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Alan Ayoub
CST 373 Ethics in Comm. & Tech.
Kevin Cahill
4/14/2017

Resolving VWs Ethical Challenges with Software Cheating Emissions Testing

My name is Alan Ayoub and I am currently a Computer Science major at California

State Monterey Bay University of California. I expect to graduate from CSUMB in June 2017

with a BS in Computer Science. In the Fall of 2017, I will begin a Masters program at

Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing. I have some experience as a Full-

Stack developer and I have an interest in moving towards Machine Learning & Artificial

Intelligence. As it relates to machine/deep learning, I also believe that self-driving car

engineers have a very bright future in the automobile industry. In this paper, I will examine

the ethical issues relating to VWs software cheating emissions testing. Self-driving

engineers and Computer Scientists working in the automotive industry have an ethical

responsibility to their employers and the public. I am interested in the ethics of VWs

software cheating emissions testing because I once worked for an Audi dealership in 2003

and I found myself in the middle of a corporate surprise audit. The Audi dealership sold the

most Audi cars in the world and I speculate that there were some unethical actions taken

by the dealership to help boost sales. There were several unethical challenges that I

witnessed first-hand as an employee at an Audi dealership and believe that gives me a

unique perspective when reflecting about this issue. As a software engineer, I will have an

ethical duty to protect my employers and do right by the public as a self-driving car

engineer. Several fields are moving towards implementing software into their products and

the computer scientist will be faced with the challenges to produce results that are

favorable to the company and to the public. The ethical challenges with software cheating is
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worth studying because every computer scientist will be faced with the option to cheat in

order to produce desired results.

There is a long history of cheating on regulatory testing (Hashimoto, 2015). One

example is an android manufacturer by the name of OnePlus and other companies from

China were caught cheating in a benchmark test (Smith, Popular Android manufacturer

OnePlus caught cheating in benchmark tests, 2017). Their end goal was to bump up their

benchmark score by entering an alternate CPU scaling. When they were caught, OnePlus

admitted to cheating in a benchmark test and they said that they would not do it again.

Toshibas CEO Hisao Tanka resigned from the firm once it was discovered that Toshiba had

overstated their earnings by nearly $2 Billion over a seven year period. The technology

field isnt the only one that has been caught in a scandal. Valeant, a Pharmaceutical

company was using a specialty pharmacy company to inflate their sales (Matthews &

Gandel, 2015). Valeant was also accused of price purchasing drugs and rapidly raising the

prices. Valeant has denied this practice. Martin Shkreli used his Pharmaceutical company

Turning doing something like Valeant by raising the cost of one HIV pill to $750 an increase

of 5000%. Both characters maintain their innocence. Martin Shkreli has displayed

arrogance in the public eye after these accusations. He sarcastically pleaded the fifth in

court and after harassing a freelance reporter on twitter his account was suspended. In

general, the public does not like Martin Shkreli. What do these corporate examples have in

common? They all made unethical decisions and they thought nobody would find out. In

some examples, even when they were caught they maintained their innocence and denied

any wrong doing.

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Volkswagen, the worlds largest auto manufacturer has been cheating on their diesel

cars emissions testing for the past six years (Hashimoto, 2015). The purpose of this

software is to ensure that pollutions controls are turned off when the vehicle is in

operation and the pollution control turns on only when being tested for emissions. The

vehicles that were affected by this are the 2009 to 2015 Audi A3, Volkswagen Jetta, Golf,

Passat, and Beetle. The European Commission found that Volkswagen broke consumer

laws in 20 European Union countries (Reuters, 2016). Volkswagen has agreed to paying

14.7 Billion dollars to settle the emissions scandal. Since the laws are different in Europe,

owners in the United States are being compensated while European owners have weak

chances of receiving a payout. United States consumers are protected by the State

consumer protection laws and the State and Federal Warranty Laws (What the Volkswagen

Emissions Scandal Means for Consumers, n.d.). The United States implemented the

Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in 1975 (Understanding the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act,

n.d.). The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act protects consumers with a warranty on products

that cost $5 or more. The MMWA also protects consumers in ways that most consumers do

not even realize. There are many instances where large corporations are challenging the

MMWA in plain sight. For example, the Xbox One includes a Warranty Void if Removed

sticker on their machine. This is deceptive and is a violation of the MMWA and has no legal

standing (Doctorow, 2016). The sticker is meant to discourage consumers from opening

the Xbox and implies a void warranty if opened. The purpose of the MMWA protection is to

allow consumers to get their product serviced at independent depots without voiding their

warranties. Most consumers are not aware of their rights and this is ignorance is what

companies prey on.

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After reviewing how the media portrays Volkswagen, there are several ideas that

come to mind. In my opinion, the title of an article can be telling regarding the bias point of

a view an author may have. While doing a google search for Volkswagen and specifying a

time range of 2001 to 2013 in news articles, it appears as if Volkswagen has consistently

had a bad reputation. Some article names are Ruined after betting on Volkswagen Stock,

German Billionaire and Volkswagen Super Bowl Ad accused of being racist. To be fair,

not all the articles in the search were negative. There were several neutral articles such as

Volkswagen Bets on Passat Built in Tennessee and Volkswagen completes Porsche

takeover. I remember in 2003 while I was working at the Audi dealership, we would hear

phrases like Audi has come a long way and they are no longer a terrible car.

