyers in front of Le Conte, in Cory, Etchtevery, etc. is our plan. We do wish to reach out to all the engineering and science students because we wish for every technically minded person to be aware of ethics outside of their own area of work.

Section 103 Peer Review of Group 3 by Group 2

Posted on May 8, 2014 by huangshan108

The final project of group 3 focuses on the data privacy on campus. With many login services being used on campus, there might be a potential issue on the safety of our personal information on schools website. Tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have been reported to analyze users’ data and sell it to third party companies to make profit. Due to the fact that the schools web services are used by a large amount of students everyday and stores a lot of sensitive information of students such as personal contact information, grades, criminal status, etc. There might be an ethical problem that the schools analyze those data and sell it to another party.

We like the idea that they choose to proposal this concern to ASUC. They plan to set up a committee of both students and faculties to determine the current state of data storage by the University to enforce the transparency of the data usage by the university, which is a clever idea. They also want the university to officially guarantee to safeguard students’ personal information and the data collection against misuse. This is a good idea because this can ensure the university will not misuse students’ private information (of course, if and only if university keep their promise). To reinforce this idea, they also want to establish a cyber security team to monitor ethical use of the data collected by the university. The punishment they set for misuse data is also very effective. Once the committee finds some misuse of personal data, the university should be asked to abolish such practice immediately. They also advocate deleting any personal data that are deemed unnecessary for storage in the university servers, which is a good idea to prevent the university to store extra students’ information than needed and use them other “dirty” purpose.

Group 2’s overall proposal is great, however we found some minor problems in their idea. First, we cannot guarantee that the school does not misuse students’ data just by using this committee. From the interview assignment, I know that most of the tech companies have such committee in their company, but the committee actually does not make any affect on the ethical issue simply because everyone in the company are working for the company and the they only help to make profit for the company not work against the company. Second, I am not sure if the committee has the privilege to read what kind of data is storing on the school’s server, nor to ask the school to delete some of those that are not considered necessary. Third, there are not any legal documents saying what the school should do and should not. The boundary of “misuse” and “deemed unnecessary” are very vague.

In conclusion, the entire proposal is well thought and planed. They spot the potential issue of misuse students’ data by university and offer a working plan to solve this problem. Everything meets the standard of this class and they accomplish what this class expects them to do. Well done.

Section 103 Group 1 Revised Proposal

Posted on May 8, 2014 by brianbarch

Proposal:

After our group interviewed various individuals associated with engineering, a common theme that kept coming up was that a lot of company success depends on the personal ethics of individual employees. To support this claim, other groups in our discussion section noticed that most employees say they do not think about ethical issues in their everyday work, but the issues that they do think about are more business related than scientific related issues. It’s apparent that we need to raise awareness among young scientists and engineers about the ethical issues that are prevalent in the workforce and also incorporate ideas about entrepreneurship into the education system.

At UC Berkeley, engineering ethics classes are requirements for only of a few majors in the College of Engineering and not requirements for some sciences, such as physics. It’s surprising to us that majors such as Civil Engineering, Energy Engineering, Chemical Engineering (within the College of Chemistry), and Materials Science Engineering don’t require an ethics class for graduation when these fields have a huge potential for controversy in dealing with the environment, government regulation, and society as a whole.

At a bare minimum, we believe that the College of Engineering should add an ethics class requirement to every major. Ideally, though, we propose that an interdisciplinary Haas-CoE ethics be developed and offered in the near future because it is important for business and engineering students to understand the processes of each other’s trade. In order to appropriately structure the class the best way possible, a committee of business and engineering students and professors that currently teach ethics courses should be formed. In addition to this coalition, we believe that including a few people working in industry (possibly Berkeley alumni or other individuals associated with Cal) on the committee would provide an additional, relevant perspective on ethics. Having a course that would talk about different business management infrastructures and technical related issues would help foster a morally righteous frame of mind amongst students prior to their entry into the workforce. In addition to this frame of thinking, the course would also promote open discourse on how employees, engineers, and managers can safely bring up ethical issues that are not only prevalent to their respective companies, but are also important to them.

Along with the ethical awareness that would be gained from this class, the networking between the technical and business students that would manifest is a great side effect of this course. Such connections would open up opportunities for partnerships to be formed that promote entrepreneurial and business skills.

