CS109 Spring 2018: Unethically Ethical

(Alan, Danely, Xeon, Sriram) As the video-game industry reached the widespread popularity it is known for today, the overall cost of developing a video game grew, both for large studios and indie-developers. To account for this, many developers started to implement ways of monetization inside their games. These purchases usually cost lower than the game, and as such are called micro-transactions. However, there are many issues that rose from the advent of micro-transactions. One of these issues can be seen in the launch of the popular first-person-shooter game Star Wars: Battlefront II, a game released by Electronic Arts in 2017. The game, while lauded for its beautiful graphics and satisfying gameplay, came under extreme fire throughout the internet for what many saw as extreme monetization at the expense of user experience. Users have repeatedly criticized the difficulty of game progression due to the need to “grind” (spend an extended period of time to acquire in-game bene...

  (Sriram, Danely, Alvin, Xeon) Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are more and more prevalent in every aspect of our lives, from policing to banking. As such, it is important that these algorithms are designed in ethical ways. Unfortunately, in the banking sector, that is not always the case. These algorithms have advantages including increasing speed, reducing mistakes, reducing labor costs, and enhancing customer experience. However, algorithms are not without bias. Bias can come from unrepresentative or biased data samples used to train the model, bias in the training of the model, or bias in the original design or adaptation after contact with new data. This is especially bad when credit scoring company uses shopping patterns or social media activity, which could be incorrect, in a non-transparent process, and result in denying credit without the consumer knowing why. Furthermore, an algorithm could use factors such as race or writing style, which have no dire...

The Stuxnet virus was launched by the United States and likely Israel, with the United States having officially taken responsibility. The purpose of the virus was to infect centrifuges used by Iran’s nuclear program, spy on them, and interrupt their operations. This action raised a number of ethical questions. Is it ethical for a government to attack another government’s technological infrastructure? There are many valid opinions on this issue, and it is highly dependent on the situation. With technological attacks it is possible for actors, whether terrorists or nation-states, to poison water supplies, or take down the electrical grid, with devastating and life destroying consequences. It is probably agreeable that anything that will kill innocent civilians is unethical, even in a time of war. The Stuxnet virus is easier to consider ethical, as it did not target innocents, and in fact was necessary to get information and possibly stop Iran from creating a nuclear weapon, which would ...

An individual’s privacy in the United States is protected by the Fourth Amendment, in which the “persons, houses, papers, and effects” of the people “shall not be violated”. With the advent of technology, however, the scope of the personal possessions of a person have expanded include digital property as well. The definition of a warrant, a right to access “the places to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized”, has thus been blurred by the ease of access to personal digital property. One main example of the debate over the right to exercise the Fourth Amendment comes from the seizure of technology in order to access information that could assist criminal investigations. Tech companies, although not obligated to assist in such investigations unless summoned by a subpoena, have the option to assist the government. This being said, however, there exists opposing stances on this action. One prominent company that assists in government law enforcement is Best Buy. In a lawsuit...

                     (Sriram,Danely, Alvin, Edwin) In April 2013, Greenheart Games released Game Dev Tycoon, a single-player game in which the player gets to simulate the evolution of the game development industry by starting their own company in the 1980s. Because of huge hit that the gaming industry has taken due to bootleg games, the creators of Game Dev Tycoon released a bootleg version of their game on torrenting sites to toy a bit with the users who downloaded the pirated game. The game logged how many people pirated the game, as well as made the game inside the game get pirated. Piracy is a widespread issue in the software industry, especially for the video game sector. Piracy is the process of distributing and acquiring an illegal copy of a piece of intellectual property without having to pay for it. Essentially, piracy is stealing, with the same consequences to the creator of a work as stealing an item from a store. How...

                                                                                     (Sriram, Danely, Alvin, Xeon) In 2016, Austin voted 56% to 44% against Proposition 1, which allowed ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft avoid requiring fingerprint background checks for their drivers and other regulations regarding drop-offs and pick-ups in traffic. Uber and Lyft had spent around $8 million lobbying voters for their support in the vote, so the loss was a big blow. Voters against Proposition 1 believed that it was the company’s responsibility to keep their customers safe. The majority of Austin resident voters decided that they valued their own safety over lower ride fares. Uber and Lyft both warned that they would leave if Proposition 1 wasn’t passed, and that th...

