Ethics in Computing

This session is facilitated by Kathy Pham, Responsible Computer Science Awardees

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About this session

This session will feature Responsible Computer Science awardees to discuss introducing and integrating ethics early in the computer science and engineering education and career. This includes rethinking classroom and engineering practices, working in an interdisciplinary manner, and rethinking our tech culture and principles.

Panelists joining Kathy Pham will be: Jeff Behrends, Marty J. Wolf, Casey Fiesler, Margarita Boenig-Liptsin, Augustin Chaintreau, and Ellen Zegura.

Notes from session:

  • ‘Ethics in Computing’ - Georgetown, Harvard, Colorado-Boulder, Columbia, California-Berkeley, Georgia Tech (embedding ethics in curriculums; Ethics Lab; responsiblecs.org) - in a circle, everyone talking

  • ’Understanding that code is power, from Day One’

  • ’How do we get folks with a high teaching load to incorporate these sorts of projects and ideas into their work?’

  • ‘Trying to help our undergraduates to better understand our datafied world’

  • ’Ensuring that ethics is a part of the job (Computer Science) in the same way as debugging is part of the job’

  • Responsible Computer Science Challenge - funding for integrating open ethics approaches into UG CS curriculums

  • ’How do we fund the ethics side of computer science?’

  • Possible opportunities for partnering with international universities

  • Shared Digital Europe - https://shared-digital.eu/

  • David Parkes https://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~parkes/

  • Green Web Foundation https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/ (‘Online video has the same carbon footprint as Spain’; decarbonising tech is a huge blindspot)

  • Alan Winfield https://people.uwe.ac.uk/Person/AlanWinfield

  • Cryptocurrencies have generated a greater carbon footprint than that generated by renewable energies, within the same time frame