The implementation of this course can definitely be achieved within the next five years at little cost. After the committee gathered statistics and attitudes associated with the ethical differences between businesspeople and engineers, the committee could collaborate efforts on designing a curriculum they feel best fills these knowledge gaps between the two disciplines. After synthesizing each respective discipline’s strengths and weaknesses, the committee would have the appropriate information to design a curriculum that would fill in these gaps. Although the process in formulating a class can be costly at times, the only costs associated with this project would be the necessary compensation to the committee for their time and effort.According to the UC Berkeley Academic Senate, in order to implement a new course, the committee must include a week-by-week course schedule, course number, course title, and grade breakdown and receive the department chair or dean’s approval. In the case of our course, this new class would require approval from both colleges’ dean.

Cal has a lot of kids interested in the tech industry and especially in tech startups, so this class’s focus on negotiating the interplay between technology and business should have a large audience. This class would also provide good networking between business and engineering majors. Many students join entrepreneurship clubs for some of the benefits this class provides, but this class will also provide units and fulfill an ethics requirement, so finding student support should not be difficult. In theory, once we get the word out about the class and can demonstrate that their is student demand, faculty support should follow. The letter to the deans of Haas and CoE should sway them to be in favor of this class, and should they be on the edge we could take a poll of engineering and Haas students to demonstrate how many would be interested in this class.

The course will be evaluated on it’s effectiveness and popularity after it has been offered for a year to determine how it needs to be changed. Should the class need major changes, the committee could meet again to make these changes.

In the long run, we hope that this course will accomplish two goals. First, we hope it will make it easier for engineering and business majors to make ethical decisions in what might not be their field of expertise. This is particularly important for the many tech startups that spawn out of UC Berkeley, as the people working for them have no established ethical norms that they can follow, and will likely be forced to make decisions that affect both tech and business. Second, this class is meant to serve as a model of interdisciplinary ethics classes. UC Berkeley currently relies on single major ethics classes, but actual decisions are rarely made in a field contained within a single discipline – they tend to rely on ethics related to multiple different fields.

Class Syllabus:

Engineering C126 / UGBA C126 Syllabus

Prerequisites: None

Units: 2 or 4. The 2-unit version is curved to an A/A- to encourage people to take it, even if they don’t need to fulfill a requirement.

Lecture:
TuTh 2-3pm F295 Haas

Discussion:

1.5 hour per week, by section

Course Description: Engineering and Business decisions are rarely value neutral and engineers will inevitably encounter moral dilemmas at some point of their professional practice. Furthermore, there is a large amount of overlap in the ethical calls that must be made in engineering and business. The course will cover ethical issues prevalent in the workplace, the pre-workplace planning room, and in the rest of the industry process. Students will learn through standard lectures, hands-on exercises and simulations, projects, and guest speakers from industry.

Logistics:

Class information will be posted on Piazza, and all assignments will be submitted to your personal blog at edublogs.com.

There is no assigned textbook, as assigned readings will be posted on Piazza. Lectures and homeworks will also be posted on EDX.

Objectives:

The primary objective for this course is to prepare students for a real life ethical situation in engineering/business and all the aspects of it that would not be covered by a pure engineering or business ethics class.

Students should be able to:

Identify ethical issues in a situation and come up with practical solutions for both business and technological parties.
Understand the positions of both technical and business parties on ethical issues, and understand why they would disagree.
Mediate disagreements between business and technical parties.
Recognize the role of engineers/scientists in a business setting, the role of a businessperson in a technological setting, and the role of either in a setting they are unfamiliar with.
Predict issues that may come up between business and technology in the design process from history and knowledge of the subjects.
Practice effective communication, mediation, and debate skills.
Pick a moral stance on a technical issue and effectively argue for it against peers.
Make ethical decisions in a real life industry setting.

Grade Breakdown:

Participation (10%): Students can earn their participation grade by participating in class discussion, promoting active dialogue on the class blog (edublogs.com), etc. To earn full score on participation, a student must disagree with another (or the teacher) with solid reasoning at some point in the semester, as this fosters dialogue.

Reading Quizzes (5%): After every assigned reading, there will be a short 5-minute quiz at the beginning of class. There will be true/false questions, along with a few opinion questions, which will not be graded for “accuracy” as they are opinion questions.

