└── README.md /README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # EthicsForTech 2 | 3 | Readings for a course in ethics for those in technology fields, 4 | such as engineering, computer science, data science, biotechnology and 5 | so on. 6 | 7 | Norm Matloff, UC Davis 8 | 9 | # Background 10 | 11 | I'm a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, 12 | Davis. [Here is my bio.](http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html) 13 | 14 | Our department has its own in-house ethics course, required for 15 | our Computer Science and Engineering majors (this program's 16 | accreditation requires students to have some exposure to ethics), and 17 | popular with our Computer Science majors. 18 | 19 | **I teach the course with the aim of having students ponder issues that 20 | may confront them in the future, as tech professionals, managers and even 21 | entrepreneurs.** 22 | 23 | Note that in some instances, ethical issuea are also legal issues. The 24 | law is after all in many cases codification of our more consequential 25 | ethical holdings. And, those ignorant of the law may be at risk. 26 | 27 | The course also has the goals of getting often-reticent tech majors to 28 | speak up, and to engage in critical thinking. 29 | 30 | I'm making this reading list available publicly in case other 31 | instructors, at other institutions or my own, may find it useful. 32 | 33 | # Readings 34 | 35 | Arranged in several topical units. A small number of items may require 36 | online access via the UCD library; if you are not a UCD affiliate, your own 37 | library may have access. 38 | 39 | ## Preparatory: critical thinking, analytical tools 40 | 41 | *The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the 42 | easiest person to fool* -- Richard Feynman, Nobel physicist 43 | 44 | ### Logic 45 | 46 | [Logical fallacies](http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/fallacies/), 47 | UNC Writing center 48 | 49 | [MORE bad arguments](http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/188/MOREBadArgs.html), NM writeup 50 | 51 | ### Statistics, math modeling 52 | 53 | Many policy arguments rely heavily on statistical analysis. Avoid the 54 | pitfalls! 55 | 56 | [Don't use statistical p-values](https://github.com/matloff/regtools/blob/master/inst/NoPVals.md), NM writeup 57 | 58 | [Israeli data: How can efficacy vs. severe disease be strong when 60% of 59 | hospitalized are vaccinated?](https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated) and 60 | [update](https://twitter.com/jsm2334/status/1462573183970824201), 61 | *Covid-19 Data Science* (blog posts), Prof. Jeffery Morris, University of 62 | Pennsylvania, August 15, 2021 63 | 64 | [Simpson's Paradox Is Back](https://matloff.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/simpsons-paradox-is-back/), 65 | N. Matloff, April 21, 2014 66 | 67 | [Good for Men, Good for Women, Bad for 68 | People](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11608762_), 69 | focus on Table 1. 70 | 71 | ## Biomedical ethics 72 | 73 | [As the Jury Deliberates Elizabeth Holmes' Fate, Experts Say 'Fraud is Complicated'](https://www.npr.org/2021/12/29/1068639311/elizabeth-holmes-jury-theranos-fraud-case), NPR, December 29, 2021 74 | 75 | [He Jiankui Affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair), 76 | *Wikipedia* 77 | 78 | [Applied Ethics, Section 3, Bioethics](http://www.iep.utm.edu/ap-ethic/#SH5), 79 | from the *Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy* 80 | 81 | [The Obsolete Science Behind Roe v. Wade](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-obsolete-science-behind-roe-v-wade-abortion-fetus-supreme-court-ultrasound-11635449644), *Wall Street Journal*, October 28, 2021, and 82 | [The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/the-things-we-cant-face/600769/), Caitlin Flanagan, *The Atlantic*, 83 | December 2019 84 | [New York Announces That Scarce Covid-19 Treatments Will Be Prioritized For Non-White Patients](https://jonathanturley.org/2022/01/03/new-york-announces-that-scarce-covid-19-treatments-will-be-prioritized-for-non-white-patients/), Jonathan Turley 85 | 86 | ## Data privacy 87 | 88 | *Privacy is dead, and social media holds the smoking gun* -- Mashable 89 | CEO Pete Cashmore 90 | 91 | *Privacy with medical information is a fallacy. If everyone’s 92 | information is out there, it’s part of the collective* -- Craig Venter, 93 | pioneer mapper of the human genome, entrepreneur 94 | 95 | *A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. 