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The Programmers' Identity Crisis: how do we use our powers for 'good'?


In December of 2021, an itinerant sci-fi and fantasy gathering called Worldcon came under scrutiny for accepting a sponsorship from an American defense company.1 Critics remarked that the conferenc…

A giant oil company can claim that people having house pets is killing the planet, and lowly engineers can go to jail for implementing executives’ duplicitous lawbreaking. Another option is to become Doug, the ascetic pushover from The Good Place whose commitment to avoiding harm brings him to assign himself a three week round trip on foot to memorialize a snail. Or, another flavor of this rationalization strategy, “My tattoos and artsy side hobbies prove I’m cool and progressive even if I blithely sling code for the highest bidder and ignore my impact.” Again, matching wallpaper does not mean alignment.

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