Reddit reviews Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases

Engineering Ethics is a field and a specialized one in the sense that it is largely driven by engineering best practices and refined by history. Therefore, unfortunately, this is a topic which cannot be concisely described.

The application of ethical engineering is, at times, subjective - that is, open to interpretation based on the lack of visibility around the safety dimensions on a new technology.

One aspect of Engineering Ethics that is much less open to interpretation is what happens when death occurs as a direct or indirect result of the technology being developed. A death or serious injury should immediately put into motion a series of very transparent and public (if the technology is publicly-available, which Autopilot is) concrete actions to diagnose and modify the program.

From my perspective, this did not happen after the crash in Mountain View. Instead, the consumer was blamed which was not only inappropriate and seemingly cold, but again, raises ethical questions that were not there before.

That is not to suggest that it is acceptable to ship known issues that are safety-related to the public. It is not acceptable.

One of the firm principals of Engineering Ethics is the knowledge that, sometimes, immediate business concerns might conflict with ethical behavior in product development. The proper application of Engineering Ethics always dictates that the protection of the consumer comes first.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask and/or check out a few of these resources:

One of my favorite books on Engineering Ethics

The Wikipedia page which actually shows some pretty compelling case studies that are somewhat similar to the Autopilot program (potentially).