This is what happens when all the education about computer programming cuts out any parts related to humanities. In my three years studying information science on university, there was never one minute spend on ethics, the impact of technology on society or any critical thinking. Feeling some discomfort with your disruption? Just repeat the dogma “technology itself is neutral - it’s just a matter of how you use it.” and you will be fine.

That’s interesting to me that you guys didn’t have any ethics classes. At my uni (10 years ago) we actually had a 200 level CS class specifically focused on ethics in technology.

Granted, one class in four years still isn’t much, but it was a part of the curriculum if you were going for a CS or Computer Eng degree.

I’d never been fully exposed to a class on ethics before and enjoyed it enough to seek out some similar classes while fulfilling my general ed requirements.

ABET accrediting has nearly always required an ethics class for all engineering fields, including Computer Science/Computer Engineering degrees when ABET accredited.

Maybe there are some CS degrees out there that warrant investigation into why they aren't ABET accredited? (Or if they are accredited, maybe should have that reviewed?)

How did you learn ethical thinking without taking a class in it?

I chose to do a philosophy minor.

My university didn't have classes on ethics in technology as a requirement for a computer science degree. In retrospect after working in the startup world for a few years I wish they had. People need to be given the tools to evaluate questions of technical ethics themselves otherwise they'll just sign on to the employer arguments about "tech is neutral" or "think of all the people this helps" while ignore all the people they (or someone else using what they created) may hurt.

My university did, but since most CS majors did not care about GPAs, most of my classmates took the class and just cared about passing it, not actually learning anything or recognizing the importance of ethics. Hearing my classmates joke about some really serious ethical dilemmas kind of made me depressed about the state of the field.

Can we get some actors to weigh into this and maybe take up the other side?

I hate to be dismissive but without any specifics were just tilting at windmills here.

He identified a virtue signalling niche.

For something that has so many low hanging fruits and obvious fundamental failures, it has no reason to stay niche long.

Also it's not good in truthspeak which makes it an even more attractive target.

There was a reason why the 29C3's motto was "Not my Department".