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Mozilla Challenges Educators To Integrate Ethics Into STEM (fastcompany.com)

Posted by msmash on from the open-challenge dept.

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."

12 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Who's Ethics? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Who's Ethics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hopefully not MBA ethics.

    2. Re:Who's Ethics? by mi · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Who's Ethics are we going to integrate into STEM?

      The teacher's, of course. And that of the teachers of teachers.

      Rule #1: it is unethical to vote for RethugliKKKunt$...

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    3. Re:Who's Ethics? by Noishkel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Probably the same assholes that want to change 'STEM' to 'STEAM' with the addition of 'arts' to the STEM acronym. So basically talent-less arts majors that don't have any marketable skills.

    4. Re:Who's Ethics? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Mozilla Foundation raises money from donors who believe they are funding free software development. Then Mozilla spends that money instead on this ideological crusade, and other nonsense such as sponsoring a surfing contest.

      Is this money diversion and mission creep ethical?

      My opinion:
      1. Mozilla has way more money than they need for their core mission.
      2. Mozilla should not be lecturing anyone on ethics.

    5. Re:Who's Ethics? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm pretty sure a lot of people won't accept my ethical values. They might agree with some, and not others. I can assure you that my ethics and morals are relatively tame, but none the less, I'm pretty sure many wouldn't want me teaching my version of ethics to young adults.

      It is much easier to scream about Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Bigotry than it is to form a coherent code of ethics that has deliberative rational thought behind it (even if you disagree with my rationale).

      The issue remains whose ethics are we talking about? I'm sure that plenty of people thought Nazism was ethical, or thinking socialism is ethical today. I happen to despise leftist ethics, because they are almost universally opposed to individual liberty in some degree. Lefitsts think they are ethical as they groupthink their way towards tyranny.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    6. Re: Who's Ethics? by astrofurter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Ethics" is just morality in a wig, dressed up for atheists who aren't honest enough and strong enough to embrace the nihilism that is the inescapable consequence of their faith.

  2. Ethics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Like what happened to Brendan Eich?

    1. Re:Ethics? by Tsolias · · Score: 4, Insightful

      no, the guy who lost his job because he had a different opinion.
      It didn't have anything to do with his job, he just happened to have other likes and dislikes when he got home.
      and to top that, we watch all day long those SJW idiots on twitter explicitly saying "opinions my own, not my employer's",
      guess what, if your opinion doesn't fit their mentality, your opinion gets dragged into your work environment, either you like it or not.
      The best part about this shit show is that mozzarella won't exist in a few years.

    2. Re:Ethics? by Crashmarik · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Brendan supported the wrong ethics.

      Well not if you actually believe in evolution instead of just hating people that don't. Which is the problem with so much of the SJW agenda, it isn't positive or reasoned it's just people that have a desperate need to give the middle finger to anyone that resembles their parents.

  3. Everything Relative by Etcetera · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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,
  4. Ethics? by ckatko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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