Poster: Ethics-Aware Software Engineering

Human interaction and behavior are at the core of most software engineering (SE) activities. Furthermore, software is created to fulfill human stakeholders' needs and wishes, and the resulting software is ultimately utilized (directly or indirectly) by human users. Today's software is highly intertwined with our lives, and it possesses an increasing ability to act and influence us. Besides the obvious example of self-driving cars and their potential harmfulness, more mundane software such as social networks may introduce bias, break privacy preferences, lead to digital addiction, etc. Additionally, the SE process itself is highly affected by ethical issues, such as diversity and business ethics. This paper introduces ethics-aware SE, a version of SE in which the ethical values of the stakeholders (including developers and users) are captured, analyzed, and reflected in software specifications and in the SE processes.