Data, Privacy, and Computing Ethics

Catalog description

Computing technologies have opened exciting new possibilities for how we work, communicate, and live, but have also created corresponding ethical challenges due to risks of misuse, injustice, and harm. This course will explore some of these challenges, a task which is urgent because the development of new technologies outpaces effective legislation and regulation of them. One central challenge concerns the value of privacy, and what ethical obligations privacy places upon those who engineer, promote, and use these technologies. Another challenge is that types of bias and discrimination are embedded in technologies that are widely used and entrusted with very important decisions. Both of these challenges are even more pronounced because of the role played by autonomous learning systems, which can refine their own problem-solving strategies in ways that may be opaque to their designers. Finally, there are challenges about the public goods at stake in a society that is increasingly dependent upon computing technologies, such as freedom of speech and misinformation. This course fulfills an Applied Ethics course requirement.