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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."

20 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 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.

    3. 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.

    4. 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.
    5. Re: Who's Ethics? by hey! · · Score: 2

      A foundation in ethics would necessarily include the critical study of a number of philosophical approaches to ethics (rights/duties, consequentialism, character-based ethics etc.) Although these approaches are fundamentally different, they each correspond in certain situations to common intuitive notions of right and wrong, and in other cases they may challenge our assumptions, which is actually a good thing if you don't enjoy being blindsided.

      If you are looking for an oracle or a simple algorithm that gives you easy, pat answers to questions, look no farther than your personal prejudices and biases. We are never more sure of ourselves than when we're squarely in the center of whatever blind spot we have. But a study of ethics enriches our decisions with perspective.

      I always felt that an interest in philosophical ethics and the social sciences gave me an advantage as a system designer. The reason is that when a node in dome UML diagram happens to be a person or group, there's a lot of complexity your model is missing.

      People have rights and opinions and needs and attitudes. A study of ethics doesn't tell you necessarily the right things to do about that, but it does open your mind to some of that complexity. That's good, because unlike robots, people behave in unpredictable ways when they feel they've been treated unfairly, or that their needs have been ignored, or their dignity has been disrespected. We all understand this in relation to ourselves, but we forget when dealing with other people.

      Which brings me to Kant's second formulation of the Categorical Imperative: always treat humanity, in yourself as a person or other people, as an end as well as a means to an end. My practical take on this is that when you're a designer everyone who plays a role in your system is on some level your client, not just an abstract worker bee or resource to be tapped.

      Of course ethical design remains a choice, and this kind of knowledge can be used for harm and exploitation, like any other. For examples look no farther than social media, which despite highminded rhetoric about connecting people is in fact ruthlessly designed to exploit tribalism for profit.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    6. Re:Who's Ethics? by plopez · · Score: 2

      I've never been aware of any ethics in IT/Software develoment. I also know of no board of ethics which can pull a programmer's or administrator's license to operate.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    7. 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.

    8. Re:Who's Ethics? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      It's very rare that a single person builds any kind of complex system and then promotes/sells it on their own. More likely there will be a team of people with somewhat diverse views on ethics, so at least there might be a debate.

      It's much easier to scream about Leftists and groupthink, but in reality most things are a group effort and ethics are a matter for discussion.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Ethics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Like what happened to Brendan Eich?

    1. Re:Ethics? by Tsolias · · Score: 2

      Brendan supported the wrong ethics.

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

    4. Re:Ethics? by Kjella · · Score: 2

      If "ethics" courses worked, then why the hell is basically every major business scandal the result of managers... who already take ethics courses? #VWDidNothingWrong

      Because we want things like money, power, sex and so on. You're stupid if you think an ethics course on corruption will end all corruption, it'll still happen if the benefits exceed the risk. Conversely when something is seen as having risk but no gain it's easy to avoid it, particularly if somebody is looking to set an example and show their zero tolerance policy. The course itself is mostly just awareness, this is the different forms and shapes it can take, this is our policy, these kinds of behaviors are not acceptable, these are the possible consequences. They rarely go down to the fundamentals on how we agree on what's ethical and not, they're basically dictating.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. 3.5M for something that already exists? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

  4. 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,
  5. Rule 1: Don't Fire People for Political Donations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    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.

  6. 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

  7. Engineering ethics vs Attorney ethics by Latent+Heat · · Score: 2

    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.

  8. Actual Link? by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 2

    I think that this was meant to be the actual link. Or, better still, you could just go to the announcement.