Comment by 0xbadcafebee

1 year ago

In the Military, soldiers have an ethical duty not to follow an order that is illegal. It is called duty to disobey.

In civilian life, you have a duty to disobey if what your employer asks of you will unnecessarily harm people. For example, shipping a broken insecure product that handles PII/PHI/etc is absolutely unethical, and possibly illegal (though often the legal consequences are minor, if not irrelevant). Your bosses will absolutely ask you to do illegal and/or unethical shit, so you always need to be aware of where the line is, both legally and ethically.

It's not always clear where the line is. With AI work, the line has already been crossed several times (things like discrimination in output resulting in innocent people being hurt). Do not do whatever your company asks for. Do push back when you see a problem. Don't ship something that could hurt someone. If you're not sure, ask or find out.

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0xbadcafebee

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paulddraper  1 year ago

> an ethical duty not to follow an order that is illegal

I'm not sure that has to be said, but yes, don't do illegal stuff.

You then push this question further outside the legal/illegal bounds.

  • marcus_holmes  1 year ago

    Ethical is not the same as legal. Legal actions can be unethical and ethical actions can be illegal.

    The Nuremberg trials established this after WW2: just obeying orders is not sufficient [0]. This is why modern militaries have a duty to disobey.

    It's the same in civilian life: you have a personal duty to disobey an instruction that you personally consider to be unethical. You cannot hide behind "I was just obeying the law". You absolutely should break the law if you consider that law to be unethical. It is your personal responsibility to decide this.

    So yes, you should do illegal stuff if not doing said illegal stuff would be unethical.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_principles