Ethics and Ownership
Computer Ethics regulate how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional & social conduct.
A computing professional can be ethically guided by joining a professional, ethical body such as the BCS and IEEE, which have codes of conduct.
- BCS: The British Computer Society
- The Public Interests. 为了公众的利益
- Professional Competence and Integrity. 职业能力和诚信
- Duty to Relevant Authority. 对象管机构的责任
- Duty to the Profession. 对职业的责任
- IEEE: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
- aims:
- Raising awareness of ethical issues. 提高对伦理问题的认识
- Promoting ethical behavior. 促进伦理道德行为
- Ensuring engineers and scientists respect the need for ethical behavior. 确保工程师和科学家重视伦理行为的必要性
- aims:
- ACM: Association for Computing Machinery.
Intellectual Property 知识产权 - an individual’s ownership of their own creations or ideas.
Copyright 版权 - The legal ownership of Intellectual Property and conveys the right to control its reproduction and distribution.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Principles:
- Public - focus on public interests, disclosing any potential harms.
- Self - Self improvements (knowledge, don’t be biased).
- Colleague - Give credits to others’ works, listen to others, help them and guide them.
- Judgement - do legal things, be objective & integrity.
- Clients - be honest about own abilities.
- Products - meet all the requirements, high quality, no back doors.
- Management - know the standards, be realistic, use capable/skillful team mates.
- Profession - support others, dealing with the potential errors, report someone who breaks the code.
关于IEEE，更多请参见：IEEE/ACM Software Engineering Code of Ethics - Thyrius
Software Licencing
Copyright:
- The formal and legal rights to ownership.
- Protects against unauthorised reproduction of work.
- Provides for legal right of redress.
Different types of software licenses:
- Free Software. 自由软件.
- Open Source Initiative. 开源软件.
- Freeware. 免费软件. — 被版权保护的软件.
- Shareware. 共享软件. — 可以使用免费版本，但没有完整的功能.
- Commercial software. 商业软件. — 付费才能使用. & strictly for resale.
如果对自由软件和开源软件感兴趣的话，我推荐以下两个视频：
如果对实际使用的各种licenses感兴趣，可以参考以下内容：
Free software. 自由软件. & Open Source Initiative.
- Users have the freedom to run, copy, change and adapt the software.
- Run the software for any legal purpose they wish.
- Study the program’s code.
- Redistribute.
Freeware 免费软件.
- subject to copyright laws.
- User must agree the terms of use.
- Not allow to modify the source code.
Shareware 共享软件.
- Users need to pay for a fee after the free trial.
- Trial version is not the full version.
- Protected by copyright laws.
- Must not use the source code.
Artificial Intelligence
AI - machine or application which carries out a task that requires some degree of intelligence when carried out by a human being
Characteristics of AI:
- collection of data.
- Rules for using the data.
- The ability to reason.
- The ability to learn or adapt.
Positive impact:
- increase productivity
- able to make informed predictions.
- analysis complex dataset.
Negative impact:
- unemployment.
- unable to maintain the AIs when AIs replaced human jobs.
- changes human life.
AIs can be used in:
- autonomous (driverless) vehicles.
- artificial limb technology.
- drones.
- climate changes.
- medical procedures.
Expert system
- Knowledge base & Rule base - Similar to a database that stores a set of facts and rules
- Inference engine - Controls the steps taken to solve the problem.
- forward chaining - give a number of facts then the system can reach new facts.
- backward chaining - give a goal and determine the facts that are needed.
- Interface - Used to interact with humans (e.g. web pages, chatbots, telephone system).
Machine learning - The program is able to automatically adapt its own processes or data.
How AI works:
- Train the AI with large amounts of data, then AI will find the patterns.
- Use Machine Learning to improve the accuracy of recognition.
- Capture the new data by a sensor, and compare it with the stored data.