Reflections (10%): Students will write a series of 200-300 word reflections on the assigned readings. reflections should analyze readings from both an engineering and business perspective and argue for or against the author.

Individual Interviews (15%): Students will interview someone from the technical side of engineering and the business side of engineering on the ethical decisions they have made. Students will then post a comparison between the two to their blog, either in the form of a writeup, diagram, or other medium.

Debates (15%): Groups of 4 students will debate issues in their discussion sections. Issues will be chosen in class (identifying relevant ethical issues is part of the curriculum as well) and given to groups. One pair of people will argue one of of the issue, and the other will argue the other. Each group will be up for 20 minutes, so each person will be involved in multiple debates.

Simulations (10%): Similar to debates, groups of students will be given a situation and told to act it out as realistically as possible, in order to get them into the mindset of someone in a real workplace situation. Each student should get a turn on the business, engineering, and mediation sides of a simulation. Groups will invent situations for each other rather than their own in order to get students to experience a mindset they may not be familiar with.

Ethics in the News (10%): Students will research a current event in the news that pertains to the conflicts between business/management and science and talk about what class material is relevant to it and helped or could have helped the situation go over well.

Final Project (25%): The final project is a larger scale simulation. Student groups will design their own startup (or pretend they are in an already thriving industry) and identify ethical issues that could occur. For each issue, groups will demonstrate how they would solve the issue in industry, identifying where principals they have learned in the class come into play. Groups will also identify where what their business does could cause conflict with others (e.g. Nuclear power may be morally justified to you, but it is bound to cause conflicts with those that don’t believe in it) and how they would mediate these conflicts.

Letter:

Dear Dean Lyons and Dean Sastry,

We are a group of students from the engineering ethics class E125. After interviewing academic and industry professionals, we noticed that many engineers face a mix of both scientific- and business-related ethical issues in their daily world. Though UC Berkeley offers many business and engineering ethics courses, there are currently no courses that cover the overlap of the two. For this reason, we would like your support towards the creation of a crosslisted Engineering and UGBA ethics course.

Engineering and business decisions are rarely value-neutral and new college graduates will inevitably encounter moral dilemmas at some point of their professional practice. From our interviews, we determined that the majority of ethical decisions relied on an individual’s ethics, rather than institutionally enforced norms. To us, this illustrates the importance of teaching individuals to think ethically through ethics courses. Current ethics courses provide the ability to think morally about one side of industry, but with the current growth of the tech industry and the great number of tech startups Berkeley students are involved in, students will have to make decisions in both sides of industry. Tech startups, in particular, have no established ethical norms to follow, making an ethical knowledge for their workers all the more important.

Open discourse between business and engineering students on these topics will ultimately lead to similar conversations carried out in the real world. In addition to enriching the conversation by bringing together students across the disciplines, it also forms an useful professional network for the business and the engineering students.

It is also important for business majors to understand the needs of engineers in the workplace (and vice versa), as well as be exposed to situations they might encounter early on, so that they have experience in dealing with these unique problems in industry. Lastly, it is important for engineering and business students to join in discussion about ethics in order to find a common language in engineering ethics and to form professional networks, since we continue to see the intersection between business and technology grow.

We acknowledge that there are a number of business classes offered through Haas and the College of Engineering, but our course is unique through its teaching approach and its relationship with a subject that has not been thoroughly explored at Berkeley: technology and business. We think the course should include discussion of current events, as well as simulation, debate, and interaction with people in the industries. The course should ideally cover ethical issues prevalent in the workplace. Attached to this letter is a draft syllabus for the proposed course. Considering the many new startups and businesses in collaboration with engineers and the technology they utilize, business and engineering undergraduates would be encouraged to take this course. However, students outside of these two fields of study are also welcome to sign up.

Our proposed course would be a good opportunity to sensitize undergraduates to different moral situations while incorporating ideas about entrepreneurship. We would love to work with you and your fellow department to make a new class applicable to the 21st century.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Brian Barch, Andrew Davis, Selena Shang, and Kien Wei Siah

Civic Engagement – Group 3 Discussion 103

Posted on May 8, 2014 by shubhamsinha

Our group consulted three EECS professors regarding the technical aspects of what happens with the data stored by the university. I was also able to interview a friend who is a CS peer adviser and works with the Calnet office regarding the same. It turns out none of the people we interviewed know exactly what happens with the data stored and that it isn’t exactly transparent.

