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> No surprise that this doesn’t include any consideration for the profound moral, ethical, or social implications of AI and AI solutions. Would you say the sam
by theferalrobot 6y ago
> No surprise that this doesn’t include any consideration for the profound moral, ethical, or social implications of AI and AI solutions.
Would you say the same thing for an undergrad in SE (actually asking)? I feel like the hype train for AI has moved it into a plane where it has to be some moral arbiter but it seems to me that the same demands could be placed on most fields of study including general software engineering.
> Nothing about bias in models. Nothing about communication. Nothing about privacy. Nothing about security. Nothing about resiliency. Nothing about the responsibility of the individual practitioner. Nothing about the economic or ecological impact of the work.
Maybe it is just my bubble but I feel like very few AI jobs actually deal with hot button ethics (facial recognition for dubious purposes etc). It is just that these fringes get all the attention as if they represent the broad community (they don’t). For instance I work in AI for satellite communications, most of the things you bring up don’t really apply (any more than they do to the software engineers I work with). My former work was in AI and computer vision in marine ecosystems. Again... your moral questions don’t really apply (privacy of coral reefs?). I agree it is important to be aware of these issues but most of the real jobs in AI I feel like are more scientific in nature.. not the privacy busting, bias inducing ones we hear about a lot. Again that could be my bubble to some degree I suppose though.
- noelwelsh 6y agoI think courses covering professional ethics are now fairly common in CS degrees. For example, here is the current course at Edinburgh: http://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/20-21/dpt/cxinfr10022.htm http://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/20-21/dpt/cxinfr10022.htm
- throwaway2016a 6y agoI got my BS in CS 13 years ago and I had to take a dedicated ethics course and also several of my other courses had ethics components. I don't know how common it is but certainly many colleges/universities have been doing it for quite some time.
- theferalrobot 6y agoI happen to have taken an ethics course but it wasn't at all part of my CS/AI education. It was just a humanities course in my undergrad that fulfilled some philosophy requirement. Did your CS program actually require ethics directly? If so that is rather interesting.
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- numbsafari 6y agoI absolutely do. It's why I was so quick to jump on that with this. My personal belief is that every undergraduate degree should include these subjects. That's what separates an undergraduate degree from a bootcamp--in theory. But I think it's especially important for engineers and scientists, because it is very often overlooked or discounted by virtue of the fact that there's so much "technical" stuff to get into. I think schools should try to counteract that by producing more team taught material. e.g., let's not just do a regularly philosophy course, let's do a philosophy for engineering and science course that takes you through the same general philosophy, but with readings that focus on engineering and science related ideas and themes. But we should also have courses, and woven into our courses, discussions of these larger issues. Engineers, especially, have such a profound impact on society. It's important for us to be trained to think about these things. Not what to think, but that it is necessary to do so, and perhaps some tools and reference points for being able to do so in a cogent manner. Lastly, I think it's important for undergraduates to get some exposure to the ethical issues related to work: the relationship between the employee and employer, the intellectual property, integrity in science and methods, etc.
- artificialLimbs 6y ago"It's important for us to be trained to think about these things." This doesn't seem self evident to me.