To compare these older results with a more current timeframe, I decided to choose

an isolate the search to only include 2014 to 2017 articles. While doing this search, I

happened to notice that all of articles that showed up in the google search were about the

software emissions testing. I noticed that the word scandal appeared 16 times in the title

of articles and cheat appeared 10 times in the title of articles. These words have a negative

connotation and they appear strong in headlines. The reader can usually determine the

sentiment of the author based on the title.

Volkswagen has had a very bad reputation prior to the internet. Today, my primary

research tool is the google search engine. Out of curiosity, I decided to dig deeper and I did

a google search for Volkswagen and specifying a time range of 1990 to 2000 in news

articles. The internet became user friendly roughly around 1996 and 1997 so I did not

expect any articles prior to this time to populate in google. After doing this search, it

became much clearer to me that Volkswagen has had a very bad reputation that it has been
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trying to shake off for years. One article title from 1996 reads Volkswagens History: The

Darker Side Is Revisited. A quote at the end of the article reads Klaus Kocks, a Volkswagen

spokesman, said he hoped the books depiction of the companys inglorious past would not

be used by Volkswagens competitors. You dont sell cars with things like this, he said

(COWELL, 1996). In general, I would conclude that the media has historically packaged

Volkswagen news in a negative spotlight.

There are many stakeholders who are affected by the failure of Volkswagen. For

one, Volkswagens competitors will be beneficiaries. An article entitled For Volkswagen

Competitors, Diesel Scandal Is Gift That Keeps on Giving. In this article, we learn that

competitors like Ford, General Motors, Renault, BMW, and Daimler are all beneficiaries

(Levin, 2016). Competitors are not the only ones who are affected, consumers will be

affected as well. If a consumer is debating between a BMW and a Volkswagen, the

Volkswagen cheating emissions testing scandal may sway a consumer to get a BMW

instead.

Volkswagens software cheating emissions testing may have temporarily fooled an

emissions test, however, the smog effects did not fool the environment. The Environmental

Protection Agencies were also affected by Volkswagens software cheating emissions

testing. The EPA accepted a settlement that required Volkswagen to buy back affected cars

and fix them for free (Rash, 2017). Several States in the U.S. have received large

settlements. Volkswagen has agreed to pay over 157 Million dollars to 10 US States.

There are approximately 500,000 customers who were affected by Volkswagens

software cheating emissions testing. Volkswagens buyback program was more generous
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than most expected, several owners reported that they made a profit from Volkswagens

buyback program.

From an ethical stand point, there may be several different ethical frameworks that

contributed to VWs software cheating emissions testing. Three ethical frameworks that

could have contributed to VWs software cheating are egoism, utilitarianism, and

deontology.

Egoism or Self Interest Perspective could have contributed to the cheating emissions

testing. In a corporate setting, management is driven by results and sometimes people will

do anything to get the desired results. Businesses have an obligation to shareholders to

produce shareholder value and managements job is to make sure the company and their

employees produce those results. Ethically, employees should operate and engage in their

activities without fraud. In the case Volkswagens software cheating, a programmers

obligation at Volkswagen develop a software. The programmer is not responsible for the

science behind environmental protection. Is it possible that a manager at Volkswagen

instructed a programmer to write this cheating emissions software? I believe this is likely.

Could the manager have a self-interest in producing such results? Yes, a manager will

sometimes do unethical things to protect their image and to get the results they are after.

The management could have believed the results would only affect them and not others.

Utilitarianism could have contributed to the cheating emissions testing. The small

group of people at Volkswagen who made the decisions to move forward to develop the

cheating software emissions testing could have justified the idea that this was for the

greater good of the company. They could have deliberated about the outcome and

concluded that writing a software that cheats emissions testing would satisfy the majority.
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Their outlook could have been focused on making shareholders happy. Upon deliberating

the effects, they could have concluded that nobody would know and therefore, nobody will

be affected. Maybe they thought that nobody would care enough to investigate or an

investigation would produce nothing substantial. Ethically, maybe the programmers dont

believe the impact will have any effect on the environment. There could have been a

mastermind that all agreed that more people would benefit from results.

Deontology could have contributed to the cheating emissions testing. Volkswagen

could have produced the software cheating emissions test with the idea that their

competition would do the same thing. Volkswagen could have felt that their competitors

would do something unethical to gain an advantage. So, whats the appropriate response?

Do unto your competitors as your competitors would do to you. When using this ethical

framework, ideally, the ethically responsible thing to do is to question whether your

response is good or bad. Not everyone uses this approach the same way. Some use this

approach as retaliation without consideration for what is right.

Looking ahead, the future can learn from the mistakes of the past. Prior to the

Volkswagen scandal, BP settled for 20.8 Billion over federal environmental and safety

issues violations (VW's US tab said to grow to $20 billion in emissions scandal , 2016).

