Embedded EthiCSTM @ Harvard Bringing ethical reasoning into the computer science curriculum
The Embedded EthiCS Approach to Teaching Responsible Computing
Embedded EthiCS @ Harvard is a pedagogical collaboration between Computer Science and Philosophy that embeds the teaching of ethical reasoning directly into existing CS courses. The embedding aims both to integrate ethical and CS content and to distribute the teaching of ethical reasoning across the CS curriculum. This approach sends the message that ethical challenges arise across CS subdisciplines, and it builds a habit in students of looking for ethical challenges. The effort is truly interdisciplinary: Philosophy graduate students and postdocs develop and teach the ethics modules in consultation with CS course staff, philosophy faculty, CS postdocs, and one another. The burden on individual courses is small, and the approach is scalable.
The program aims to prepare our students to ask and responsibly address normative questions (what would be morally right or wrong, permissible or impermissible, just or unjust?) in connection with various computing and information technologies. For example: In data visualization, what should be done to avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes, and why? What would it mean for automated processes to be discriminatory, and what if anything should engineers do to avoid it? Is it permissible to develop and deploy automated systems that will replace human workers? Questions of this kind structure all the modules. The program teaches students to address them by providing philosophical tools and opportunities to practice using them. Knowing how to structure those opportunities well requires careful attention to best teaching practices, such as active learning.
The philosophical study of ethics is the core part of the program because it enables students to identify values that are fundamentally important, and understand why they matter. Preparing CS students to engage with normative questions also requires learning methods for identifying ways in which technology affects people, their interactions, and their communities. These issues are the domain of scholars in the behavioral and social sciences. The program thus aims to cast a wide net when searching for resources that will be helpful to our instructors and students, sometimes drawing from scholarship in such disciplines as history, race and gender studies, anthropology, psychology, disability studies, and any discipline that can helpfully speak to what being a responsible computer scientist requires.
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