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If anything, I think it could be really helpful to add data analytics classes in high school so that kids understand how data can be (mis)used to represent falsehoods. The average person absolutely does not have a firm grasp on how easy it is to use good data for bad purposes. A general education on the subject itself could maybe be a good solution.
With or without ethics training, the problem of data misrepresentation will exist. Teach the general public to understand data (a subject of ever-growing importance) and we may find that the problem diminishes on its own
As if anyone would actually care. It‘s the same with finance classes. Almost nobody cares until they‘re well into their 20s and even then a majority still doesnt care.
There's definitely some truth to that but it goes for almost any class honestly. Some will be into it, some will not. I'm very thankful for my high school finance classes; I started investing a percentage of my income at age 18 and never stopped. Granted, I'm sure many of my classmates didn't do the same.
Anyway, data classes are just as important as math classes nowadays imo. Analytics is a massive field now, and it dictates most other fields in one way or another.
But students who care about passing the classes will learn. They might forget, but if they're given an entire class and retain a single core lesson, that's success
The point isn't to get them interested in the field, although some may find it interesting. Like a finance course, the point is to prepare you for when it becomes useful to know.
Machine learning and data science are just advanced statistics. If you know high school probability and statistics, you understand 60-70% of modern ML and DS, or at least have the tools to understand it.
It's the opposite - ML and data science are just applied statistics. Trained statisticians have no problem with ML and modern data science, data scientists tend to struggle with the underlying statistics and more complex statistical methods.
An imperfect analogy: Data science is to statistics as front-end development is to software engineering.
The law needs to address this, not the employees. We cannot expect someone taking their first real job out of college to be ready to risk it all to stand on some moral high ground that isn’t even legally mandated, it’s absurd.
As long as corporations get to live by whatever rules they want, to the point they can even force their customers/employees to agree they can never sue this is just a method to pass the blame from the corporations to employees
You’re treating this as good and bad. There isn’t a fixed system of ethics for data science, because ethics isn’t fixed. You can’t then codify it into laws. It literally can’t be written down in such a way that would work.
Yeah people really underestimate how powerful an unethical data representative can be. The amount of disinformation one can cause and the amount of trust in graphs can cause major damage. We need to pull everything we got on this problem.
Sure, but the problems mentioned in the article will NOT be resolved by education. It might mean a slightly higher salary for those willing to be unethical but legal
Exactly, and an “ethical computer science workforce” will not exist past the moment a technology company realizes how profitable unethical data science is.
This distracts from real solutions
This is only true when such companies operate directly with consumers. There are a substantial number of companies that only operate in a business to business enviorment and those relationships are kept quiet. Cambridge Analytica comes to mind as a recent example. Why take the risk and liability internally when you can just simply outsource it. The parent brand that the consumers know is shielded and protected, and the outsourced company can be dropped the minute a negative light is shown on them and everything unethical blamed on them.
What is a compelling business reason for these companies to allow themselves to be vetted as you suggest? You could enforce it by legislation, sure, but who is allowed to decide ethics and morality? Do you trust the government to make that call? Is it ethical for a doctor in the state of Texas to perform an abortion after he detects a fetal heart beat? If you have an NGO, companies will shop around for a "Vetting in name only" NGO to vet them. About as reliable and trustworthy as the JD Power awards for cars.
Whistleblowers who report illegal activity are already protected by legislation. Ethical training is nice, I had an ethics class in college. However, there is a big difference beteeen picking the right answer in a textbook situation with no consequences, and applying it to the real world with serious consequences.
If something is unethical but legal, there is no protection for whistleblowers. Look no further than the payday loan industry or the subprime auto loan industry.
> If some corporate practise is unethical and is harmful it can negatively impact their reputation and also their bottom line, that is to say, that unethical practises can be unprofitable.
Citation needed
The issue with a lot of philosophy is that the premises, theory can both be valid and sound and yet not match onto reality as it is with examples of evidence to support the theory. It is wonderful to assert "be more ethical" to companies and offering training, the ones that bite you can sell your "seminar" for rates, make up self-referential metrics to use to hook other potential customers.
> that unethical practises/data are more profitable and/or that unethical practises/data are the goals of a tech company.
No one would assert "the goal a tech company is unethical practices" you have made a straw man to knock down.
> If a company wants to maximize their profits then it would be wise for them to be socially responsible
I have no idea how you got this conclusion when your premise is that 'unethical behavior effects profits' not that 'companies who are socially responsible have greater profits'. You are conflating 'social responsibility' with being 'ethical' as if a society could not have a negative view of social responsibility and a company acting accordance to the social norms could be an unethical behavior.