We were also able to discuss this few ASUC members who suggested that we do more research and come up with a specific and elaborate proposal regarding the issue of data transparency. In general we asked them the following questions:

1. Do you know what kind of personal information the university stores/has stored about you?

2. Do you think there is potential misuse for this personal information data?

3. Do you feel like it violates your privacy?

4. Would you be okay if the university sells this information to third party companies for advertising purposes?

5. Would it be okay if the university uses this information as evidence against you if you were in a legal case?

We shall use the responses we got so far and compile them to write our proposal to the ASUC which is still in works.

Section 102: Peer Review of Group 3 by Group 2

Posted on May 8, 2014 by lberr25

Having never heard about B Corporations, I found this proposal both informative and interesting. I think the critique of B Corporations was very insightful, and I found the comparison to Fair Trade to be helpful in explaining the project’s goals. I furthermore completely agree that its approach is problematic, since it only requires a vague and potentially unvalidated pledge of ethicality. However, I disagree with your statement that becoming an ethical company to gain the B Corporations stamp of approval would ultimately hurt the business’ bottom line; products that are USDA Organic, non-GMO, Fair Trade, or Certified Vegan, or donate a percentage of their profits to charity, appeal to specific audiences, and by selling well to these growing niches, the ethical designation often increases profit in the end.

I appreciate that you recognize how incredibly challenging it is to measure something’s ethicality and find the suggestions you’ve brainstormed to be creative and reasoned. Still, I have to wonder whether ethicality is too subjective to be measured at all. You suggest average wage and the origin of raw materials as potential factors, but while one person might claim that high wages and environmentally sustainable sources are markers of ethical soundness, another might claim that freedom, such as the freedom to pursue individual success, is more vital, so wages and sourcing should be determined by the free market. Perhaps more people agree with the first point, but that doesn’t make it the only defensible ethical stance. I find this problem even more significant once the government comes into play, as it would if ethical tax cuts were to be instated. Consider how the different political parties might view the ethicalness of a manufacturer of birth control or a shop that sells assault rifles. Of course, if you’re only considering factors such as the way employees are treated, that won’t be relevant, but that seems unlikely to occur in the political sphere, where appearance and hardline party tactics are so strongly relevant.

I’m also curious to know your justification for stating that “more ethical companies would increase the health of our economy as a whole.” It doesn’t seem to agree with your earlier statement that I addressed in my first paragraph, wherein you claim that becoming more ethical hurts businesses because of the added expense of paying workers fairly and so on.

Summarily, it seems amazingly difficult to determine a company’s ethicality, especially once politics are thrown into the mix, but it’s a very interesting and creative idea, and I wish you the best of luck!

Section 101 Group 5 Proposal [Revised]

Posted on May 8, 2014 by dweng

Reposting our original proposal, including some extra material from our presentation; ~~as far as I’m aware, we didn’t receive a group peer review anywhere~~. I noticed that our proposal was recategorized to the “uncategorized” section, but the link to our post still showed up here.

Lars Gustafson, Ollie Peng, Darrel Weng, Alexandre Chong

We wanted to create a project that would be able to spread the word regarding a topic that we believe should be more heavily acknowledged in the engineering community – conflicts of interest.

The motivation we have for pushing the education of conflicts of interest in the engineering community is based off of multiple interviews of engineers who come from a wide array of disciplines. In each one of these interviews, their personal struggles with conflicts of interest in the workplace came up. If this was not enough to pique our interest, each situation they faced regarding conflict of interest was especially difficult for them to deal with and they felt as if they did not have the necessary resources or education to handle the conflict to the best of their ability. Although each situation had different manifestations, they all pointed back to the fact that education and resources regarding conflict of interest are extremely critical and that they need to be implemented in work environments as soon as possible.

