Our guest today says that the profession of programmer or coder is the most important occupation to have in the 21st century, and yet computer science is developmentally speaking, still a very young field and discipline.

Rob Reich is professor of political science and, by courtesy, professor of philosophy and Education, at Stanford University. He is the director of the Center for Ethics in Society and co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and associate director of the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. 

His books include “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot,” and “Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better.”

Listen as Greg and Rob talk about computer science, the ethics of engineering, echo chambers and how social media is changing communication systems.

Episode Quotes:

Is democracy in opposition to big tech?

When the optimization mindset becomes a kind of life outlook, rather than a particular methodological approach to a domain of technical problems, I think the engineer is led to believe that there's no particular reason to be attached to democratic decision-making as such, because democracy is so suboptimal.

We need a social system, a political system that optimizes. And democracies are designed as a fair process for refereeing, contesting preferences and values amongst citizens while cohabiting together in the same social order. 

How social media is changing communication systems 

In a world of social media, the people who are signaling to us what counts as quality information are our peers, are our friends on the social graph, rather than some gatekeeper expert.

And so we have what we call horizontal trust rather than vertical trust to an expert. And that has led to the spread of misinformation and disinformation that no expert has, as it were, weighed in on and tried to filter for us. 

Ethics & computer science

I think while personal ethics of course is fine to have, maybe necessary, there's no such thing as a university course that will fix the human temptation to fudge the corners or to get ahead in various unethical ways. And I think the far more interesting challenge is this one to unearth the implicit value frameworks that guide our way implicitly or explicitly through moral complexity. 

Show Links:

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Stanford University
• Professional Profile at National Center for Family Philanthropy
• Rob Reich on LinkedIn
• Rob Reich on Twitter

His Work:

• Rob Reich on Google Scholar
• System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot 
• Digital Technology and Democratic Theory
• Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better
• Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values
• Education, Justice, and Democracy 
• Occupy the Future
• Toward a Humanist Justice: The Political Philosophy of Susan Moller Okin