In 2011, with a team of interns at a Department of Defense contractor, Caleb created a Wi-Fi geolocation app to locate hotspots. It could find the location in 3D space of every hotspot near you in seconds. His team made formulas to model signal strength and probable distances. They used machine learning to optimize completion time and accuracy. He was so caught up in the details that it took months to see it would be used to kill people. What do we do when we discover that we're building something immoral or unethical? How can we think through the uses of our software to avoid this problem entirely?
To actually see this talk, which does in fact have mostly empty slides, visit https://calebhearth.com/talks/dont-get-distracted.