Fixing Tech’s Ethics Problem Starts in the Classroom; The Nation, February 21, 2019

Stephanie Wykstra, The Nation; Fixing Tech’s Ethics Problem Starts in the Classroom

 

"Casey Fiesler, a faculty member in the Department of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that a common model in engineering programs is a stand-alone ethics class, often taught towards the end of a program. But there’s increasingly a consensus among those teaching tech ethics that a better model is to discuss ethical issues alongside technical work. Evan Peck, a computer scientist at Bucknell University, writes that separating ethical from technical material means that students get practice “debating ethical dilemmas…but don’t get to practice formalizing those values into code.” This is a particularly a problem, said Fiesler, if an ethics class is taught by someone from outside a student’s field, and the professors in their computer-science courses rarely mention ethical issues. On the other hand, classes focused squarely on the ethics of technology allow students to dig deeply into complicated questions. “I think the best solution is to do both…but if you can’t do both, incorporating [ethics material into regular coursework] is the best option,” Fiesler said."

 

Even The Data Ethics Initiatives Don't Want To Talk About Data Ethics; Forbes, October 23, 2018

Kalev Leetaru, Forbes; Even The Data Ethics Initiatives Don't Want To Talk About Data Ethics

"Two weeks ago, a new data ethics initiative, the Responsible Computer Science Challenge, caught my eye. Funded by the Omidyar Network, Mozilla, Schmidt Futures and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the initiative will award up to $3.5M to “promising approaches to embedding ethics into undergraduate computer science education, empowering graduating engineers to drive a culture shift in the tech industry and build a healthier internet.” I was immediately excited about a well-funded initiative focused on seeding data ethics into computer science curricula, getting students talking about ethics from the earliest stages of their careers. At the same time, I was concerned about whether even such a high-profile effort could possibly reverse the tide of anti-data-ethics that has taken root in academia and what impact it could realistically have in a world in which universities, publishers, funding agencies and employers have largely distanced themselves from once-sacrosanct data ethics principles like informed consent and the right to opt out. Surprisingly, for an initiative focused on evangelizing ethics, the Challenge declined to answer any of the questions I posed it regarding how it saw its efforts as changing this. Is there any hope left for data ethics when the very initiatives designed to help teach ethics don’t want to talk about ethics?"

Stanford makes a startling new discovery. Ethics; ZDNet, June 4, 2018

Chris Matyszczyk, ZDNet; Stanford makes a startling new discovery. Ethics

"Now, in a glorious moment of chest-beating and head-bobbing, Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne has admitted that his university -- which spawned so many young, great tech titans, such as the founders of Google, Instagram and LinkedIn -- failed to make titanic efforts in the area of ethics. 

In an interview with the Financial Times, he revealed that the university now intends to explore the teaching of "ethics, society and technology."

As we survey the political and social carnage that seems to have been enabled by technology over the last few years, it's remarkable that this wasn't thought of before."