ECS 088: Ethics of Technology

Subject
ECS 088
Title
Ethics of Technology
Status
Active
Units
4.0
Effective Term
2024 Fall Quarter
Learning Activities
Lecture: 3 hours
Discussion: 1 hour
Description
Foundations of normative ethics for technology, its relationships to moral philosophy and to the law. Technologies and their impacts on the environment and society. Justice, meritocracy, and computer science and engineering. Ethical issues with AI and machine learning. Not open for credit to students who have taken ECS 188. GE: SE, SS.
Credit Limitation
Not open for credit to students who have taken ECS 188.
Enrollment Restrictions
Pass One restricted to Computer Science and Computer Science Engineering majors only.

Summary of Course Content:

  1. Preliminaries
    1. Course description
    2. How to read and write as an ethicist in computer science
  2. A primer on normative ethics
    1. The virtue of Aristotle’s ethics
    2. Pleasures and pains: Utilitarianism.
    3. Kant’s categorical imperatives: deontology.
  3. What is technology?
    1. A primer on epistemology.
    2. Technological inventions that have changed the world.
    3. Technological traps.
  4. Surveillance and privacy
    1. The right to privacy
    2. Informed, and uninformed consent
    3. Censorship and freedom of speech
  5. Machine learning, AI, and society
    1. Algorithmic justice
    2. Clarifying AI alignment: can we encode human values?
    3. The counterfeit human.
  6. Technologies and the environment
    1. Human’s relation to nature
    2. Do technologies embed environmental values?
    3. Ecological disasters and their management. 

Illustrative Reading:
A reader assembled for the class that includes work from: Neil Postman, Michael Sandel, Peter Singer, Deborah Johnson, Phil Rogaway, Timnit Gebru, James Boyle, Daniel Quinn, EM Forster, Ursula Le Guin, the ACM. 

Potential Course Overlap:
The course overlaps with ECS 188 (Ethics in an Age of Technology); however, this course is designed to be an introduction to ethics in computing. The course overlaps with ENG 190 (Professional Responsibilities of Engineers) in that it also covers ethical issues; however, ENG 190 does not primarily focus on computing, and ENG 190 also covers contracts, patents and law. The course has overlap with STS 101 (Data & Society) in its coverage of impacts of biases in data but does not cover topics like reading, exploring, manipulating, or visualizing data sets as is done in STS 101. There is overlap with ENG 001 (Introduction to Engineering) but ENG 001 covers all of engineering, not just Computer Science and Engineering. The course overlaps with PHI 024 (Introduction to Ethics) in its coverage of moral theories such as Utilitarianism, Rights-Based Ethics, etc., but PHI 024 covers the material in far greater depth and without singular focus on a computing context. 

Course Category

Lower Division