Ethics in Computing

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