A commitment to the public good is at the core of all professions. This is reflected in the principles and practices of the ACM and prominently displayed in the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. In this column, which marks the transition of the Communications Computing Ethics column helm from Susan Winter to Bernd Stahl, we review key ethical questions linked to computing that have been covered in the past and may be relevant in the future. We encourage ACM members and other Communications readers to become engaged and express their hopes, fears, and expectations concerning current and expected ethical questions. Drawing on their professional expertise when reflecting on ethical questions and contributing to the public debate is an important way in which computing professionals can contribute to the public good.
We want you to actively contribute to the discussion of ethics and computing (through the comment section or our survey (https://tinyurl.com/CACM-ethics) because participation is part of the computing profession. Professionalism emphasizes the public good as part of the social contract. Societies grant privileges to members of professions because their work will benefit society. Thus, the commitment to the public good sits at the heart of the ethical responsibilities of professions.
Professional bodies, such as the ACM, have long recognized the importance of ethics and the public good. This aspect of professionalism gains importance when there are apparent threats to the public good, such as the growing dominance of Big Tech, which led to an “ethics crisis” in computing.10 The ACM first released a Code of Professional Conduct in 1972 and its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct in 19921 which was more recently updated.2 Professional codes can raise awareness of ethical questions, stimulate debate, and develop good practices within the professional community. However, key to understanding and reflecting on ethics is the exchange among professionals and between professionals and other stakeholders in society. This is where Communications can nurture the marketplace of ideas to develop community agreement and signal our position to the outside world. The Opinions column on ethics thus has an important role to play for the computing profession and its perspective on contributing to the public good.
Recent Work in Professional Ethics
This particular column marks the transition from one column head (Susan Winter) to the next (Bernd Stahl). Here, we lay out what the column has achieved in recent years and where we hope it will go in future.
During Susan Winters’s tenure, this column often engaged ethical issues arising when computing is used by individuals, groups, and organizations. Some contributions have been more rooted in formal methods of ethical analysis while others have emphasized contextual issues. Each has provided a call to action and guidance on how computing professionals can do better—either individually, as a sub-domain, or through organized collective action.
One theme is that ethical computing must be done with people, not to them. Because many uses cannot be foreseen and impacts extend beyond the creator and user, we must consider a larger set of stakeholders. Just as we increasingly think of apps as part of a broad ecosystem, we must think of the impact of computing on the social, technical, legal, and natural ecosystem if we are to act ethically. This requires understanding and respecting those affected by computing, their goals, and how we affect their agency. This can only be gained through significant and prolonged engagement with stakeholders including direct users, but also those in the larger community or organizational context.
A second theme is that we have agency and can have a positive impact through individual and/or collective action. These columns have articulated many ways that we can act ethically and that we can influence the trajectory of computing technologies toward societal good. Some tactics have been used by sub-groups of computing professionals (for example, requiring ethics-related statements in conference submissions) and could be applied more broadly for greater impact. Other tactics may be less well known or entirely new to portions of this community (for example, community-driven co-design) so may require discussion and adaptation for implementation.
The future shape of the ethics discussion in Communications will build on these foundations and those laid by prior column editors and continue the important work of ethical reflection and action.
Current Questions
Recent work on ethics in computing has focused on artificial intelligence (AI) with its success in solving problems, processing large amounts of data, and with the award of Nobel Prizes to AI researchers.5 Large language models and chatbots such as ChatGPT suggest that AI will continue to develop rapidly, acquire new capabilities, and affect many aspects of human existence. Many of the issues raised in the ethics of AI3 overlap previous discussions.9 The discussion of ethical questions surrounding AI is reaching a much broader audience, has more societal impact, and is rapidly transitioning to action through guidelines4 and the development of organizational structure, regulation, and legislation.
This increased attention to ethical issues is welcomed; it underlines the importance of ethics for professions and their members. However, the term ‘ethics’ in the context of AI predominantly refers to harm, but focusing on harm implies a duty to prevent or address it, which may reduce ethics to risk management. This fails to engage the broader ethical debate and diverse theoretical positions that provide insights into how we think about something being right or wrong, good or bad,7 how we consider dilemmas and trade-offs when there are no perfect solutions, and how we can reconcile conflicting views and interests.
Ethics of digital technologies in modern societies raises questions that traditional ethical theories find difficult to answer. Current socio-technical arrangements are complex ecosystems with a multitude of human and non-human stakeholders, influences, and relationships.8 The questions of ethics in ecosystems include: Who are members? On what grounds are decisions made and how are they implemented and enforced? Which normative foundations are acceptable? These questions are not easily answered. Computing professionals have important contributions to make to these discussions and should use their privileges and insights to help societies navigate them.
What the Profession Should Ask—A Call to Action
As ACM members and computer professionals we must be mindful of the long history of ethics in computing11 and build on our accumulated knowledge. Although we cannot fully know the future and surprises will always happen, we should have confidence in our understanding of technologies and our ability to make meaningful statements about future developments and what the work we do is likely to lead to. In this column, we would like to build on our some of our own work in exploring likely ethical issues and digital technologies6 and further engage the community in looking at the future.
As computer professionals we also have insights into how new and emerging technologies may be used and influence our socioeconomic, legal, and regulatory ecosystem. As professionals we should reflect on current trajectories and contribute to the public debate to steer them in desirable directions for societal benefit. Discussions of future ethical developments benefit from the collective knowledge and experience of professionals; professional bodies should host such discussions.
This column is a call to action for all ACM members and readers to think about our own work and knowledge and to ask questions about likely technical developments and expected changes to the environment (social, technical, legal, and natural) that can influence the impact of technology. What are you worried about? Do you expect more harm or different kinds of harm to arise? What scenarios do you find desirable or problematic? Please share your thoughts in the comment section on the Communications website or invest a few minutes completing a survey (see https://tinyurl.com/CACM-ethics).
As the new column head, Bernd will share reader responses here, use them to guide column topics, and to facilitate a broader discussion within and beyond ACM. In doing so, we hope to support an ongoing debate about ethics in computing and to nurture a community of interested contributors.
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