Killer robot case study

The News

"Jane McMurdock, prosecuting attorney for the city of Silicon Valley, announced today the indictment of Randy Samuels on charges of manslaughter. Samuels was formerly employed as a programmer at Silicon Techtronics Inc., one of Silicon Valley's newest entries into the high-tech arena. The charge involves the death of Bart Matthews, who was killed last May by an assembly-line robot.

Matthews worked as a robot operator at Cybernetics Inc., in Silicon Heights. He was crushed to death when the robot he was operating malfunctioned and started to wave its "arm" violently. The robot arm struck Matthews, throwing him against a wall and crushing his skull. Matthews died almost instantly. The case has shocked and angered many in Silicon Valley. According to the indictment, Samuels wrote the particular piece of computer program responsible for the robot malfunction."

Main Characters

Cindy Yardley

Michael Waterson

Ray Johnson

Randy Samuels

Who's responsible

Ray Johnson?

Cindy Yardley?

Randy Samuels?

Sam Reynolds?

Personality

• Driven by the division's need for success
• Friction with Sam Reynolds (project manager)
• He was always seen as the manager or chief on desperate need of a successful project (selfish needs)

Managerial Mistakes

• Bringing emotional and personal feud into a professional environment (Sam Reynolds)
• Placing a lot of pressure on the team.
• Not understanding the team (different backgrounds: hardware)
• Recruiting extra staff(20) never fully integrated
• Failing to create and follow protocols: checks and balances
• Using authority to manipulate Cindy
• Fully aware of the problems but stopped at nothing (values in life)
• Would rather stick to is old experience and not opened for more

Duty As a Manager

• ability to operationalise management structure.
• ability to lead, oversee multiple business operations and manage stress
• ability to effectively communicate with coworkers

Responsibilities as a Manager

• Daily Operations
• Set Goals
• Liaising
• Administration
• Delegation
• Motivate
• Enforcing Policy
• Training
• Evaluation

What Codes were breached?

PROFESSIONAL

You shall:

• develop your professional knowledge, skills and competence on a continuing basis, maintaining awareness of technological developments, procedures, and standards that are relevant to your field.
• respect and value alternative viewpoints and, seek, accept and offer honest criticisms of work.
• avoid injuring others, their property, reputation, or employment by false or malicious or negligent action or inaction.
• reject and will not make any offer of bribery or unethical inducement.

Cont'n

ETHICAL

Useful six tips

• The Golden Rule – how would you like it if what you are proposing to do was

done to you?

• The legality test – is what you are proposing to do legal?
• The smell test – do you have that feeling in your stomach that it’s right or that

it’s wrong?

• The parent test – would you tell your parents that you are planning to do this?

Cont'n

SOCIAL

Public Interest

You shall:

• have due regard for public health, privacy, security and wellbeing of others and the environment.

Cont'n

LEGAL

You shall:

• ensure that you have the knowledge and understanding of Legislation and that you comply with such Legislation, in carrying out your professional responsibilities.
• NOT disclose or authorise to be disclosed, or use for personal gain or to benefit a third party, confidential information except with the permission of your Relevant Authority, or as required by Legislation.
• NOT misrepresent or withhold information on the performance of products, systems or services (unless lawfully bound by a duty of confidentiality not to disclose such information), or take advantage of the lack of relevant knowledge or inexperience of others.

What do we know about Cindy

- Straight out of school.

- Not much knowledge around ethics.

- Trust (Gullible).

- Feels guilty for being part of a project that has caused physical harm.

- Accepts responsibility for what has gone wrong and what she did.

What did she do?

- Ray Johnson said "I want you to fake the test results on that Samuels software. I don't want Reynolds to know anything about this"

- Cindy Yardley said "He assured me that no one would probably ever see the test results because the robot was perfectly safe."

- She admitted to faking software tests in order to save the jobs of her co- workers.

- She has listened to Ray Johnson and ran a simulation instead of using the actual software.

BCS code of conduct

Violation 1 (Duty to the Profession):

Duty to the Profession states "notify BCS if convicted of a criminal offense or upon becoming bankrupt or disqualified as a Company Director and in each case give details of the relevant jurisdiction."

Violation 2 (Duty to Relevant Authority):

Duty to Relevant Authority states "NOT misrepresent or withhold information on the performance of products, systems or services (unless lawfully bound by a duty of confidentiality not to disclose such information), or take advantage of the lack of relevant knowledge or inexperience of others."

Violation 3 (Professional Competence and Integrity):

Professional Competence and Integrity states "reject and will not make any offer of bribery or unethical inducement."

Personality

- Randy was working under a huge pressure on his shoulders alongside the team due to there being a deadline.

- Described by peers that he is a 'Prima Donna' meaning that he couldn't accept his own failure and would never accept if he did anything wrong

- Task oriented so this had a bad reflection on his team as he worked by himself and had a large ego.

- Takes everything personally and doesn't let people communicate to him.

- Hacker type person

- Good one on one meetings, hates group meetings.

What did he do?

- Randy programmed the robot which killed Bart Mathhews and was blamed as being the culprit for this mishap.

- He misinterpreted a hand written robots dynamic formulas

- Randy did not have the required knowledge to take on the job

- Very arrogant towards his peers and didn't take any advice or help from them therefore working under pressure and ego proud of his own self not knowing it was wrong.

What ethics were broken?

- Duty To The Profession - When programming the code, Randy broke the rule of structuring the code that clears the way for the maintenance if there are any problems and also producing code that was easy to maintain and he should have been in the pursuit to develop professionally.

- Professional Competence and Integrity - Randy was described as a Prima Donna and this is referred to the person who cant accept criticism and cant take or accept any advice from fellow peers. This broke the ethic as Randy should have accepted different viewpoints from different views.

- Duty To The Profession - The rule that was broken was the encourage and support fellow members in professional development. Randy hated meetings and this reflected into his work resulting in the death. Randy didn't encourage his fellow peers in their work and was always in his own cloud of work.

- Professional Competence And Integrity - Randy wasn't mature enough to take on such a big task and he should have thought ethically regarding his work as he saw it all as a big joke and was cutting corners. He claimed experience he didn't have.

Work on the project

• Under extreme amount of pressure to complete the project by January 1st.
• Personal feud with Ray Johnson "They hated each others guts"
• Threat of the division being terminated
• Only has background in data processing.
• Kept Ray Johnson off the staffs back. Due to the fued?
• Lack of communication with Ray.

Sams Role in the project

• Was only made the project manager as a cost saving.
• New staff did not read over the manual and Sam "wasnt about to waste time"
• Closed door meeting with Ray resulted in his being told "heads would roll" if the project was not completed
• Sam only wanted a waterfall method
• Anderson on sam "He should never have been made project manager"

What ethics were broken

Duty to relevant Authority

• Fired Anderson because she questioned the waterfall method "project was doomed long before Samuels misinterpreted those formulas"

Professional Competence and Integrity

• Inexperienced (also the CEO Michael Waterson fault)

Duty to profession

• Rejected idea of a prototype
• Knew their was an issue with the project