Our goal for our civic engagement, then, would be to increase the level of awareness among our fellow engineering (student) peers before they enter the work environment. Just like having the technical knowledge and skill is important to finding a job, we believe that having an ethical and conscious awareness regarding conflict of interests, especially when start ups are now so prevalent in the industry, should be equally as important when it comes to preparing for a job. To realize this in an effective and efficient manner, we plan on producing an online survey geared towards exposing common and uncommon situations caused by an underlying conflict of interest. The survey will consist of a series of questions in the form of a hypothetical situation that revolves around a particular conflict of interest, and some questions that will try to get the survey-taker to think critically on the issue. After the hypothetical and questions, a separate page of the survey will (briefly) detail what conflict of interest the hypothetical revolved around, (good) ways the person in the situation could have handled it, and possible resources the person could have turned to in his/her company for help and support. To measure the effectiveness of this approach, we would include at the very end of the survey a question that asks the survey-takers to rate the level of awareness of the issue of conflicts of interest in the industry that they have now, as well as how important they believe awareness of this issue is (as compared to before they took the survey). In order to keep this method efficient, we would like to keep our survey as short as possible, as we realize that our fellow engineering peers do not have much free time, especially with final projects and midterms coming up.

Our hands on situational guide would look something similar to:

1. John, representing his company, is closing a deal on a sale for a food sterilization machine to a major company, Nestle. He decides to run some last minute test on the machine to ensure it’s functionality, but discovers that out of 25 total test runs, 1 test run failed completely. In response, John declares the machine unsafe for use and uses extra company expenses to ensure that the machine satisfactorily operable before finalizing the sale.

Q1: Was John’s decision to ensure the fidelity of the machine’s operations the right choice? Y/N

Q2: Given the following choices, which do you think would have been the best choice for John to follow through with: a) The 1 fail is an outlier; just go through with the sale. b) John’s choice in this case was the right way to go.

–next page–

John can be seen here as facing a conflict of interest: he could have closed the deal, disregarding the 1 failed test run, thereby quickly finishing the sale, versus his actual choice of delaying the sale and ensuring that the machine operated as intended. He knew that the machine’s failures could potentially impact a large group of people, as Nestle products are very popular. Had John not known what to do, he could have contacted his manager, or his company’s HR department for ethical advice on how to proceed.

2. Larry, a high level manager in an engineering corporation decides to hire a family friend by the name of George. Over the course of a few months, Larry sees that George is performing extremely subpar. Larry decides to have a talk with George reminding him of his responsibilities and the standard that he has to follow. However, a few more months pass by and Larry has to make a decision regarding whether or not to let George go from the company since George has not improved his work performance at all. Eventually, Larry decides that it is in the best interests of the company to fire George.

Q1: Was Larry’s decision to fire George the right decision? Y/N

Q2: If these were Larry’s possible options and you had the chance to decide which one to choose, which would it be? (a) Fire George from the company (b) Remind George once again to improve his performance and give George more grace since they are family friends

-next page-

In this situation, Larry is clearly facing a conflict of interest. He was conflicted whether or not to fire George since he wasn’t performing to the standard the company required of him or whether to let George keep working for the company since he and George were friends and he did not want to ruin their personal relationship. In situations like these, Larry had many resources such as the HR department as well as his executive managers to come towards and ask for advice.

3. Tom works in research and development for Intel, designing new designs for ever faster and more efficient computer chips. One day, a newly hired employee gives Tom’s research and development team a package containing photographs of each layer of AMD’s latest computer chip. Whereas Tom’s team could originally only reverse-engineer and analyze AMD’s chip if they wanted a look into the competition’s designs, they now have the option to use the photographs instead, which would allow them to instantly and accurately model the layout of the entire AMD computer chip. With only two months before Intel announces its newest CPU design, Tom must decide how the research team will spend their remaining time. Will he take advantage of the photographs, giving the team valuable knowledge about AMD’s designs and more time to develop a faster and better CPU before the deadline? Will he ignore the photographs but still reverse-engineer the AMD CPU chip, knowing that the team will have less time to actually create their own chip and that the reverse-engineering results would practically be the same as what’s on the photographs anyways? Or does he ignore AMD’s chip completely and simply tell his team to spend the next two months iterating and improving upon Intel’s existing designs?

Question 1: Imagine you were in Tom’s shoes and needed to decide how your research team will spend the next two months. Which of the three choices is the most ethically correct?

Question 2: Which of the three options do you think the majority of research and development teams actually choose in real life?

–next page–

           This situation that Tom faces is an example of the conflict of interest that many employees face between themselves, their companies, and the entire industry. In this particular case, if Tom chose to take advantage of the photographs, he and his team would be more likely to create a much speedier chip than the competition, and thus he and Intel would reap significant financial rewards. However, this course of action severely damages the industry as a whole by compromising its competitive integrity; if such practices were widespread, than the innovations of smaller companies would instantly be absorbed and produced more cheaply by larger companies, ultimately running the smaller companies out of business.

