Data Ethics    3 s.h

Catalog description

In the very early days of computing, there is an expression that is generally attributed to William Mellin: “garbage in, garbage out”. As many are aware the phrase loosely denotes that what comes out of the computer process is only as good as what goes into the machine. While some outputs may be seen as trivially bad, others carry with them substantial moral harm. The way data is collected and processed has real-world ethical implications. In this course, we examine the ways data can have unintended moral consequences in the hopes of avoiding these errors in the future. Prereq.: None.