Balancing Innovation and Responsibility: An Ethical Analysis of Engineering Tools with the Consideration for Potential Misuse

To make new discoveries, to advance as a society, certain tools must be created and used. These tools can be created with the intent to drive humanity forward and can be created with pure and good intentions. However, just because a tool can be used for good doesn’t mean it will always be used for good. There will always be malicious people within society, people who will want to use these tools for their own gain even if it comes at the cost of others. This is simply the unavoidable reality that we live in. A perfect example of this is facial recognition technology. This technology could be used to increase the safety and security of others, or it can be used by governments to oppress the public. This situation creates a dilemma where these tools can be used to benefit humanity and progress society, but at the same time these tools can also be used to hurt others and create oppressive environments, resulting in an interesting ethical question. Is it ethical to create these tools without considering how they could be misused? This essay will try to address this question using the knowledge I learned from taking ethic classes at the University of Portland. Firstly, I will use facial recognition technology as the base example in this paper and I will go more in depth into how this technology is being used in both beneficial and unbeneficial manners. Then I will try to answer this ethical question by looking at this dilemma using the ethical lenses of consequentialism and the IEEE-CS/ACM code of ethics ^[1].

In the twenty-first century, cameras are everywhere, so it becomes obvious how a technology that can utilize these cameras has the potential to be used for good or evil. Facial recognition technology has been making waves in the media with stories about how this technology is used to save lives or how it is used to discriminate against others. There is much debate on whether facial recognition is ethically moral or immoral, suggesting how important it is to consider the ways these tools can be used and misused. On one side of the debate, many people think facial recognition can be used for the betterment of society. Afterall, solving kidnapping, murder, and other criminal cases could become much easier with facial recognition technology. With the implementation of this technology, criminals would have a much harder time avoiding the police. Alternatively, finding missing and trafficked people would become easier for the police. This technology would be able to identify missing people or criminals the moment their face appears in any public areas with cameras. The local authorities would then be notified and the police can make an arrest or rescue victims in dire need. Having this extra set of eyes monitoring the population could be used to help a lot of people and potentially save many lives. However, there is also another other side to this argument. The people who are against this technology being implemented fear that its usage could lead to the oppression of others and strip away the freedoms of certain individuals. A good example of this misuse can be seen in China. China has implemented the usage of facial recognition within their country. China does use this technology to help catch criminals and those who wish to harm others, however from the Western perspective it appears that China is also using this technology to oppress any movements advocating for government change. With this technology, governments like China can quickly figure out where the leaders of opposition parties are at any given time. They can use this information to try to blackmail, to arrest, to bring harm to, and in extreme cases silence members of the opposition who oppose this communist society. Concern has been raised regarding China’s use of this technology to locate and suppress runaway Uyghurs and those who are helping the Uyghurs people. This concern becomes more prominent as more and more claims about China’s attempt of ethic genocide of the Uyghurs people becomes more well known. In this example, even though facial recognition technology could be used to catch criminals, it can also clearly be used to suppress innocent people and even aid in the genocide of certain groups. Because of the clear potential for both good and evil, facial recognition technology is a perfect example of why engineers must consider how their tools can be misused and the consequences that can come from their creations.