           Likewise, reverse-engineering a competitor’s chip also dampens innovation in the industry, but to a much less extent than using photographs. Moreover, keeping tabs on the competition can arguably be a smart business move that prevents one company from overtaking all the others; in a way, this levels the playing field. Nonetheless, the most ethically correct choice is to only focus on your company’s own designs and disregard your competitors’ designs.

           Unfortunately, such a noble approach is rarely seen in the real world because it puts your company at a severe disadvantage to those competitors who are looking at other companies’ designs; thus, the majority of companies actually do reverse-engineer each others’ chips. Companies don’t take photographs, however, because not only is it bad for the industry in the long term, it also is kinda-sorta illegal: while companies cannot copyright or patent circuit designs because they are geometrical ideas, almost akin to art, they can apply for GNU General Public Licenses, which are issued by national governments and act like hard-to-enforce copyrights.

4. Edmond is a safety officer for the Electrical Engineering department at UC Berkeley. A professor notices that he is an exceptional engineer and would love to take him on as a project lead for one of his research projects. He accepts the position. Fast forward a few months Edmond is working on an experiment that emits highly energized particles. The rig isn’t set up yet but the EE professor wants so preliminary results so that they can submit a grant proposal. He warns Edmond that if this goal is not met he is at danger of losing his job. Edmond neglects to install the appropriate safety systems and runs the experiment anyways in fear of disappointing his PI.

Q1. Who is at fault here? Edmond for accepting the position or the professor for threatening Edmond, and/or for offering him the position?

Q2. Was this conflict of interest easily avoidable?

-next page-

In this case the conflict of interest started when Edmond accepted the job as project lead despite his current position. The professor should have also seen this as a potential conflict of interest and avoided proposing such an arrangement to Edmond. Edmond should have also refused to carry out the experiment without appropriate safety measures and should have reached to higher ups. The professor should not have deviated from protocol by pushing Edmond to run the experiment. This conflict of interest could have easily been avoided at the start and generally there are systems in place to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen.

There will be more situations added later on in the creation of the guide and it will be implemented using an online survey website in order to be able to reach as many people as possible. Through tools such as this hands on situational guide, we believe that conflict of interest education is very feasible and simple. With the response of engineers to a guide like this, we will be able to determine whether or not there is an increase in understanding of conflict of interest. If there is, we hope to improve the guide and push for greater implementation. If there isn’t an increase in understanding of conflict of interest, we will adjust our hands on guide accordingly.

To add on to the previous paragraph, given the responses that we saw from the survey, that our survey appears to be effective. Two major trends we looked for were people coming in not knowing much and increased their understanding through the survey, and those who came in thinking they knew all about conflicts of interest and finding out that they actually don’t know much about it. In both cases we would see an increased awareness on the topic (which was our goal): those who weren’t aware are now more aware, and those who thought they were aware are now aware that it’s more than what they believed it to be.

We have taken Section 101 Group 2’s peer review into consideration, and we agree that our interpretation of our results seem “rushed”. Indeed, to spread awareness through this survey we would require some sort of incentive for the students, and for better results, divide our survey into two parts that are to be taken at separate times. Perhaps one method of implementation for this would be to divide the survey into two and integrate it into the beginning/ending of a course, similar to the survey we had to take at the beginning and end of this course.

For our theoretical applications, when our survey will be in use by companies, we want to make sure it will constantly be growing and changing to make sure that it will be as effective as possible. To do this, we first want to integrate it into the hiring process. This allows the newly hired employee to be aware of conflicts of interest as soon as they begin working, which will hopefully prevent harmful situations from arising. We also want to revamp the survey every year to take into account the specific environmental needs of the company such as creating a more specific survey that would benefit them most. This would also keep possible conflicts of interest on the mind of employees, which is crucial. Another benefit of the survey would be that we would be able to analyze the answers of the employees and find outliers who tend to answer the questions unethically. This would allow us to meet with those employees one-on-one and hopefully clear up any confusion or misunderstanding.

Here is a link to our survey.

If you took this survey, and think that it can be improved in any way, please don’t hesitate to contact us about it so we can revise it, and hopefully have this survey be used as a tool in the future.