But this material does not make you a lawyer our goal

But, this material does not make you a lawyer! Our goal has simply been to make you aware of the
many legal obligations of software users and developers, so that you can recognize when these laws
may apply to your own work and workplace and so that you can recognize when you need to consult
with a professional lawyer.
More generally, I hope that this course has made you think. I hope that it makes you be more conscious
of the different rights and responsibilities that software users and producers have to one another.
I also hope that this course will cause you to think more critically about the ethical and social
implications of the software that we build and, that as you go through your careers, you will continue to
think critically about the kinds of software that you or your company want to use or create. I especially
hope that you will think more carefully about the failure modes of software and worst-case scenarios of
what can possibly go wrong if our software fails or is misused/abused.
C O N C L UD IN G R E M A R K S F R O M T H E I N S T R U C T O R
P R O F . J O A T LE E
I T I S A D E V E L O P E R ’ S P R O F E S S I O N A L D U T Y T O H E L P E N S U R E T H A T T H E
S O F T W A R E T H E Y B U I L D C H A N G E S T H E W O R L D F O R T H E B E T T E R .

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© University of Waterloo and others
A diverse workplace can help a company to work through these considerations because people with
different backgrounds will bring to the discussion different perspectives and different reasonings
about the ethical and social implication of our software.
I encourage you to download the materials from this course for future use. Just remember that laws
change. Just as technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, laws need to keep up so that they
continue to protect the interest of the creators, and users and bystanders of technology.
As a software professional you need to keep up, with not only with the changes to technologies but also
with the changes to the relevant laws. Software is changing the world and it is our professional duty to
help ensure that the software we build changes the world for the better.
o IBM's Watson Supercomputer May Soon Be The Best Doctor In The World (Business Insider, Apr.
22, 2014
o Gold Coast drug raids uncover 3D-printed submachine guns (The Guardian, Nov. 23, 2016)
o The Future Of Room Service Is Robots (The Huffington Post UK, Nov. 23, 2016)
o The Future of Artificial Intelligence and Cybernetics (BBVA OpenMind)
o Engineers design programmable RNA vaccines (MIT News, July 4, 2016)
o In the fight against fake news, artificial intelligence is waging a battle it cannot win (Quartz, Nov.
22, 2016)
T H E W O R L D E C O N O M I C F O R U M
The World Economic Forum says that, “we are at the beginning of a Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
Advances in computers and communications (i.e., the Third Industrial Revolution), when combined with
advances in materials and advances in machine intelligence and decentralized decision making, are
enabling the creation of cyber-physical systems and smart products that can be deeply embedded
within our societies, our financial systems, and even our human bodies.