Ethics for Nerds
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29173/irie484Keywords:
ethics, computer science, educationAbstract
Informatics is the innovation driver of our time. From social media and artificial intelligence to autonomous cyber-physical systems: informatics-driven, digital products and services permeate our society in significant ways. Computer scientists, whether researchers or software developers, are shaping tomorrow's society. As a consequence, ethical, societal, and practical reasons demand that students of computer science and related subjects should receive at least a basic ethical education to be able to do justice to their ever-growing responsibilities and duties. Ethics for Nerds is an award-winning lecture that is being taught annually at Saarland University since 2016. The course has been continually updated and progressively improved over the years. In this paper, we share our experiences with and best practices for teaching the basics of ethics to students of computer science and offer advice on how to design a successful ethics course as part of a computer science study program.
References
Askel, Amanda. “The Moral Value of Information.” EA Global: Boston 2017. Science Center, Harvard University, 2. – 4. Jun. 2017, Harvard Science Center, Cambridge, USA. Talk available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8rVscSHJT4 and transcript available at https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/the-moral-value-of-information-amanda-askell/.
Baum, Kevin, et al. “From Responsibility to Reason-Giving Explainable Artificial Intelligence.” Philosophy & Technology, forthcoming.
Blackburn, Simon. “The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.” Oxford University Press, 2008.
Johnson, Deborah. “Who Should Teach Computer Ethics and Computers & Society?” SIGCAS Computer and Society [Jun. 1994] 24 (2), pp. 6 – 13. Available at https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/181900.181901.
Kant, Immanuel, et al. “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.” Oxford University Press, 2019 [1785].
Gotterbarn, Donald. “Informatics and professional responsibility.” Science and Engineering Ethics [2001] 7, pp.221–230. Available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-001-0043-5.
Howard, Ronald A. “Information Value Theory.” IEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics [Aug. 1966] 2 (1), pp. 22-26. Available at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/4082064.
Hursthouse, Rosalind/Pettigrove, Glen. "Virtue Ethics" in: Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018). Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/ethics-virtue/.
Noorman, Merel. “Computing and Moral Responsibility” in: Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020). Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/computing- responsibility/.
Scanlon, T.M. “What We Owe to Each Other.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. “Consequentialism” in: Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021). Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/consequentialism/.
Sterz, Sarah, et al. "Towards Perspicuity Requirements." 2021 IEEE 29th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW). IEEE, 2021. Available at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9582408
Talbert, Matthew. "Moral Responsibility" in: Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019). Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/moral-responsibility/.
