Post #2729610

2026-04-19 14:10 UTC

@ddrake@mathstodon.xyz "what are the society-level negative externalities of this?" / "why shouldn't we build this at all?" / "what marginalized group will this tech make life harder for and how?" -- all questions that don't typically get asked in the tech ethics course and should (I mean, it's been 20 years for me, but we mostly got "here's Kant and Bentham, with a side of Therac and other cautionary tales")

Replies (1)

@ddrake@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-19 20:17

@aerynv2@tenforward.social those questions seem pretty natural to me, but perhaps that's just my own perspective, living in a blue metro (and not just any blue metro area -- the one targeted by Operation Metro Surge) and working at a very woke liberal arts college. You mention Kant and Bentham, and I know a tiny, tiny bit about their philosophies, but I have already decided that one component of the course needs to be "so, what is ethics, anyway? What does it mean to be ethical when doing software design?" And so we're going to have to get our hands dirty with reading actual philosophers. ...and I'm a bit out of my depth there. But I have until spring semester to work something out. Suggestions welcome...!

Open ##2729611