We expect professionals to behave ethically. Doctors and companies working on genetics and cloning for instance are expected to behave ethically and have constraints placed on their work. And with consequences for those behaving unethically.
Yet we have millions of software engineers working on building a surveillance society with no sense of ethics, constraints or consequences.
What we have instead are anachronistic discussions on things like privacy that seem oddly disconnected from 300 years of accumulated wisdom on surveillance, privacy, free speech and liberty to pretend the obvious is not obvious, and delay the need for ethical behavior and introspection. And this from a group of people who have routinely postured extreme zeal for freedom and liberty since the early 90's and produced one Snowden.
That's a pretty bad record by any standards, and indicates the urgent need for self reflection, industry bodies, standards, whistle blower protection and for a wider discussion to insert context, ethics and history into the debate.
The point about privacy is not you, no one cares what you are doing so an individual perspective here has zero value, but building the infrastructure and ability to track what everyone in a society is doing, and preempt any threat to entrenched interests and status quo. An individual may not need or value privacy but a healthy society definitely needs it.
But I think it's already too late. The genie is out of the bottle and it's already doing it's darker things in many parts of the world.
One of the great things about technology, is that it knows no boundaries. But that is also it's biggest danger. Because powerful technology in the hands of weak people can lead to disaster.
Intelligence is the ability to create something from nothing, while Wisdom is the ability to choose (wisely) how to apply intelligence to reality - what to create and what not to create. If intelligence is the engine, then wisdom is the driver.
We have trained lots of engines but very few drivers. And that is what worries me most..