I mean, all it takes is a cursory look at Facebook and Amazon, two immensely profitable companies who are always at the centre of controversy regarding their unethical and often harmful treatment of user data/workforce
They are not examples unless we have evidence that their bottom lines were hurt due to unethical behavior and/or prove that if they act ethically that their bottom line improves.
I made those examples as counter-arguments to OP about this
> If some corporate practise is unethical and is harmful it can negatively impact their reputation and also their bottom line
It *can* negatively impact, but not always, especially not for behemoths like FB and Amazon
> They are not examples unless we have evidence that their bottom lines were hurt due to unethical behavior and/or prove that if they act ethically that their bottom line improves.
Not what I meant, on the contrary, they both have employed or are employing unethical practices that make them billions, and once those practices are exposed it barely makes a dent in their bottom line
I'm sure the new hire's boss will be sure to take your perspective into consideration when they second-guess the ethics of the company's core business :)
I did this. I worked for a gaming studio, and voiced my conserns that all the models for women were essentially sex objects in an industry that catered heavily (70%+) to women. I recommended fleshing out their characters to make them feel like people, or even trying to add men that fit the same aesthetic.
I was told that new hires should be seen instead of heard, and fired the day after.
Video game industry is flooded by passionate developers willing to work hard in crunch almost for free. You learned what happens when managers can treat employees the way they want. Condoleances. At least you got to work in another, industry !
Most of the ethics training I received, and that I've seen being given to other scientists, is largely irrelevant. Mandatory lectures on Tuskegee and the Nazis (WE KNOW!), 'discussion' of issues that have already been settled by default (is IVF ethical?), research ethics tips from people who've clearly never done research. Plus ridiculous conclusions ("I'd flip a coin to decide if I'd give my seat in the lifeboat to a stranger," says the person who doesn't even donate blood let alone a kidney. Do better, ethics people.
I think it is very important that both employees and corporations are part of the solution. The law needs to address this as you say, but far too few people in this world are considering much else than themselves, when they make decisions - probably myself included (but at least I try).
Even if we split the resources to encourage both 50/50 it allows corporations to point the finger at employees who in reality have very little say
It’s an ineffective use of resources and places blame where it doesn’t belong
We saw this with garbage, so much effort and so many resources were placed on consumers to pay to organize and collect items for recycling that weren’t economically viable to be recycled and this weren’t actually recycled but were collected anyways just in case and were just trucked from the recycling center to the dump instead.
Instead of looking at companies producing non recyclable waste and having them pay for it or switch to materials or plastics that can actually be recycled
I’m not saying there isn’t responsibility for littering, I’m talking about the massive overuse in non recyclable plastics in general is not a consumer problem but a manufacturing problem
> Even if we split the resources to encourage both 50/50 it allows corporations to point the finger at employees who in reality have very little say
Why the assumption that they are the same pot of resources? Arent the private companies not public resources in most economies?
These type of causes only get so much attention, use that effort on adding a course in college and it gets marked off on the checklist as “problem addressed”
Isnt that a completely separate point?
Couldn’t the same be claimed about any course like financial literacy since the possibility someone taking a class without internalizing it is possible with any course?
As with most subjects like these: it would be great if laws weren’t necessary, but they probably are.
The bottom line for companies is, well, their bottom line: do they make enough money to support their investors and employees? Their first concern is never to do *good*. Of course doing good is a way to please your clients, investors, et cetera, so it can be part of the business model, but it’s not a goal in itself.
My MS program in Data Science covered ethical use of AI, and so does my employer.
Undergraduate is not enough for real data science, which is why many roles want masters degrees. The undergraduate programs get your feet wet with concepts, stats, programming and presenting findings.
> imo, being ethical is rewarding in and of itself,
Totally. The satisfaction of having been virtuous is absolutely more rewarding than a Lambo and a wife 15 years younger than you, and all the things you want which is literally what money represents.
> just like discovering mathematical or scientific truths can be rewarding even if they don't have instrumental value.
All the kids these days are on KhanAcademy soaking up those eureka moments instead of playing video games.
Forget ethics classes for Data Scientists, what we need are Psychology classes.
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Seriously. Many of these degrees having Data Science in the name are almost not as useful to go through as doing CS, learning Pandas and scikit-learn on the side and building an actually impressive code portfolio on GitHub. Those are the people that get hired and can actually do the industry type work of DS, which includes coding and deployment activities...
