Comment by autoexec
15 hours ago
I just wish that software engineers had a similar level of accountability that an engineer building something like a bridge is held to. When a negligent software engineer causes harm to people nothing typically happens. No real risk of lawsuits, or loss of license, or worry about their liability insurance. This also means that software engineers can't effectively push back when their bosses want them to implement things that they know are insecure or dangerous
Well, Meta just settled with states to the tune of 17 billion dollars for harm caused by its algorithms.
Air Canada, a few years back, was found liable when its ai bot promised discounted fares to a customer.
Companies are getting hacked and held to ransom regularly so bad software is getting punished alright.
Maybe the guy writing the actual line of code (or the guy in whose name AI code is being pushed to git) isn’t getting punished but software is definitely being scrutinised for ill effects.
Now please show me the consequences from the Hugging Face incident. The company or the engineers individually apparently have nothing to be worried about.
They’re not software engineers, they’re software farmers. Very different kind of job
> Meta just settled with states to the tune of 17 billion dollars for harm caused by its algorithms.
Those were working as intended, unlike a bridge that collapses because of bad design.
> Air Canada, a few years back, was found liable when its ai bot promised discounted fares to a customer.
That was a solid win for AI accountability, but it only cost them $812.02. They most likely made money using that lying AI bot. It wouldn't take a week of paying just one employee minimum wage to hit $812. Last I heard they're still using the chatbot.
It's true that bad code can cost a company something, but its obviously not costly enough that they take the needed actions to avoid shipping it.
> No real risk of lawsuits
This is a joke right? Companies get sued for software all the time.
Companies get sued, programmers generally do not. Companies don't really care about being sued either, as evidenced by the fact that they still don't bother to prevent bad code from being shipped.
> Companies get sued, programmers generally do not.
Which makes sense. Software is generally purchased from a company, not an individual programmer.
> Companies don't really care about being sued either, as evidenced by the fact that they still don't bother to prevent bad code from being shipped.
They do care about code so bad it'll get them a lawsuit.