CSC 322.01, Class 11: Professional ethics, continued

Overview

• Preliminaries
  • Notes and news
  • Upcoming work
  • Extra credit
  • Questions
• Discussion question 1: Papers
• Discussion question 2: Curriculum
• Discussion question 3: CSC 151

News / Etc.

• Please let me know when you notice problems on the Web site. I think I’ve fixed most of them. (Okay, something is massively wrong with the generation of readings in the schedule, but that turns out to be a programming problem I don’t have time to address.)
• Don’t forget to keep up with clients and getting your projects in order! You should be writing user stories.

Upcoming Work

• More readings for Tuesday. To be distributed.

Good things to do

Note: I do not do extra credit in two-credit classes.

Academic

• Convocation immediately after this class
• CS Table Tuesday: Tapia
• CS Extras Thursday: Grad school

Misc.

Questions

Discussion question 1: Papers

What did you see as the core/important themes in these three papers? Why? How do/will they inform your own practice?

• Computer scientists should gain the trust of the public. That’s hard, because we do so much crap as a discipline, but nonetheless. The code o ethics would help us gain that trust of the public, as would following it. Get good stuff publicized, too.
• What we write affects people: It can discriminate, it can shape how people think, it can shape how people act, it can use people’s times.
• “Don’t just live with intention; program with intention.”
• We should think more carefully about whether or not some of these things are okay.
• Luis Van Ahn - Games with a purpose (idea: Write games that take advantage of the fact that people do many things better than computers.)
  • ESP game: Two people see pictures. They try to pick the same set of five adjectives to describe the picture.
    • Helps with image classification (reveals biases clearly)
    • Helps with machine vision algorithms
• Value of standards: Law, Medicine, Engineering
  • It could be useful to look into the histories of these.
  • In the US, each of these professions gets certified. Ours does not.

Discussion question 2: Curriculum

Where would you put ethics in the Grinnell CS curriculum?

• Context: Right now, we have ethics
  • Two-Three days in CSC 322
  • A paper in CSC 322
  • CS Table (not required)
  • Some CS Extras (not required)
  • In unplanned places in courses (optional)
• Is there value for doing it (more formally) earlier?
• Are there particular cases that are useful as we introduce it?
• Add another P: Principles? (Find a greek word that means ethics and starts with P)
• It needs to be regular practice.

Discussion question 3: CSC 151