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Shaping Ethical Computing Cultures

Communications of the ACM

Public concern about computer ethics and worry about the social impacts of computing has fomented the "techlash." Newspaper headlines describe company data scandals and breaches; the ways that communication platforms promote social division and radicalization; government surveillance using systems developed by private industry; machine learning algorithms that reify entrenched racism, sexism, cisnormativity, ablism, and homophobia; and mounting concerns about the environmental impact of computing resources. How can we change the field of computing so that ethics is as central a concern as growth, efficiency, and innovation? There is no one intervention to change an entire field: instead, broad change will take a combination of guidelines, governance, and advocacy. None is easy and each raises complex questions, but each approach represents a tool for building an ethical culture of computing.


Teaching AI, Ethics, Law and Policy

Wilk, Asher

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The cyberspace and the development of new technologies, especially intelligent systems using artificial intelligence, present enormous challenges to computer professionals, data scientists, managers and policy makers. There is a need to address professional responsibility, ethical, legal, societal, and policy issues. This paper presents problems and issues relevant to computer professionals and decision makers and suggests a curriculum for a course on ethics, law and policy. Such a course will create awareness of the ethics issues involved in building and using software and artificial intelligence.


Unemployment Low For Computer Professionals (And Everyone Else)

Forbes - Tech

A'Help Wanted' sign hangs on a window in New York City, May 4, 2018. U.S. unemployment has fallen to a near historic low of 3.9 percent and is even lower for computer professionals and engineers. The premise of the Trump administration's "Buy American and Hire American" executive order, which has unleashed numerous measures to restrict high-skilled immigration, is that U.S. professionals can't get jobs because of immigrants. This raises a legitimate question: Has anyone in the administration making U.S. immigration policy checked the government data on unemployment – or do they simply choose to ignore it? The unemployment rate among people with at least a bachelor's degree in "computer and math science" occupations was only 2% for the first quarter of 2018, according to estimates from the Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey.


Predicting Failure of the University

Communications of the ACM

Lucas asserted "... technology-enhanced teaching and learning can dramatically improve the quality and success of higher education ..." His Figure 1 and Figure 2, in outlining traditional versus technology-enhanced courses, suggested traditional teaching methods deliver a low-quality result, while professional (Hollywood) production methods deliver a high-quality result, with, again, no evidence provided. The idea of universities as "content producers" giving students "content" consisting of "course materials and exercises" gave me an analogous idea. Families give food and clothing to their children, but families are inefficient and can involve bloated administrations (parents). Just as parents do more than feed (they try to create an environment where their children can develop and thrive), universities likewise try to create a learning environment for students. Indispensable elements include laboratory work, fieldwork, real essays marked by real scholars (not against a list of bullet points), and project work.


Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

Communications of the ACM

I think often of Ender's Game these days. In this award-winning 1985 science-fiction novel by Orson Scott Card (based on a 1977 short story with the same title), Ender is being trained at Battle School, an institution designed to make young children into military commanders against an unspecified enemy (http://bit.ly/2hYQMDF). Ender's team engages in a series of computer-simulated battles, eventually destroying the enemy's planet, only to learn then that the battles were very real and a real planet has been destroyed. I got involved in computing at age 16 because programming was fun. Later I discovered that developing algorithms was even more enjoyable.