Author Archives: shubhamsinha

Summary Reflection- Shubham Sinha

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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.

Civic Engagement – Group 3 Discussion 103

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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.

EITN: Google Glass Is Both Cool And Creepy

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URL: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-glass-is-both-cool-and-creepy-2013-5#ixzz2uMYTu0Vn

Google Glass is among the most sought after current technologies out there. It is truly a revolutionary product in the field of wearable gadgets. It has a small microprocessor chip attached to the glass that is capable of taking pictures, recording videos and even giving directions. The product currently isn’t for sale on the market, but is already around and about and is being used by thousands of select developers and google employees. At first it may seem like a really cool and savvy device however, it has increasingly garnered angry glares from non google glass users who find this device to be “creepy”. In the article, it is also described as something that violates the norms of social etiquettes.

It has made people feel uncomfortable to the point that places such as restaurants and bars have banned the use of google glass inside their premises. When lawmakers raised the issue of google glass having having capabilities such as facial recognition, google simply argued saying that the device doesn’t have that feature. Is google glass any different from a smartphone? Technically speaking no it isn’t. Before mobile phones became common, they were frowned upon too. Now it isn’t strange or uncomfortable to see people use their smartphones around us. However, what makes google glass stand out is the fact that it is a device that is on your face. Wearable devices haven’t been accepted by the society yet and I believe such is the case due to psychological reasons.Our face is our identity. We recognize others through their faces and any anomalies on a face such as a google glass device would make us uncomfortable to a certain extent.

If philosophers such as Aristotle or Immanuel Kant were alive what would they say about google glass? They most certainly would have been fascinated and encouraged its use. Aristotle being a true scientist and Kant being a propagator or reason himself would perhaps encourage its use. Technology is developing at a rapid pace and futuristic devices such as google glass have great utility and are aimed at making our lives more convenient. However, just like smartphones google glass has immense potential for unethical use. For instance, currently when it records a video it has a red light that blinks which indicates that a video is being recorded. Although, I am certain that this feature could be disabled through certain hacks and very soon google glass users could be recording videos in public without getting caught. Such moral and ethical dilemmas do raise some serious concerns with the use of google glass and how easily it could transform from a technology of utility to a technology of destruction. It is therefore, critical of engineers working on google glass to tackle such safety issues and ethical concerns raised over this device and find ways to prevent it.

Group Proposal – Group 3 Discussion 103

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Team Members: Shubham Sinha, Shaun Singh, Neel Rane, Leo Wu

Statement of Problem:

Tech giants namely Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon have petabytes of data stored on their servers about their registered users. The data not only includes valuable information such as name, telephone, address etc but also includes user internet activity, places checked, destinations traveled to name a few. Such information could be easily used by third party data analytic companies to target users accordingly. It is not just an invasion of privacy but delves into a much bigger issue of user manipulation through specific online marketing schemes. It is scary to think about the future of such big data in the hand of few business corporations whose sole purpose is to maximize profits and please investors. However, this issue simply doesn’t exclusively apply to software companies but is also applicable to the UC Berkeley system. The UC Berkeley calnet system provides access to portals such as bspace, berkeley library system, bearwalk and numerous other services. Thousands of Berkeley students use these services everyday without realizing where exactly this data goes and what it could be used for. How do we know that Berkeley doesn’t run some sort of analytics on all this data available? Is this data being sold to third party companies? Our Group believe that even if it isn’t being misused in any way , it definitely has the potential to and there isn’t any existing framework to safeguard us from this horror.

Executive Summary:

What initially made us think about this problem was our group presentation about our interviews. Through a fortunate coincidence, all our interviews were related to the idea of user data and user data analytics and its potential misuse for manipulation. Through our presentation we realized the gravity of this issue and how significant its impact will be in future. The harsh reality is that such data mostly benefits individuals and corporations that already have unnecessary amounts of money. Our group aims to provide concrete, feasible suggestions to tackle this issue. We hope to make the students aware of this problem so it could be open to discussion throughout the whole campus by submitting a proposal to the ASUC student body. As we have the right to make sure that our privacy isn’t threatened and that our personal students information isn’t being misused. As ethical engineers it is our responsibility to make sure that the existing technology is being used to solely for utility and benefit. By making the ASUC aware of this problem and by gaining their support we would be able to write a much stronger proposal to the chancellor of the university.

 

Objectives:

  • Proposal the ASUC student body highlighting the aforementioned issue.

  • Setting up a committee of both students and faculty to determine the current state of data storage by the university

  • Transparency of the data usage if any by the university.

  • Transparency about the type of data being stored by the current university run web and mobile apps such as video data, voice data etc

  • Official guarantee to safeguard our personal information and the data collected against any misuse.

  • Establishment of a cyber security team that enforces ethical use of the data collected by the university.

  • Set an example for other universities to do the same. If the issue garners enough attention perhaps it would make the general public more aware of the practices of big data companies.

  • If the committee does find any misuse of personal data then the university should immediately abolish such practices.

  • Removal of any personal data that are deemed unnecessary for storage in the university servers.

  • Scrutinize currently running research projects that use student data or record student data through web app services.

  • Ethically evaluate proposed research projects in the field of software engineering and other related engineering disciplines

 

Action Plan and Conclusion:

First and foremost we would begin with submitting a proposal to the ASUC student body. After that we would engage the engineering faculty in a discussion about this issue. Our most important task would be to aware people of this existing problem. Support from fellow students and faculty would be key in making this proposal a success and reality. It would take us 1-2 weeks to write the proposal and get it proofread by some faculty members. It would also be important for us to do some research to obtain factual data to substantiate our proposal. However, it would eventually come down to the ASUC to approve our proposal and take the next necessary steps. Our group would stay committed and active throughout the whole process. Data misuse is a reality. As engineers it is our ethical and moral responsibility to make sure that isn’t happening to us and our community. Our group truly believes that our proposal highlights the issue appropriately and our objectives provide the needed course of action.