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Mozilla Challenges Educators To Integrate Ethics Into STEM (fastcompany.com)
Today, Mozilla, along with Omidyar Network, Schmidt Futures, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, is launching a competition for professors and educators to effectively integrate ethics into computer science education at the undergraduate level. From a report: The context, called the Responsible Computer Science Challenge, will award up to $3.5 million over the next two years to proposals focused on how to make ethics relevant to young technologists. "You can't take an ethics course from 50 or even 25 years ago and drop it in the middle of a computer science program and expect it to grab people or be particularly applicable," Mitchell Baker, the founder and chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, said. "We are looking to encourage ways of teaching ethics that make sense in a computer science program, that make sense today, and that make sense in understanding questions of data."
Who's Ethics are we going to integrate into STEM?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Ethics? What's that? Is that like competition?
especially if people outside of the computer science field don't share those ethics, like MBA's.
Nothing in these "news" make a bit of fucking sense anymore... What the FUCK are you talking about?!
Like what happened to Brendan Eich?
They were told to evacuate. If they didn't, we can't slow down to mourn them. It's Darwin at work. Hell, this is a science lesson playing out in real time.
People are dying right now in the worst storm since Andrew and Camille and you are posting about some STEM nonsense.
So?
Talking about nerd stuff on a nerd board doesn't in any way prevent talking, or doing something, about such a storm and the people in harm's way.
Even on the same site.
Meanwhile, just because, for the people in the storm, everything else stops while they work on staying alive, doesn't mean that everything stops for everybody else. Quite the contrary: If we let it make everything else stop we've just massively increased the harm done by the storm.
Sure we help out where we can. But we don't drop everything else we do.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Is timeless, and agnostic across culture, author of original article isn't off to a great start...
I did this during my CS undergrad back in 2006. It was called "Legal, Ethical and Social Issues in computing". I thought it was interesting and definitely more useful to my career than "algorithms and data structures" ever was.
The depressing thing about our current times, is that people are speaking past each other so much there's little that's agreed on.
Teaching (or at least reminding people of) ethics in technology is a noble goal... One of my favorite courses as an undergrad (despite the textbook itself being rather poorly written) was an Ethics in Computing course, and I'm sure there's a lot more to be said now.
"All science, no philosophy" leads to bad outcomes, I think we can agree. The problem is that I don't know that I trust any of Silicon Valley to do so in any sort of neutral manner.... Mozilla's Ethics are that Brendan Eich should have been fired. Can't say I agree with that.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
In my program there were to ethics classes. One the typical intro, and the other applied ethics in technology focusing on lawful compliance. Once my initial degrees were completed I moved on to studying ethics in more depth.
My problem with this effort is an assumption that ethics from 25 years ago does not make sense. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is still the most read ethical treatise and one of the oldest. Ethics does not change based on buzzwords, quarterly reports, or technologies. Ethics has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the decisions humans make.
The fact that this group of people seem to treat ethics like a fad tells me everything I need to know. They want to integrate their ethic, their fad, and Baker doesn't understand what ethics is. Ethics tells us nothing on "understanding questions of data." Data is for science. Ethics is not a science and does not deal in data but ought, can, judgement, and dessert.
Important to point out that their "up to 3.5 million" includes zero, showing just how committed to ethics the Mozilla Foundation really are.
What is the specific set of ethics required for math?
At least they did in the 20th century when I graduated from an ABET-accredited engineering school.
"What is ABET?
ABET is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that accredits college and university programs in applied and natural science, computing, engineering and engineering technology."
From their requirements for accrediting engineering schools:
"General Criterion 3. Student Outcomes
The program must have documented student outcomes that prepare graduates to attain the program educational objectives.
Student outcomes are outcomes (a) through (k) plus any additional outcomes that may be articulated by the program.
-snip-
(c) an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability
-snip-
(f) an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility"
Rule 2: Don't participate in mass censoring/tracking projects in totalitarian regimes.