96 | They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to 97 | themselves, an unrecorded unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem 98 | because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we 99 | are and who we want to be* -- Edward Snowden, NSA 100 | whistleblower/fugitive 101 | 102 | [Apple-FBI encryption 103 | debate](https://www.wired.com/story/apple-fbi-iphone-encryption-pensacola/), 104 | *Wired*, January 16, 2020 105 | 106 | [Prisons Across the U.S. Are Quietly Building Databases of Incarcerated 107 | People’s Voice Prints](https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/prison-voice-prints-databases-securus/), *The Intercept*, January 30, 2019 108 | 109 | [Corporate Executives Couldn\'t Care Less About Civil Liberties](http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/15/corporate-executives-couldnt-care-less-about-civil-liberties/), 110 | Bill Blunden, *Counterpunch*, September 15, 2014 111 | 112 | [Snapchat and the Liability Conundrum](http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/snapchat-shawndra-hill/), 113 | *Knowledge\@Wharton*, October 22, 2014 114 | 115 | [Data Scientists Square Off Over Trust and Privacy in 2020 Census](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-12/data-scientists-ask-can-we-trust-the-2020-census), 116 | data privacy may be easier said than done 117 | 118 | ## Tech and the environment 119 | 120 | *Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it* -- 121 | famous American humorist Mark Twain 122 | 123 | [New Climate Model to Be Built from the Ground 124 | Up](https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/new-climate-model-be-built-ground-84636), 125 | Caltech news site 126 | 127 | [What Was Volkswagen Thinking?](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/what-was-volkswagen-thinking/419127/), 128 | *The Atlantic* , Jan./Feb. 2016 129 | 130 | [The 10-Page Machine Learning 131 | Book](https://github.com/matloff/regtools/blob/master/inst/MLOverview.md), 132 | N. Matloff (overview of machine learning, prep for Strubell article and 133 | others below) 134 | 135 | [Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in 136 | NLP](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.02243.pdf), 137 | Emma Strubell, Ananya Ganesh, Andress McCallum, University of 138 | Massachusetts Amhearst, June 5, 2019 139 | 140 | ## Ethics and culture 141 | 142 | *When in Rome, do as the Romans do* -- Saint Ambrose 143 | 144 | *If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from 145 | amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought 146 | best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative 147 | merits—choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception 148 | believes is own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, 149 | to be the best* -- Herodotus, ancient Greek historian 150 | 151 | *Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a 152 | hypocrite ... If you are flying to an international congress of 153 | anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get 154 | there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a 155 | lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sum 156 | right* -- Richard Dawkins, *River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life* 157 | 158 | [Ethical Relativism](https://www.scu.edu/mcae/publications/iie/v5n2/relativism.html) 159 | 160 | [Ethical issues across cultures: managing the differing perspectives 161 | of China and the 162 | USA](https://mdsoar.org/bitstream/handle/11603/4081/Ethical_issues_across_cultures_Managing_the_differ.pdf?sequence=1), 163 | by D. Pitta, HG Fung and S. Isberg, *Journal of Consumer Marketing*, June 1999 164 | 165 | [Culture and 166 | Ethics](http://kolibri.teacherinabox.org.au/modules/en-boundless/www.boundless.com/management/textbooks/boundless-management-textbook/ethics-in-business-13/ethics-an-overview-95/culture-and-ethics-448-8309/index.html) 167 | 168 | [Data from University of Texas 169 | Austin](https://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/188/UTDemogCheating.html); is there cultural variation here, or are there unaccounted-for confounding factors? 170 | 171 | 172 | ## Discrimination 173 | 174 | *Bingo!* -- a Grace Hopper Conference attendee, upon completing her 175 | bingo card for excuses given by men for the dearth of female engineers 176 | 177 | ![alt text](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bzd-57YCYAEeUht?format=jpg&name=medium) 178 | 179 | ### Race 180 | 181 | [Black Drivers Get Pulled over by Police Less at Night When Their Race 182 | Is Obscured by ‘Veil of Darkness,’ Stanford Study 183 | Finds](https://news.stanford.edu/2020/05/05/veil-darkness-reduces-racial-bias-traffic-stops/), *Stanford News*, May 5, 2020; might there be other confounding 184 | factors, e.g. with police stopping older cars, which are 185 | disproportionately driven by Black people? 