2024 Tech Ethics Symposium: Coming October 17-18!; Duquesne University, October 17-18, 2024

 Duquesne University; 2024 Tech Ethics Symposium: Coming October 17-18!; How is AI Transforming Our Communities?

"The Grefenstette Center for Ethics in Science, Technology, and Law will host the fifth annual Tech Ethics Symposium: “How is AI Transforming Our Communities?” This two-day symposium, co-sponsored by the Institute for Ethics and Integrity in Journalism and Media, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Albert P. Viragh Institute for Ethics in Business, will focus on how generative AI is transforming our daily lives and our communities. It will also explore how AI has already changed our region and will continue to alter our world in the next decade.

How do major stakeholders like journalists, educators, and tech workers use AI to shape our community?  How have professional communities in tech, journalism, and education been impacted already by AI? What is the role of politics in responding to AI’s influence on, and through, these impactful stakeholder communities? What has AI changed for communities of faith, artists, people with disabilities, and historically marginalized communities? What can each of us do to utilize –or avoid– AI to ensure strong, healthy human communities?"

An Ethics Guide for Tech Gets Rewritten With Workers in Mind; Wired, July 15, 2020

Arielle Pardes, Wired; An Ethics Guide for Tech Gets Rewritten With Workers in Mind

The Ethical Explorer Pack is designed to help Silicon Valley's rank and file—not just CEOs—steer products away from harmful directions.

"Now, the Omidyar Network has a new tool kit, designed to get tech workers talking about the way their products shape society, democracy, and more. The Ethical Explorer Pack, as it’s called, covers many of the same topics and ideas as EthicalOS, but with added guidance on how workers can bring these issues up on their teams—whether to identify red flags early on, to brainstorm solutions to potential problems, or to set boundaries around things like data control, surveillance, or disinformation. The kit, which comes as a free digital download or a physical deck of cards, provides exercises, activities, and prompts that can be used alone or with a group to guide conversations...

The Ethical Explorer Pack might introduce some employees to questions they’d never considered. For others, the prompts might reinforce ideas they were too nervous to bring up. “People can feel like the joy-kill, the person getting in the way of the cool innovation,” says Drinkwater. The kit includes some sample language for making the case to managers and colleagues. That might not be enough to get buy-in when an ethical concern stands at odds with a business’s bottom line, or when a marginalized worker is the only one speaking up. Still, the tool kit encourages workers to make their point in the parlance of Silicon Valley. Slowing down to think through future consequences isn't any different than slowing down to debug code. It might even save startups from a headache, or something bigger, down the road."

Link to Omidyar Network's Ethical Explorer Pack