The ethical lens of consequentialism states that an action is ethical or unethical depending on the consequences that arise from said action. Using consequentialism, to answer the question of whether it is ethical to create these tools without any consideration of how they could be misused, we must look at the consequences of creating these tools with and without consideration of the tool’s potential of misusage. For this example, we will be using facial recognition technology as the tool being created. Let’s assume we create facial recognition technology with the intent of helping others and we put no consideration into how it could be misused. First, our tool could be used by police agencies to help catch criminals, make places more secure, and save lives. But eventually, our tool gets misused by some tyrannical body which uses this tool to make it easier to oppress those fighting for equality and liberty. Since no consideration was given to how our tool could be misused, then there exist no safety features that help prevent the misusage of this technology. Therefore, it becomes incredibly easy for any malicious actor to use our technology to blackmail, oppress, or spy on others. In this scenario, we have a situation where our facial recognition is being used to both help and hurt others. This example closely mimics the actual situation we find ourselves in today involving facial recognition technology. Through the eyes of consequentialism, the consequences of making facial recognition technology have led to both good and evil. To decide the ethical morality of making this technology would be impossible with consequentiality without some way to measure the good and evil created. However, one fact remains true. If we considered how our facial recognition technology could be misused, then we would have been able to create safety features to help limit the misuse of our technology. One realistic way to achieve this is by making the source code private and only allowing trusted bodies of government and certain agencies to use the technology. If due diligence is done, then this practice would severely limit the number of malicious actors that could use this technology to oppress others, which would in turn lower the total amount of harm done by the misuse of our technology. By comparing these two scenarios against one another, it becomes clear that by having considerations for misusage there will be less evil created compared to having no considerations. Therefore, the lens of consequentialism would state that it is morally ethical to consider the ways in which our engineered tools could be misused, and it is unethical to create such a tool without any consideration for the potential of misusage. However, consequentialism is just one of the many ways to judge the morality of an action. There may exist more relevant ways to judge the morality of an action involving computer technology, such as using the IEEE-CS/ACM code of ethics.

The IEEE-CS/ACM code of ethics is an ethical guide for software engineers to follow in their professional careers. IEEE stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and is an institute made of these engineers that provides many guides and rules for fellow engineers to follow. ACM stands for the Association of Computing Machinery, which is a society consisting of computer engineers that also create guides and rules for fellow engineers. The IEEE-CS/ACM code of ethics is a joint taskforce between this institution and society with the aim of creating ethical guidelines for software engineers. The ethical guide contains eight principles that all software engineers should follow, but I will be looking at two of these principles as I believe they are the most applicable to our situation. Using these principles as our ethical lens, I shall answer the ethical question as stated in the introduction. Using facial recognition as our tool, let’s create the same two scenarios described in the previous paragraph. One where consideration for misuse occurred and one where no consideration occurred. The first principle states that software engineers must act in the public interest. In the scenario where consideration was made, harm done to the public will still exist. However, through our considerations and actions we can limit the total harm done to the public. With no considerations done, there is no limiting factor for public harm. As no public would want to be oppressed and harmed, then it becomes clear through principle one that we must consider the ways our technology could be misused. Principle eight states that software engineers shall participate in lifelong learning regarding the practice of their profession and shall promote an ethical approach to the practice of the profession. All software engineers must keep up to date on the world around them and how it affects our profession. Engineers must be aware how their work can be used to harm others and they must take actions to be as ethical as possible when creating software. With this principle in mind, looking at the scenario where no consideration is given for misusage means we failed to consider how many other software technologies have been abused in the world. We were negligent about the true nature of society and how our technology could easily be misused to harm others. Thus, according to principle eight, not considering the possibility of misuse indicates that one did not practice lifelong learning and therefore did not adhere to ethical principles embedded in the IEEE-CS/ACM code of ethics  Alternatively, principle eight would find consideration of misuse to be ethically moral because to make these considerations means that one has been partaking in the lifelong learning and has learned that our creations can easily become perverted if no counter measures exist. In essence, by not being negligent we are able to uphold ethical morality. Through the lens of IEEE-CS/ACM code of ethics, it becomes clear that making a tool without consideration for misuse is ethically immoral and that one must always consider the ways their creations can be used to harm others.

When engineering the tools of scientific discovery, it becomes clear that one must consider the negative ramifications of their creation if they wish to live a morally ethical life. Through the lens of consequentialism and through the eyes of IEEE-CS/ACM code of ethics, negligence of considering how your tools can be misused is clearly an unethical act and one must consider the ways in which their technological creations can be twisted. This is an important lesson, one that I would have never clearly thought about if I hadn’t taken a multitude of ethic classes. These classes showed me how evil can come from good intentions, and they taught me how to consider the ethical ramifications of any action. Because of this newfound knowledge, I feel more confident in my ability to go out into the world and create these tools while ensuring that they cannot easily be misused to harm others. Learning about ethics and morality has given me the vital tools to start my engineering career knowing how to walk a path that is ethically sound and how to identify and avoid unethical practices.

References:

[1] https://www.computer.org/education/code-of-ethics