THINKING ISSUES
OPINION by Tony Clear,
Auckland University of Technology
What’s Driving Uber? Values in
Computing and the ‘Sharing Economy’
The strongly technical focus of com- puter science as a discipline means that the underlying values behind the
development and use of technology often
become obscured. Hidden biases inherent
in systems, based on AI and algorithmic
processes, making important decisions
affecting people’s lives [ 16] illustrate the
need to more openly reveal these values.
Debates such as the recent spat between
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, around AI
and the need to regulate software systems
which critically influence the lives of many
[ 18], will only intensify, and our students
will need to be better prepared to address
the issues involved.
A critical question then is, can we reveal
what values are driving our technology and
the businesses based upon it? Disruptive
new business models created by tech ventures and aggressive Silicon Valley start-ups
are driving the so called ‘gig economy’ [ 23]
and new forms of ‘platform capitalism.’ [ 14]
But the tensions are now becoming more
obvious. This column takes the case of Uber
as an example, highlighting the dubious
choices in which the software developers
for the company have been implicated. It
asks, to what extent should we expect our
graduates to have an innate concern for the
human, moral, and legal aspects of their
actions? Yet exercising such professional
judgement is not easy. A myopic view of
the system code may predominate, the
company culture can be oppressive or even
toxic and sometimes the cumulative effects
of systems can be hard to discern.
A panel session at the Global Software
Engineering conference in May 2017
[ 5], discussed the topics of Systems-
of-Systems, Software Ecosystems and
Distributed Software Development. In
an interesting aspect of the debate, Jon
Whittle noted the unpredictable outcomes
emerging from such groups of systems.
He argued the need to consider the values
embedded within each component system,
to highlight core incompatibilities between
systems and address the implications.
Computer science often masquerades
under the cloak of technology as value
neutral, so this struck me as an important
insight that we need to be aware of
ourselves, and to share with our students.
Jon referred to an intriguing model of
‘universal values’ [ 19] as a way in which to
think about what values drive our systems.
This model by Schwartz identified several
value groupings which can be used to
categorize a value system whether held by
a human or (as Jon argues [ 7]) embedded
within a hardware/software system.
As a company Uber provides a good
example of a technology driven start-up
business, albeit now undergoing some
growing pains. It represents a case of
‘platform capitalism’ [ 11, 14] where the en-
abling technology provides a base for an
aggressive tech start-up employing a new
business model, muscling into markets,
disrupting other businesses, and with the
ability to rapidly scale—a venture capital-
ist’s dream! Yet, I have been particularly
struck by the case of this company which
has recently been in the news for all the
wrong reasons, leading up to the release
of the CEO Travis Kalanick from the firm,
(but not the board since he was a major
stockholder of this $70B company!) [ 24].
Several compounding factors led to Travis’
departure. In early 2017 the company
reputation had suffered from the explosive revelations of the sexist treatment
of female employees at the company in
the blog post by former employee Susan
Fowler [ 8], and also from the #DeleteUber
backlash against the company’s perceived
support of President Trump’s ‘Muslim
[Uber] represents a case of ‘platform
capitalism’ … where the enabling
technology provides a base for an aggressive
tech start-up employing a new
business model, muscling into markets,
disrupting other businesses, and
with the ability to rapidly scale—
a venture capitalist’s dream!
