Personal Attributes / Traps

Lecture

This week's lecture was a new alternative to the usual discussions of Virtue Ethics (still featuring in the readings) with a discussion of common "cognitive traps", or modes of thinking that computer scientists can intentionally or unintentionally fall into.

Reading

Required - Virtues for Data Scientists

"Key Virtues for Data Science"

https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/interviews-on-data-ethics/

A series of interviews with leading data ethics experts, concluding with a short piece pulling out some of the key virtues that data scientists (and other computer scientists) should endeavour to display. This conclusion piece is the core thing to read here. The interviews can be considered optional.

Optional - Refusal to Work

"When the implication is not to design (technology)"

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1978942.1979275

Suggests that in some situations the right behaviour for someone designing something is to stop doing so. Presents a set of questions designers can ask themselves, to help make this decision. Links in to some readings earlier in the course that talk about the responsible behaviour sometimes being to disengage with making the system.

Optional - Codes of Practice

"ACM Code of Ethics"

https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics

Hopefully most of you are familiar with this from SEPP, but the ACM Code of Ethics is a popular example of a code of practice intending to highlight the behaviour expected from an ethical computing professional. This course was built with it in mind.

Optional - Being Critical

"The Critical Engineering Manifesto"

https://criticalengineering.org/

Encourages a critical outlook from all kinds of engineers through 11 manifesto points illustrating the traits of the Critical Engineer.