Rule 3: Don't infringe on people's religious freedoms in your home country while doing business with oppressive religious states in the Middle East.
Rule 4: Don't replace your local workers with visa workers.
There's more, of course, but that seems like a good starting set.
Very simple rules on how to be ethical is to be
1) open (transparency)
2) honest (don't tell lies)
3) truthful ( actively making known all the full truth of a matter).
Following these simple and objective rules, you inform users of your software whether you plan on (or are reserving the potentiality of) exploiting them now and/or in the future. So for example, you can write exploitative software that mines users' data and then sell that data to the highest bidder, just so long as you inform your users about it. Informing them has to be open, honest and truthful. This knowledge empowers users.
Because, you know, all those ethics courses managers take (the people who make all the decisions) are working out great!
That's one of the silliest things of today. Sexual harassment surveys. Domestic abuse billboards and NFL commercials. "Code of conduct" seminars.
It's GREAT to want to make the world a better place. However, what we're lacking is ANY SCIENTIFIC PROOF whatsoever that doing these things actually solves the problem they're trying to solve.
In fact, there WAS a study that showed the opposite. That women who were told of all the "unconscious" ways that men oppress women, the women were less likely to engage and integrate into the workplace because they were "primed" and constantly looking for harassment and were more likely to assume it was harassment even when it wasn't. Likewise, the men in the study after going to these seminars? Simply __stopped interacting with women__. [1]
Which is GREAT way to get women to powerful positions in STEM. Take all the guys currently in power, and make sure they never interact and see hardworking, intelligent women and give them raises.
You see how "feeling like your helping" doesn't actually equate to "helping"? Kind of like how like 90% of all the funds for Bono's 1985 Live Aid charity concert to help stop Ethopia famine, ended up FUNDING AN WARLORD'S ARMY.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us...
[2] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Li...
If "ethics" courses worked, then why the hell is basically every major business scandal the result of managers... who already take ethics courses? #VWDidNothingWrong
to put a web browser in their software, but we're still waiting all these years later.
You can talk all you want, but either someone understands ethics and ethical behavior, or they don't. If they do, you're wasting your breath. If they respond with some claptrap about how stealing music, videos, or software without compensating the owner/producer for their work is fine, or come up with excuse after excuse why ethics work on a sliding scale, you're wasting your breath.
Engineering ethics demands that you sacrifice career, family, and livelihood to turn "whistleblower" if management ignores your pleas that their proposed cost-saving measure will threaten public safety and despoil the environment.
Attorney ethics demands that you refrain from stealing from your clients.
I think that this was meant to be the actual link. Or, better still, you could just go to the announcement.
You wouldn't steal a car would you?
Don't they put ethics in the dumbed down AP courses in the code camps for young un's?
Wait for new workers to say they won't work on complex projects due to the political "ethics" that they learned in university adding politics to every level of education.
The time it takes US brand to sit down with its workers and work out how to start work again will allow global competitors to have the same project ready on time.
The next project is given to any english speaking global company that can do the same work for the same price on time.
Who is going to risk US workers if they stop work to request ethics and political reviews for every new complex project?
Teach workers the skills they need to be smarter than every other nation. Not how to stop work for political reasons.
Once US workers get a reputation as argumentative about project details then work will move to nations with workers who can get the work done.
With other nations currency weakness they can offer lower costs and skilled staff who are able to work on any project.
They have skilled workers who will not be stopping a project to talk about "ethics" while getting paid as they know they have a project to get ready on time.
Their branding and reputation will grow as US workers are seen as difficult and slow for the same work.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is the same organization that covertly installed unwanted browser addons, intends to send all your DNS queries through Cloudflare, and derives almost all of its income from a single company that thrives on handling data unethically. And they're lecturing the rest of the world about ethics?
I think one of the main things holding any women back from STEM are the professors and followers of women who are not in STEM screaming from the rooftops all the ways women are held back in STEM.
If I keep hearing that something is terrible. I might think that it is terrible and avoid it.
