Yrkesverksamma programmerares etiska förhållningssätt till användning av generativ AI

Sammanfattning

During the past few years, the development of tools basedon artificial intelligence (AI) has accelerated. This hasresulted in the launch of several AI tools that can assistsoftware developers in their work. These AI tools have theirbasis in generative artificial intelligence (GAI) and theintroduction of GAI within software development has givenrise to discussions regarding the potential risks that GAIentails where, among other things, privacy and securityissues have been highly topical topics.These risks give cause for AI-ethics and ethical guidelines.Previous research shows a gap between research andpractice regarding AI ethics, which was deemed to justifyfurther research within the field. It was also noted, in currentresearch, that there exists a need for research into the impactthat external constraints, such as time pressure, have onprogrammers’ ethical approach when using GAI. Overall, aneed was thus highlighted that gave rise to this study, whoseresearch question aims to investigate which ethicalapproaches can be identified in professional programmers’use of GAI in code writing processes.A qualitative study was conducted to research this, wheresemi-structured interviews were conducted with fiveprogrammers who had experience with using GAI inprofessional contexts for their coding tasks. The responsesfrom the interviews were analyzed through a deductiveinductive thematic analysis which had its basis in the theoryTechnology Affordances and Constraint Theory.The study's results indicate that ethical approaches can beidentified in professional programmers within technologyaffordances, technology constraints and work culture forGAI. This led to the conclusion that professionalprogrammers largely maintain ethical approaches whenusing GAI. Another conclusion of this study is that the use ofa secure GAI tool in combination with providing a goodwork culture for GAI reinforces their ethical approach. Withthese prerequisites, the professional programmer can derivebenefit from technology affordances to a greater extent andat the same time deal with technology constraints to agreater degree.