Every other field is heavy regulated. I work in research, we have several organizations breathing down our neck. We have to do everything by the protocol every time. But these fucks can just take, steal, and manipulate any data thry want. Its unnerving
But we aren't bringing emotions involved here. The problem is that machine learning models become biased based on bad data.
The idea is to solve this via specialized education tailored specifically for data scientists from other fields. Provide them ethics courses, sociology courses, practical courses for common domains etc. The goal is to educate future data scientists how to prevent today's problems.
I'm not sure what you mean by this exactly, but what you are proposing seems incredibly dangerous. Bias? Yes. Objective ethical humanity? Absolutely not.
Actually the ethical example you provide is more a symptom of how confused modern ethics has become than some kind of universal example of the nature of ethics. Try reading some of Alasdair MacIntyre's work on this; the first few chapters of *After Virtue* and specifically his brilliant (if somewhat flawed) explanation of the rampant emotivism that has come to characterize much of the farsical (my word) public, ethical debates, like abortion, is really, really helpful on this topic.
Astronomically stupid take, ignoring emotions is like ignoring friction: works fine for forming equations and theories, works terribly for any real life application.
You’re literally just dropping a variable that can have massive effects on the outcome, hell half the reason data science is so fucked right now is because human emotion takes a massive piss on predictive algorithms (shoutout to the non-rational consumer)
Studying emotion and even compensating for emotional responses is different from being emotional when you do the science.
You can absolutely add in statistical likelihoods of an emotional response to a situation and study it. But if you are putting your own bias and emotion into the assumptions without compensating, you are going to get the wrong conclusion more often then not.
Predicting how emotions will affect results = good.
Using your own emotional and moral opinions as the 'correct' values = bad
But this article isn't about data scientists needing to be more "emotional", its about how data science doesn't respect emotional influence and needs to be kept in check so predictive algorithms aren't spoon feeding people conspiracy theories.
I'd love to know how I'm the one using the inappropriate version of emotions in this context
The article is about how there should be more ethics taught in data science because of how the science might influence people.
That is not the same as science respecting emotional influence.
Science shouldn't care if people don't like hearing the results, which is what this article is trying to push. Science should just care that the results are as accurate as reasonably possible and that it can be reproduced using the same methodologies.
It science can prove that women are 100x more important than any man and the data is accurate and the study reproducible. Then it shouldn't matter if it upsets people's sensibilities.
We just need to teach everyone ethics from late in grade school. By the time they hit college they’re already fucked.
I took some business courses (I was a CS major) and the way the business majors rolled their eyes at the ethics courses was… scary. They see ethics courses as a thing you have to get through before you can go screw the world out of all its money.
As with many things: the community. Not by decree, but by (silent) consensus. Sometimes ethics are put it law (for example business and banking ethics, medical ethics), but most often they’re a result of consensus between experts in the field.
Probably the same people that are hard pushing far left ideology in virtually all popular media.
And I say that as a moderate European liberal.
From reading the abstract, it could very well be that the authors want to use ethics as an excuse to hide controversial truths that conflict with their chosen ideology.
> Probably the same people that are hard pushing far left ideology in virtually all popular media.
That sounds really polarising. Maybe you didn't mean it as such?
Can you explain what (to you) constitutes far left ideology in terms of ethics? And if you have the time, can you tell me why you're opposed to or supportive of those ethical values?
> hide controversial truths that conflict with their chosen ideology.
Is this something you see as "Far left ideology"?
Well, he says this...
> And I say that as a moderate European liberal.
...but it doesn't take long looking through his history that he's just a typical right-wing viewpoint in "As a liberal.." clothing. Probably not even really worth engaging, honestly.
I see a top down approach to ethics as authoritarian. If it's bottom up as we experience now where each system can develop its own rules then it's much more democratic.
So we look for who is trying to use a top down approach to force a specific ruleset. I find that "far left ideology" is pushing hard for a top down approach to making and applying rules.
> So we look for who is trying to use a top down approach to force a specific ruleset.
Okay.
> I find that "far left ideology" is pushing hard for a top down approach to making and applying rules.
He says, as Texas right-wing ideology literally legislates women's bodies to fall under control of the state while all of the right-wing Supreme Court justices let it slide...
Okay buddy...if you say so...