Here's a link with some actual info: https://foundation.mozilla.org...
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
I'm a neuro-psychologist, and such behavior, while ingrained into modern US society, is literally how you tell if someone is a psychopath!
A normal human has empathy, and is social. He acts for the good of his group, and can not harm others wilfully, as he will feel their pain just as well, and hence naturally tries to avoid it.
A psychopath won't be sorry for causing others harm, but merely for being caught. ("Rules of the game")
Like that Exxon CEO.
I have read studies, that have shown that Americans (and to a certain extend all westerners) are extremely diffetent, and mostly very selfish psychopaths ("sociopaths", same thing).
But it is still shocking, evry, time, how casually you act like that, and talk like it is OK and normal.
No offense, but your society, as a whole, is gravely mentally ill. Seek help, before your society dies in the society equivalent of a police shoot-out or closed mental facility for the criminally insane.
Back in Soviet times, every curriculum included a lot of Marxism/Leninism, leading to this joke:
Him: Ok, you've been trying to learn cooking for about a year now, how far did you get with your class?
Her: Well, about to the fifth Party Convention.
In other words, stop stuffing degrees with bullshit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"If software is free, you are not the customer, you are the product. Everybody knows that."
Linux and countless other software?
SO why are you hanging out here instead of rushing to volunteer to help those in need? Seems your violating your ethics
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Since when does Mozilla, who has been indirectly supporting the violent Antifa, get off on pushing "ethics" to others??? How about they clean up their own house first?????
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Science and technology do not have ethical value per see. At all. All they have are cold reality based equation. Whether you use that equation to save 100 lifes or you use it to make more profit in your "puppy & baby munching machine" is actually up to the person. But that is also TRUE for MBA and many other studies (is there even ethics teaching in arts?). So if you want to add ethic in STEM, then add it in MBA in at least the same proportion, and many other studies. Furthermore you can't live well with ethics alone, everybody should understand basic concept and a lot of what is unethical happening is because have no critical thinking so let us put also a bit of STEM into art and ethics. Furthermore before we even take that steps, we should get together and decide which ethics it should be. And then in about 200 million year when you all decided on a basic line on ethic which do not offend all religions/genders/sex/ethnicity out there, we can get that utterly washed down ethic and teach it to STEM. But start with teaching STEM to arts/ethicist/philo today. Maybe a bit of critical thinking will do them good.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Shut up you fake news faggot shill INCEL deplorable uneducated cis-hetero gaylord running dog trumptard Russian NAZI alt-right bolshevik anti-Semitic Zionist Chinese cock-gobbling fascist mansplaining French fundamentalist SJW shitfucker MRA strawman trailer trash inbred lesbian Hillaryist feminazi richie rich ghetto alt-left white supremacist PEDOPHILE wetback spic mick wop nlgger chink kike redneck dago camel jockey bourgeois puritanical crackhead liberturdian commie TRAITOR!
i.e. being gay is 'normal', (sure, we believe you, that's why you have to put people in PRISON or sack them from their jobs, if they dare to talk about what gays actually DO to each other - which is, of course, disgusting to just about everybody...)
i.e. mass immigration is wonderful, and somehow white people, and ONLY white people, are expected to just give up our countries to millions of invaders who, for some strange reason, can't stand living around their OWN kind, and can't "get a better life" in their OWN countries, when surrounded by their OWN kind... gee... I wonder why that is? The weather, perhaps? Or perhaps they are standing on the wrong land mass, and white people got lucky and happened to be born on a 'magic' piece of land that makes us have better countries to live in.
i.e. women are eternal victims and are somehow being kept out of jobs that they are just as good at men at doing. Except for construction, slaughterhouse work, etc.etc. etc.
More sickening Left wing bollocks from the tyrants on the Left.
I think Mozilla should work on Search Engine similar to Google
Casteism
They all do the same thing.
It is disgusting, but until people put their donations where their mouth is and cut off the spigot, it won't get better.
