In response, Grosz and collaborator Alison Simmons, the Samuel H. Wolcott Professor of Philosophy, developed a model that draws on the expertise of the philosophy department and integrates it into a growing list of more than a dozen computer science courses, from introductory programming to graduate-level theory. Under the initiative, dubbed Embedded EthiCS, philosophy graduate students are paired with computer science faculty members. Together, they review the course material and decide on an ethically rich topic that will naturally arise from the content. A graduate student identifies readings and develops a case study, activities, and assignments that will reinforce the material. The computer science and philosophy instructors teach side by side when the Embedded EthiCS material is brought to the classroom. Grosz and her philosophy colleagues are at the center of a movement that they hope will spread to computer science programs around the country. Harvard’s “distributed pedagogy” approach is different from many university programs that treat ethics by adding a stand-alone course that is, more often than not, just an elective for computer science majors. “Standalone courses can be great, but they can send the message that ethics is something that you think about after you’ve done your ‘real’ computer science work,” Simmons said. “We want to send the message that ethical reasoning is part of what you do as a computer scientist.” Embedding ethics across the curriculum helps computer science students see how ethical issues can arise from many contexts, issues ranging from the way social networks facilitate the spread of false information to censorship to machine-learning techniques that empower statistical inferences in employment and in the criminal justice system. Courses in artificial intelligence and machine learning are obvious areas for ethical discussions, but Embedded EthiCS also has built modules for less-obvious pairings, such as applied algebra. “We really want to get students habituated to thinking: How might an ethical issue arise in this context or that context?” Simmons said. “Standalone courses can be great, but they can send the message that ethics is something that you think about after you’ve done your ‘real’ computer science work.” — Alison Simmons, Samuel H. Wolcott Professor of Philosophy David Parkes, George F. Colony Professor of Computer Science, teaches a wide-ranging undergraduate class on topics in algorithmic economics. “Without this initiative, I would have struggled to craft the right ethical questions related to rules for matching markets, or choosing objectives for recommender systems,” he said. “It has been an eye-opening experience to get students to think carefully about ethical issues.” Grosz acknowledged that it can be a challenge for computer science faculty and their students to wrap their heads around often opaque ethical quandaries. “Computer scientists are used to there being ways to prove problem set answers correct or algorithms efficient,” she said. “To wind up in a situation where different values lead to there being trade-offs and ways to support different ‘right conclusions’ is a challenging mind shift. But getting these normative issues into the computer system designer’s mind is crucial for society right now.” Jeffrey Behrends, currently a fellow-in-residence at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, has co-taught the design and ethics course with Grosz. Behrends said the experience revealed greater harmony between the two fields than one might expect. “Once students who are unfamiliar with philosophy are introduced to it, they realize that it’s not some arcane enterprise that’s wholly independent from other ways of thinking about the world,” he said. “A lot of students who are attracted to computer science are also attracted to some of the methodologies of philosophy, because we emphasize rigorous thinking. We emphasize a methodology for solving problems that doesn’t look too dissimilar from some of the methodologies in solving problems in computer science.” The Embedded EthiCS model has attracted interest from universities — and companies — around the country. Recently, experts from more than 20 institutions gathered at Harvard for a workshop on the challenges and best practices for integrating ethics into computer science curricula. Mary Gray, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research (and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society), who helped convene the gathering, said that in addition to impeccable technical chops, employers increasingly are looking for people who understand the need to create technology that is accessible and socially responsible. “Our challenge in industry is to help researchers and practitioners not see ethics as a box that has to be checked at the end, but rather to think about these things from the very beginning of a project,” Gray said. Those concerns recently inspired the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest scientific and educational computing society, to update its code of ethics for the first time since 1992.
In hope of spreading the Embedded EthiCS concept widely across the computer science landscape, Grosz and colleagues have authored a paper to be published in the journal Communications of the ACM and launched a website to serve as an open-source repository of their most successful course modules. They envision a culture shift that leads to a new generation of ethically minded computer science practitioners. “In our dream world, success will lead to better-informed policymakers and new corporate models of organization that build ethics into all stages of design and corporate leadership,” Behrends says. The experiment has also led to interesting conversations beyond the realm of computer science. “We’ve been doing this in the context of technology, but embedding ethics in this way is important for every scientific discipline that is putting things out in the world,” Grosz said. “To do that, we will need to grow a generation of philosophers who will think about ways in which they can take philosophical ethics and normative thinking, and bring it to all of science and technology.” Carefully designed course modulesAt the heart of the Embedded EthiCS program are carefully designed, course-specific modules, collaboratively developed by faculty along with computer science and philosophy graduate student teaching fellows. A module that Kate Vredenburgh, a philosophy Ph.D. student, created for a course taught by Professor Finale Doshi-Velez asks students to grapple with questions of how machine-learning models can be discriminatory, and how that discrimination can be reduced. An introductory lecture sets out a philosophical framework of what discrimination is, including the concepts of disparate treatment and impact. Students learn how eliminating discrimination in machine learning requires more than simply reducing bias in the technical sense. Even setting a socially good task may not be enough to reduce discrimination, since machine learning relies on predictively useful correlations and those correlations sometimes result in increased inequality between groups. The module illuminates the ramifications and potential limitations of using a disparate impact definition to identify discrimination. It also introduces technical computer science work on discrimination — statistical fairness criteria. An in-class exercise focuses on a case in which an algorithm that predicts the success of job applicants to sales positions at a major retailer results in fewer African-Americans being recommended for positions than white applicants. An out-of-class assignment asks students to draw on this grounding to address a concrete ethical problem faced by working computer scientists (that is, software engineers working for the Department of Labor). The assignment gives students an opportunity to apply the material to a real-world problem of the sort they might face in their careers, and asks them to articulate and defend their approach to solving the problem.
Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvard news. What does the word ‘ethics’ mean? The dictionary defines ethics because of the moral principles that govern the behavior of a gaggle or individual. But, not every people in society need to live an absolutely moral life. Ethics are actually the unwritten code of conduct that every individual should follow. These codes are considered correct only by the members of that particular profession. Similarly, for computer users, computer ethics is a set of principles that regulates the use of computers. Computer ethics address issues related to the misuse of computers and how they can be prevented. It primarily imposes the ethical use of computing resources. It includes methods to avoid violating the unauthorized distribution of digital content. The core issues surrounding computer ethics are based on the use of the internet, internet privacy, copyrighted content, software, and related services, and user interaction with websites. The Internet has changed our lifestyle. It has become a part of our life. It allows us to communicate with a person from another part of the world. collecting information on any topic, social meets, and many other activities. But at the same time, some peoples are always trying to cheat or harm others. Advantages of using the internet:
Disadvantages of using the internet:
Ten commandments of computer ethics: The commandments of computer ethics are as follows: Commandment 1: Do not use the computer to harm other people’s data. Commandment 2: Do not use a computer to cause interference in other people’s work. Commandment 3: Do not spy on another person’s personal data. Commandment 4: Do not use technology to steal personal information. Commandment 5: Do not spread misinformation using computer technology. Commandment 6: Do not use the software unless you pay for this software. Commandment 7: Do not use someone else’s computer resources unless he authorized to use them. Commandment 8: It is wrong to claim ownership of a work that is the output of someone else’s intellect. Commandment 9: Before developing software, think about the social impact it can of that software. Commandment 10: While computers for communication, always respectful with fellow members. Internet SecurityThe internet is an insecure channel for exchanging information because it features a high risk of fraud or phishing. Internet security is a branch of computer security specifically associated with the utilization of the internet, involving browser security and network security. Its objective is to determine measures against attacks over the web. Insufficient internet security can be dangerous. It can cause many dangerous situations, like starting from the computer system getting infected with viruses and worms to the collapse of an e-commerce business. Different methods have been devised to protect the transfer of data over the internet such as information privacy and staying alert against cyber attacks. Information Privacy: Information privacy is the privacy or protection of personal information and refers to the personal data stored on a computer. It is an important aspect of information sharing. Information privacy is also known as data privacy or online privacy. Some Internet privacy involves the right of personal privacy and deals with the storing and displaying of personal information on the internet. In any exchange of personal information over the internet, there is always a risk involved with the safety of personal information. Internet privacy may be a cause for concern especially when online purchases, visiting social networking sites, participating in online games or attending forums. Privacy issues can arise in response to information from a good range of sources, such as:
The risk involved in internet privacy is sometimes dangerous. In the process of data transfer over the internet, if a password is revealed, a victim’s identity may be deceitfully used. Some important terms:
General steps to protect our system from risks: To minimize internet privacy violation risks, the following measures need to be taken:
Unethical computing practices: Now we discuss some unethical computing practices: 1. Cyberbullying: When people bully other people by the use of electronic communication ( like the web, telephone, etc). it’s referred to as cyberbullying. Cyberbullying has been done by friends, classmates, relatives, any other unknown persons. Sending harmful emails to a person creates fake websites to make fun of or to make harm a person by distributing the same fake information about a person posting and distributing fake images of a person. These are some common ways of cyberbullying. In most cyberbullying cases, they do not reveal their identities. Due to cyberbullying, some bullied persons are affected emotionally or mentally. Even if those are fake information, the bullied person may become depressed or it may affect their day-to-day life. In the case of the students or kids, it may affect their study or they may lose self-esteem. How to protect yourself from cyberbullying:
2. Phishing: An internet hacking activity used to steal user data. In this activity, an email is sent to the user which misleads him/her to believe that it is from a trusted organization. After sending the email, the attacker asks the user to visit their website, and on their website, they will ask for the personal information of the user like password, credit card information, etc. So, this is how the attacker steals the personal information of the user. How to protect yourself from phishing:
3. Hacking: It is an unethical activity in which a highly skilled technical person(or commonly known as a hacker) enters another person’s computer without the permission of the user and steals important data/project/applications from the computer or sometimes destroys the information from the system. How to protect yourself from hacking:
4. Spamming: It is an unethical activity in which bulk unwanted e-mail is set to you from a strange or unknown source. Sometimes, due to bulk emails, your mail server gets full and mail bombing activity happens. Spam mail is generally used to deliver viruses, worms, trojan horses, malware, spyware, etc. to attack the user. How to protect yourself from spam:
5. Plagiarism: Plagiarism is stealing or copying someone else’s intellectual work (can be an idea, literary work or academic work, etc.) and representing it as your own work without giving credit to the creator or without citing the source of information. How to protect yourself from plagiarism:
Sample QuestionsQuestion 1. What are the disadvantages of the internet? Solution:
Question 2. What are the benefits of the internet? Solution:
Question 3. List some common computing ethics. Solution:
Question 4. List some unethical computing practices. Solution:
Question 5. What is cybercrime? Solution:
Question 6. The organization that has established the guideline for copyright Law. Solution:
Question 7. An application that obtained data without the user’s consent. Solution:
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