Engineering Human Values in Software through Value Programming

Authors

Davoud Mougouei, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

146055

Publication Details

Mougouei, D. (2020). Engineering Human Values in Software through Value Programming. Proceedings - 2020 IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops, ICSEW 2020 (pp. 133-136). New York, United States: Association for Computing Machinery.

Abstract

© 2020 ACM. Ignoring human values in software development may disadvantage users by breaching their values and introducing biases in software. This can be mitigated by informing developers about the value implications of their choices and taking initiatives to account for human values in software. To this end, we propose the notion of Value Programming with three principles: (P1) annotating source code and related artifacts with respect to values; (P2) inspecting source code to detect conditions that lead to biases and value breaches in software, i.e., Value Smells; and (P3) making recommendations to mitigate biases and value breaches. To facilitate value programming, we propose a framework that allows for automated annotation of software code with respect to human values. The proposed framework lays a solid foundation for inspecting human values in code and making recommendations to overcome biases and value breaches in software.