186 | 187 | ["Racist" Is a Tough Little Word](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/racism-concept-change/594526/), 188 | John McWhorter (Columbia University), *The Atlantic*, July 24, 2019 189 | 190 | [Minorities Face Challenges in Securing STEM Jobs](https://www.cvilletomorrow.org/articles/minorities-face-challenges-in-securing-stem-jobs/), 191 | *Charlottesville Tomorrow*, May 17, 2019 192 | 193 | [Why Doesn’t Silicon Valley Hire Black 194 | Coders?](https://blackmeninamerica.com/why-doesnt-silicon-valley-hire-black-coders/), March 23, 2016, Black Men in America 195 | 196 | [Google’s approach to historically Black schools helps explain why there are few Black engineers in Big Tech](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/04/google-hbcu-recruiting/) 197 | 198 | [A Statistician Looks at Affirmative Action in College 199 | Admissions](https://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/statAffAction.html); does 200 | Harvard discriminate against Asian applicants? 201 | 202 | ### Gender 203 | 204 | [Male and Female Entrepreneurs Get Asked Different Questions by VCs — and It Affects How Much Funding They Get](https://hbr.org/2017/06/male-and-female-entrepreneurs-get-asked-different-questions-by-vcs-and-it-affects-how-much-funding-they-get), 205 | Dana Kanze (London Business School), Laura Huang (Harvard Business School 206 | ), Mark A. Conley (Stockholm School of Economics), and E. Tory Higgins 207 | (Columbia University), *Harvard Business Review*, June 27, 2017 208 | 209 | [The Tech Industry’s Gender-Discrimination Problem](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/the-tech-industrys-gender-discrimination-problem?utm_source=NYR_REG_GATE), 210 | Sheelah Kolhatkar, *The New Yorker*, November, 13, 2017 211 | 212 | [Thoughts on the Ellen Pao Case, and the Gender/Silicon Valley 213 | Interaction](https://normsaysno.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/thoughts-on-the-ellen-pao-case-and-the-gender-x-silicon-valley-interaction/) 214 | 215 | ### Age 216 | 217 | [Ageism in tech: the not-so-invisible age limit developers face](https://bdtechtalks.com/2019/03/29/ageism-in-tech-age-limit-software-developers-face/) 218 | Howard Williams, *Tech Talks*, March 29, 2019 219 | 220 | [Everyday ageism in the tech 221 | industry](https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/advice/ageism-in-tech), 222 | *CW Jobs* (UK), November 29, 2019 223 | 224 | [Google Hit with Age Discrimination 225 | Suit](https://www.cnet.com/news/google-hit-with-age-discrimination-suit/) 226 | *c/net*, July 26, 2004 227 | 228 | [The Adverse Impact of Work Visa Programs on Older U.S. Engineers and Programmers](http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/CLER.pdf), 229 | N. Matloff, *California Labor and Employment Law Review*, August 2006 230 | 231 | ## Artificial Intelligence 232 | 233 | *The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of 234 | the human race….It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an 235 | ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological 236 | evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded* -- 237 | Stephen Hawking, Nobel physicist 238 | 239 | *We have seen AI providing conversation and comfort to the lonely; we 240 | have also seen AI engaging in racial discrimination. Yet the biggest 241 | harm that AI is likely to do to individuals in the short term is job 242 | displacement, as the amount of work we can automate with AI is vastly 243 | larger than before. As leaders, it is incumbent on all of us to make 244 | sure we are building a world in which every individual has an 245 | opportunity to thrive* -- Andrew Ng, AI entrepreneur, former Stanford CS 246 | professor 247 | 248 | [Bias In, Bias Out](https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/6104-sandy-mayson-optimizing-government-project-11-3-16), 249 | Sandy Mayson, University of Pennsylvania Law School 250 | 251 | [It’s COMPASlicated: The Messy Relationship 252 | between RAI Datasets and Algorithmic Fairness 253 | Benchmarks](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.05498.pdf), by Bao *et al* 254 | 255 | [Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against 256 | women](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G), 257 | Jeffrey Dastin, Reuters, October 10, 2018 258 | 259 | [Addressing Fairness, Bias, and Appropriate Use of Artificial 260 | Intelligence and Machine Learning in Global Health](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frai.2020.561802/full), 261 | Richard Ribón Fletcher (MIT), 262 | Audace Nakeshimana (MIT), 263 | Olusubomi Olubeko (University of Massachusetts Medical School), 264 | *Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence*, April 15, 2021 265 | 266 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------