[SystemSafety] Automobile Emissions "Cheat" Devices

[Les Chambers]

Alvery
Point taken. My suggestion does involve politics. But your statement that:
" In this particular context, giving power & authority to any group of engineers to intervene in commercial activity is a political act."
... seems to indicate I am speaking of an aspirational goal, not a present fact. I'd put it to you that political activity by the engineering profession is not an aspiration, it is a current reality. We are already up to our ears in legislative activity, albeit by stealth.
Last weekend there was a story in our national newspaper the Australian about a guy who did a hands-free drive in his Tesla from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, a distance of 100 kilometres. Our M1 freeway is a good road with solid road markers. So while the politicians are tussling with the legislative framework for self driving cars, the engineering community has just created them and put them on the road. The trip was made possible by a software upgrade that happened overnight in the Tesla of interest. What is this, if not legislation? The profession has spoken, "you can drive your car with no hands on the wheel now". 
Other examples abound. Another good one is Uber. The taxi industry is heavily regulated in most countries, including Australia. Then along comes a bunch of engineers with a web app to legislate that all that is not necessary. Engineering has spoken, "it's okay, you can jump in your car and take passengers anywhere you like for money." And the thing I find astounding is that the push of this web app is so hard to withstand that governments all over the world are saying, "well, alright then."
And then there is Air B&B ... The list is endless. But there is one item at the top of the list that none of us should ignore because it's becoming a real possibility. The notion that within 50 years the engineering profession will tender the ultimate piece of legislation:
"It's okay. You don't need to work. Most of what you do can be done in milliseconds in our big-data bunker." 
... The ramifications of this may require further legislation as the masses rise up with no money nothing to do:
"it's okay. Our pattern matching software has indicated that you are an enemy of the State. It's time for you to die."

All of this used to be science fiction, but I don't think I'm being overdramatic in suggesting that this kind of legislative behaviour is sufficiently probable to warrant a fundamental change in the way engineers view their position in society. We already wield tremendous power by virtue of what we know. This power, as I have shown above, has already trumped existing legislation (and with extreme prejudice). To suggest we are not political is to ignore reality. We just need to be better, more responsible, politicians. 

At the heart of this matter is the moral core of the profession. Ethics will not be practised unless they are aggressively taught in educational institutions and reinforced in the workplace. Words on the page ARE useless unless they are transformed into action under pressure. I just don't see this happening at the moment. There's too much of the "servant" in the engineering perspective rather than the "independent moral actor".
In terms of transformational change, the best thing we can do is feed off history. The most successful implementations of moral behaviour have always emerged from dedicated groups of self sacrificing virtuosos. Social change has always come at a cost: Mahatma Gandhi - assassinated 1947, Martin Luther King assassinated - 1968. Hence my assertion that we need a modern analogue of the Jesuits along the lines of our exemplars in MSF. There are people out there willing to sacrifice. The medical profession has demonstrated this. In engineering, many of them work within existing legal frameworks but cannot contribute to professional debate for fear of job loss or legal action. Some of them lurk on this list. What I'm suggesting is that the engineering profession needs a framework where rational discussions and actions can take place without fear of retribution. The ultimate result would be a "kill switch" on immoral projects. A real implementation of the medical precept of, "first do no harm". That shouldn't be too hard. Should it?

I'd agree with Churchill that democracy is the least bad system we have for governing our communities. But it changes and its future is not assured. I would hate to see technology put massive power in the hands of a few (the death of democracy), which is the way we are currently moving. People not involved in technology don't see this coming. We do because we are. What engineers don't understand because they were never educated in these matters and never asked to reflect on the subject (or actively practice the principles), is that the natural human tendency is to colonise, dominate and monetise. More and more the engineering profession in our "servant" role is the enabler of this kind of activity. Where this is detrimental to society we need to take an active role in stopping it. 

We can only achieve this by applying a morality layer to the political power we already wield.

Les




-----Original Message-----
From: GRAZEBROOK, Alvery N [mailto:alvery.grazebrook at airbus.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 12:29 AM
To: Les Chambers; 'Peter Bernard Ladkin'; 'The System Safety List'
Subject: RE: [SystemSafety] Automobile Emissions "Cheat" Devices

Les, 

I was absolutely with you until the last two sentences

 > From: ... Les Chambers
 >  It is laudable that engineering organisations such as the ACM/IEEE see fit to publish codes of practice, 
 > ... Talk is cheap, words on the page are useless. I think it's time we considered intervention.

In this particular context, giving power & authority to any group of engineers to intervene in commercial activity is a political act. In various safety related industries, these groups exist (EASA, FAA for example), but their power / remit is restricted to their area of interest. Politics is driven by "talk" and important words on important pages, backed up by money and influence. Therefore if you want to intervene (and I broadly support your intention in this) then Talk, Words on Pages, and Influence are precisely the types of intervention that are required. 

Try talking to a sociologist and an economist about what type of organisation could work to achieve your objectives. You'd need it to be able to influence government (regulations) and commercial organisations, and also to be stable within our society, so it lasts for long enough to be useful and can weather the controversy it will inevitably become involved in.

Regards,
	Alvery

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