Mozilla and Wikipedia have each become an autocratic monopoly in their fields, and neither has been working towards the good of the community, or global culture in many years. Like google and many others some 'good effect' still bleeds out, but anyone who has been paying attention would see the writing on the wall, and their benefitting from free labor to make themselves and their cronies wealthy, all the while bowing to corporate or political pressure.
What a lousy acronym.
...POS, keep it to yourself, Eich.
Future U.S. History Students: 'It's Pretty Embarrassing How Long You Guys Took To Legalize Gay Marriage'
So your argument is that we dont need ethics in stem. Let darwin be the final arbitrator of justice. The people dieing deserved it because they are wither weak or did not listen to the weather.
If one tribe out fights, out thinks, or out fucks another than they are gods chosen. Show no mercy. I agree completely.
Just as we dont care about people dieing in the storm we should not care about ethics in stem. The only ethic should be to promote our imaginary social construct over the evil people that chose to exist in a different social construct.
I choose to base my life around the concept of drinking lots or Pepsi products. Pepsi rules. Cocacola sucks dick. Lets bring back to soda wars. Not longer will we divide humanity up based on color, religion, nationality, or political party. Lets get to somethijng that really matters, Lets divide to world based on choice of soft drink. Lets kill those evil assholes that drink coke
Wouldn't you get more out of ensuring that business professionals have ethics, rather than STEM. I would rather deal with a handful of radioactive supermonkeys, than another collapsing financial system.
As far as I know, at least one ethics class is required in all accredited engineering programs in the US.
Are we supposed to educate or brainwash? One wonders....
I guess I'm a product of GCC then
he meant free as gratis not libre
horror vacui
A satanic cult will teach ethics before an MBA program does!
Undergrad business may, but the modern MBA program is all about removing ethics as much as possible to produce the perfect Little Eichmann. I'm talking about the important aspects not race relations and PC crap that distracts people from the big issues. (Those distractions can indirectly get partially resolved simply by working on ethics.)
Ethics needs to be taught at a young age and all the way up. It's gone in the USA for over a generation now and the impact has been slowly eroding the society. Only the older religious people notice and scream about the lack of religion being the downfall when it wasn't religion that provided the foundation morality; it's not the sole source and it too has become more corrupted and far better exploited than ever before.
Critical Thinking is essential. It's gone too. Not even valued; ESPECIALLY by leadership -- hell, in the USA a leader goes from the gut and strongly follows their beliefs "wisely" ignoring the numbers until they are a huge success and praised for their talent. (luck. it's not obvious that most fail and you only hear about the few lucky ones. meanwhile the moderately successful who were rational succeed at much higher rates.)
Shut up and perform, monkey.
US workers do not have the best reputation already; more of a last resort when higher level of skills are required. Higher ethics also helps but that is fading with time as well... Too high and you become too difficult too low and they can't afford to trust you. Actually, a level of ethics does exist which helps the employers... they only want ethics that HELPS THEM and none of the others. A perfect balance of hypocrisy. (So then don't really teach critical thinking! only problem solving.)
Doing work in the USA that is highly unethical is already a deterrent. Take blatant poisoning of locals and employees; even US companies outsourced that to corrupt 3rd world nations because uppity Americans won't tolerate that level of business thinking in their backyard.
The global economy has many bad aspects to it; it needs to be questioned far more. Sadly the only person doing that today is a moron.
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Parent would probably think it's a complement to be called a Fascist.
Times are getting bad. Guess we'll continue to head towards repeating history yet again.
SJW have taken over. They put more effort into this crap than keeping users happy and then they'll do stuff like TV show promo add-ons we didn't ask for and removing old features instead of enhancing them because $$ is being wasted on this or further depreciating their browser. It's like the tech department just tries to stay out of their way and has gone a bit too far the other way. Sure Rust sounds good... but it was going extreme to attempt to re-invent the C programming language; that sounds like management wasn't paying attention. At least they are leaving the nerds alone to do some great things (like Rust) but they have to stop wasting $$$ on "UX" and other departments.
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