Ethical dilemmas of a software engineer

Abstract

In the Information Age machines and devices are always being controlled by computers. With this, many ethical questions arise. Is a machine allowed to harm someone in favor of saving somebody else? Who is responsible for harmful actions of an autonomous car? How soft or hard should the algorithm that finds a fitting donation organ for a patient be programmed? The base of all these machines and computers is their source code, written by a human programmer. Therefore, we need to understand the ethical implications of the programmer's code. The purpose of this paper is to identify ethical implications that can result from the source-code of a program or a machine.