"PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING...":

At Harvard University "Embedded EthiCS — an interdisciplinary initiative between the Computer Science and Philosophy departments — has expanded to a dozen courses in the Computer Science department this semester and will extend to other disciplines in the near future. Pioneered by Computer Science Professor Barbara J. Grosz and Philosophy Professor Alison J. Simmons, the initiative pairs Computer Science faculty members with Philosophy graduate students to collaboratively design modules and assignments that address relevant ethical issues within Computer Science curricula. ... The idea behind the Embedded EthiCS initiative arose three years ago after students in Grosz’s course, CS 108: 'Intelligent Systems: Design and Ethical Challenges,' pushed for an increased emphasis on ethical reasoning within discussions surrounding technology, according to Grosz and Simmons. ... 'Not only are today’s students going to be designing technology in the future, but some of them are going to go into government and be working on regulation,' Simmons said. 'They need to understand how [ethical issues] crop up, and they need to be able to identify them.' Simmons said rather than serve as an afterthought or a 'one-off course,' ethical reasoning should be taught concurrently with computer science to enable students to think critically and communicate about ethical challenges associated with technology. ... 'You need to think not just about how to write clean code and elegant code and efficient code, but also about whether what the system is intended to do is ethical and whether the system might have side effects that raise some ethical concerns and, if so, how to either design around them or decide you shouldn't put certain capabilities in,' Grosz said." www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/2/22/embedded-ethiCS-expands/