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