The Ethics of Code: Who Is Responsible When Software Fails?

In 2024 I built a Legal Case Management System — software that would track the legal fates of real people. For the first time, I felt the weight of a question philosophers have long wrestled with: what does it mean for a human to be responsible for a machine's decision?

Hannah Arendt wrote about the "banality of evil" — harm caused not by monsters but by functionaries who never asked moral questions. I wonder if we software engineers are today's bureaucrats, building systems whose downstream effects we rarely trace.

Consider: a bug in a case-management system could delay a hearing. A delay could mean weeks more in pre-trial detention for someone who is innocent.

Code is not neutral. It encodes assumptions, power structures, and values. The least we can do is know whose values we're embedding.