Historically, these are two of the highest settlements ever. So, the question should be asked,

did Volkswagen learn from BPs mistake? It appears that they did not, however, one can

argue that Volkswagen was a different issue even though they were both federal

environmental and safety issues violations. Volkswagens scandal can solely be blamed on

one programmer who made an unethical decision. As a programmer, I can say that the

Volkswagen scandal carries more weight towards my career more so than the lessons
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learned from BP. When it comes to software cheating, Volkswagen is the front name. Since

the Volkswagen scandal, Uber has been accused of using sophisticated software to cheat

both drivers and passengers (Smith, Uber accused of using sophisticated software to cheat

both drivers and passengers, 2017). This is a new report and we are yet to confirm that

Uber has cheated both drivers and passengers.

In the future, we can expect unethical actions to continue to be a problem. In an

article entitled The battle for ethics at the cutting edge of technology there is a quote that

says Technologies used by the most vulnerable members of our society make the ethical

issues particularly important (Brolchin, 2017). We will see unethical people in power

who abuse technology and there will be consequences.

I have a theory as to the chain of events that led to the development of VWs

software cheating emissions testing. Historically, Volkswagen has been struggling to

improve their identity. Developing a software that cheats the emissions testing is just

another case of the company trying to wipe out their bad reputation at any expense. I

believe that the company experienced some growth and they felt that they needed to

improve on that growth. They set goals that were unattainable and they were looking for

any way to be number one in emissions. Their stock was in an uptrend after the stock crash

in 2008 with the uptrend beginning in December of 2008 through April 10th of 2015. I

believe that the pressure to produce results led management to pressure the software

engineers. That pressure to produce led to developing a software cheating emissions

testing. Since a real solution to emissions did not exist, a real solution was unable to be

developed. I believe they felt they would never get caught and that nobody would really

care.
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There are many takeaways from this incident for me. At no point is it ever ok to

cheat your way through development. The consequences are far too dangerous and the

benefits of cheating are not worth it. I personally could not sleep well at night knowing that

I could potentially harm millions of people by developing a software that cheats. As

programmers, we will be faced with many challenges and we will have to think critically

about the ethical implications. I am considering a startup and I am worried that I may not

think about every ethical issue. Since that is the case, I should hire a consultant to help me

think about all the ethical implications I might encounter. If Volkswagen hired a consultant

to review their plan to allow software to cheat an emissions test, they would have saved

themselves from this mess. I dont believe they were interested in ethical implications,

more so, they were interested in being number one.

Desired outcomes should never outweigh ethical responsibility. In 1998, I worked

for a corporation that sold wholesale products in a huge catalog. This companys business

model consisted of getting the average person to believe that they could sell products and

own their own business. They would advertise at three in the morning on the television

and target a specific group of people. The pitch in the infomercial showed someone setting

up a booth and letting the huge catalog of gifts do all the selling while products were laid

out at the booth. The business owner talks about their success and how they earned six

figures a year letting the catalog do all the work. They also started to pitch websites and

how they could help business owners have their very own website. This is where I come in.

I worked in the website technical support department. The company I worked for was

selling websites for $750 per website. Our job in technical support was to help customers

with accomplish basic html programming. The company knew that the internet was so
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new, they felt that they could capitalize on an opportunity. The way that the company

pitched websites in their infomercial led people to believe that all they needed to do was to

buy the website and the website will magically make them rich. The websites url had

mygifts.com as the primary domain name. So, lets say the customers name was Michelle.

Michelles domain might be michellesStore.mygifts.com. The IT department would install a

basic template that took no longer than 45 seconds to install and the customer would have

to edit the html to customize their new gift store. Quickly, I learned that I was not really a

technical support guru, instead, I was a punching bag for disgruntled customers who were

conned into buying a $750 template. None of the people who purchased these websites had

any programming or basic html knowledge. It broke my heart to hear people tell me that

they spent their life savings on this website. After several months of this, I started to lose

sleep. I would have nightmares of phone conversations repeating in my head and it began

to wear on me. I requested a meeting with the CEO to discuss my feelings about this

department. I tried to help him understand that this department is creating hostile

customers and they are not happy about being sold a template for $750. The CEO did not

like what he was hearing. Why would he? His interest is in keeping the revenue stream

going. Their primary business model preys on people and only cares about opening their

wallets. I was whistle blowing and I was supposed to keep my mouth shut and play along

with the scam operation. Ultimately, I ended up getting fired. Because of this experience, I

believed that the workforce was not for me. From that moment on, I have worked as an

independent contractor.

I think about my experience at this company in 1998 and imagine myself as the

programmer at Volkswagen who is asked to write a cheating software. Psychologically, I

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could not do it. I would likely resign from my position and look for an opportunity where a

programmer would not be asked to do something unethical. The characters are likely the

same in the Volkswagen scenario. The CEO I dealt with in 1998 is the modern-day

management at Volkswagen expecting their team to produce results.

As of today, the company that I use to work for has a terrible reputation online. The

big lesson that I have learned from Volkswagens scandal is that we will always be

accountable to writing our own history for better or worse.

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References

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http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/07/world/volkswagen-s-history-the-darker-

side-is-revisited.html

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