(Sriram, Danely, Alvin, Xeon) A no-poaching agreement, or a no-poach pact, is an agreement between multiple companies to not recruit from each other, and is currently illegal under U.S. antitrust laws. One main issue resulting from no-poach pacts is the decrease in the availability of jobs in the market, giving companies leverage to offer below-market wages and reducing the abilities for workers to collectively bargain. Despite the clear unethicality of the pact, companies discreetly collude, placing workers in a large, unfair disadvantage. In September 2015, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe will pay $415 million to approximately 64,466 workers for their role in creating a no-poach pact “involving senior executives … creating ‘no-poach’ lists” that were “part of a scheme whereby companies agreed not to recruit each others’ employees” (Roberts 1). This unethical act have severely limited the potentials of many of the companies...

(Sriram, Danely, Alvin, Xeon) The Challenger disaster was a catastrophic event that took place in 1986 where the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight, killing the seven astronauts on board. While it seemed to be an accident, there was every possibility of preventing it. Boisjoly was one of a group of engineers who warned Morton Thiokol and NASA of the defective o-rings, used in rocket boosters, that were prone to fail in low temperatures. Temperatures fell below freezing the night before, and they ignored his warnings - endangering the lives on the astronauts on board. Both organizations had two conflicts of interest: money and the careers of upper management. In the case of the Challenger disaster, Roger Boisjoly suffered the consequences of compromising those two things because of the bad ethical leadership in place. Both Morton Thiokol and NASA were under the scrutiny of the entire nation, and they felt that they couldn’t afford to call off a sp...

(Sriram, Danely, Alvin, Xeon) After reading the two blog posts from women who worked at Uber, it was clear that unethical behavior was allowed to propagate around the company. Both Susan Fowler and Amy Vertino experienced sexual harassment and “stifling” to the point where they couldn’t take it any longer and quit. Contemplating the culture of Uber taken from these blog posts, we can try and understand how and why the toxic culture and was allowed to grow, but also what can be done to change the current situation.  To see how the culture developed, we should probably look at the macro and micro levels of the company. From the macro level, the management and HR departments in both blog posts was extremely unethical with its handling of internal issues, showing favoritism towards certain individuals and citing that they were basically too important to lose and lying to keep up the illusion that they were doing their jobs. When Susan Fowler reported the manager that h...

(Alvin Lo, Danely Gonzalez, Sriram Hariharan, Xeon Gutierrez) Not all groups are created equal, and it can be very difficult to make one in which everyone is content with the other group members.  The point of groups is to allow people to bring together different strengths to create a better end product. A lot of the time,  we see people who don’t how  to collaborate which creates a bad group environment, but rarely is anything addressed verbally  in order to mend these problems.  For this blog post, we looked at three different situations where there were issues with collaboration  within a group, and analyzed the situation from both sides and how ethical dilemmas were faced in these bad group set ups.  The first group member’s perspective seems great from the person giving it. He/she said their partner helped them learn and grow as a programmer, but the situation was probably not ideal to their partner. He/she said, “He is a much better prog...

(Sriram, Danely, Alvin, Xeon) Sexual harassment, assault, and the need for consent have recently come to the forefront of society with the emergence of the #MeToo movement, where victims of sexual harassment are encouraged to share their stories. This movement has led to changing the discussion around sexual assault and consent, which now must be an “enthusiastic yes”. A common definition of consent is an affirmative response to the proposal of a sexual act. However, this definition is not sufficient to protect people involved in a sexual relationship. Sexual consent must be an “enthusiastic” agreement between involved parties. For example, consider the case where there is a difference in power and authority between two people. In such a situation, it can be difficult for the person with lesser power to refuse the advances of those with more power for fear of retaliation, especially professionally, such as being fired or blocked from being promoted. A CNN article...

(Alvin Lo, Danely Gonzales, Xeon Gutierrez, Sriram Hariharan) In 1998, Andrew Wakefield conducted a study, which has since been discredited, on the correlation between MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccines and the development autism. Wakefield lost his medical license due to his unethical practices through which he conducted and funded his research, but the scorn he has received from the medical community and public health officials seems to only fuel his belief in his findings. The effects of the study can be observed, even nearly two decades after the initial findings. Over the years after the report, the MMR vaccine had vaccination rates “so low that childhood diseases once all but eradicated here … have re-emerged” (Dominus 1). Wakefield has, for his own benefits, created a large public panic. In addition, some methods that Wakefield utilized to obtain data, including “[lining] up kids to give blood samples at a birthday party … [for] £5” can be described as ill...