The cover of the August issue of Communications of the ACM showcases Harvard's impressive experiment integrating ethics throughout its undergraduate computer science curriculum [6]. Anyone currently grappling with exploding enrollments must applaud Harvard's deliberate use of resources to broaden CS education beyond its traditional technical components. In a similar vein, ACM recently updated its professional code of ethics, calling on CS professionals to acknowledge "all people are stakeholders" and to "ensure that the public good is the central concern during all professional computing work," [1] possibly adding to the pressure many in CS education may be feeling to 'up their game' when it comes to their programs' attention to ethics. Unsurprisingly, doing ethics in CS can seem like yet another requirement tasked to an already overburdened system. If one is operating under constraints, perhaps limited by shortages in money and personnel, ethics, or put another way, instilling concern for computing's impact on society, starts to seem like a luxury: something that we all agree is valuable and that would be nice to have if we can afford it. But, what happens if learning about ethics is just as fundamental to software engineering as procedural abstraction or just as crucial to data science as learning to avoid spurious correlation?
Recently on the evening news, a report aired about public-school vandalism happening across the country, provoked by a recent trending video on Tik-Tok inviting users to share the biggest thing they were able to steal from their school [1]. Bathroom fixtures have been a popular choice, causing significant damage, which is what has elevated this recent trend to newsworthy status. In keeping with similar trends on YouTube such as at the milk crate challenge [2], this is another example of the power of peer suggestion to motivate others at a distance to mimic or even one-up a particular behavior. What gives social media users the persuasive power to influence the behavior of complete strangers? Meanwhile, I am noticing a resurgence in concern about misinformation online. With the Delta variant of Covid-19 exacerbating the impact of this lasting Pandemic, many worry, including the President of the United States [3], that technology platforms are not doing enough to stop the flow of misinformation about the virus and about vaccines. YouTube's recent takedown of anti-vaccination propaganda [4] is a step in the right direction, but its long-term success as a solution to the algorithmic amplification of vaccine misinformation remains to be seen. Profit motivated tech companies make convenient targets for blame, and without a strong counter narrative, the reputation of computing as a field takes the hit.
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