Engineering

Ethics
• Analysing Intel Pentium
case using flow charts
Disagreement
in Ethical
Dilemmas
 Disagreement in Facts
 Disagreement in Concepts
 Disagreement in Moral
Values
The Case
in “Brief”
 The Pentium chip has a flaw in
floating-point division affecting
digits to the right of the ninth
decimal place

Engineers at Intel were aware of

the flaw but considered it
unimportant and decided not to
declare the flaw to the public
Conceptual
Issues:
• Does this flaw have any effects
on user applications?
• Is Intel's decision to not inform
users of the flaw considered
cheating on users or is it a
trivial detail that would
unnecessarily draw users
attention and backfire?
Moral Issues:
• Intel should have refrained from selling the flawed
chip, but rather fixed the flaw and sold the
perfectly working chips
• Intel should have declared the chip’s limitation to
its customers
• Intel decided to replace chips for affected users
only, identified at its own discretion based on
interviews about use cases, causing some users to
be incorrectly declared as not eligible for a
replacement.
Flow Charts as
Ethical Problem
Solving
Techniques
Benefits of Gives a visual picture of the
using flow situation
charts to
analyze
ethical Allows us to really see the
consequences that flow from
problems: each decision
Problem statement

Decision Yes Consequence/Action

No

Decision Yes Consequence/Action

No

Consequence/Action
• There is no unique flow chart that is
applicable to a given problem. In fact,
different flow Charts can be used to
emphasize different aspects of the same
problem.
• It will be essential to be as objective as
possible and to approach flow charting
honestly. Otherwise, it will be possible to
draw any conclusion you want, even one
that is clearly wrong.
The decision-
making process that
intel used to sell the
Pentium chip:
We want to sell a
new chip

Test it The flaw No

can’t be
ignored
Inform buyers Sell
No
Is there any
Yes
flaw in the Sell
chip?
Redesign
Yes

Is the flaw No
recognizable? Sell
Yes
The decision-
making process
that followed
the disaster:
We need to deal
with the situation
Yes Does the flaw affect
everyone?

Yes
Can the flaw be Do software
fixed by a software update No
update?

No Yes Will a selective

return policy
We shall consider Do unconditional
contradict with user
rights?
a return policy return policy

No
Can the company Yes
deal with the losses
of unconditional Do selective
return policy return policy

No
Presented by:

• Omer Aboagla Mohamed-

174057
• Wais Kamal Wais-
174110
• Mohamed Mahmoud Abdallah-
174093
• Ahmed Omer Idres Alshaikh-
174003
• Abram Albert Adeeb-
174006