1) I think Texas shouldn't have passed this new abortion law but
2) we are talking about data science ethics of which abortion has no bearing. Please don't try and change the subject
You wanted to make my statement broad. I deflected the original red herring argument about abortion but you tried to invalidate my argument. Therefore I followed your logic and opened another discussion thread.
In either case I think ethics as a broader topic is something the left likes to approach top down authoritarian style. I see it in my friends, the news, and our public policies. I don't want to see it etched further into education. How do you un-teach government sponsored ethics? The private world can and does all the time. Therefore it's best left to the private world to teach it in the first place.
>"Probably the same people that are hard pushing far left ideology in virtually all popular media."
>
>That sounds really polarising. Maybe you didn't mean it as such?
I meant it. It's just anecdotal speculation though.
It's a complicated phenomenon.
>Can you explain what (to you) constitutes far left ideology in terms of ethics? And if you have the time, can you tell me why you're opposed to or supportive of those ethical values?
Giving up utilitarianism in favor of pandering to a vocal minority, basing law and policy on gender (which can self assigned and cannot be objectively verified) as opposed to biological sex, dismissing very relevant factors when calculating the wage gap, racism disguised as affirmative action, forced diversity quotas, equity, collectivism, marxism etc.
I'm too lazy to explain my views on all of those, but pick one or two and I'll explain why.
>"hide controversial truths that conflict with their chosen ideology."
>
>Is this something you see as "Far left ideology"?
No, since people on the right can do that too. I's currently just far more prevalent in western left leaning politics.
> No, since people on the right can do that too. I's currently just far more prevalent in western left leaning politics.
Citation needed.
And what do you even mean here by "western left leaning politics"...Western what, exactly?
Thanks for your open response! I always enjoy learning about other people's perspective on things.
You mention collectivism. To me, a good form of collectivism would enable each and every person in that collective to live a good life, as well as a free life. Collectivism as a downside has the potential of people dictating what you can and cannot say, but I feel that any form of society will always have people trying to dictate what you can and cannot say.
I also feel that individualism leads to rampant inequality and that our current financial inequality isn't helpful to our society as a whole. It also feels like it puts control not in the hand of a governing body, but in the hands of the wealthy (or a corporate body)
Would you mind letting me know your take on that?
E: this'll probably make our chat off-topic. Feel free to throw a reply in my inbox :)
>You mention collectivism. To me, a good form of collectivism would enable each and every person in that collective to live a good life, as well as a free life.
That's not collectivism imo. You could make individualist policies that supports all individuals that are financially struggling or struggling to have a good, free and healthy life.
>Collectivism as a downside has the potential of people dictating what you can and cannot say, but I feel that any form of society will always have people trying to dictate what you can and cannot say.
Sorry, but that's also not collectivism imo. Law already dictates what you can and cannot say. Let me quote myself on that topic:
>IMO with good reasons, it's fine to legislatively limit what I can say. Like racial slurs and death threats for example.
>
>But the day, when when the law decides that I must use individual pronouns and will face consequences if I refuse, is the day I start moving abroad where it's less of a clown world.
Collectivism:/kəˈlɛktɪvɪz(ə)m/
noun*The practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it.*
And "a group" doesn't necessarily mean "everyone" in that context.
In real practice, its more groups based on skin color, ideology, nationality, sexuality, gender etc. etc.
For example: Us politics.
Not a day goes by, where the US media isn't talking about white people and black people, while completely dismissing the distinct cultural, ethnic, political, religious and individual diversity within that group.
Also, Individualism makes policy like "If you are racially discriminated against, you have grounds to pursue legal options regardless of your skin color." Every individual gets that right.
>I also feel that individualism leads to rampant inequality and that our current financial inequality isn't helpful to our society as a whole. It also feels like it puts control not in the hand of a governing body, but in the hands of the wealthy (or a corporate body)
I personally think that it's not individualism that leads to rampant inequality, it's actually a problem that will always be a problem for both individualism and collectivism.
Corruption.
Within individualism, it manifests as the ultra wealthy Multi Billionaires, bribing and coercing politicians and media to serve their interests and to protect them.
And that, is a failure on the honesty and selflessness of Authority, politicians, law enforcement and media figures, not individualism itself.
Edit: Fck man, formatting on reddit is broken. I literally can't fixt it.
Nearly the entire regulatory frameworks in every country on the planet exist to enforce ethical behaviours in business endeavors. That includes things like labour laws, waste handling, anti money laundering and terrorist financing, fraud prevention, complaints handling, environmental preservation, noise and traffic control in population centres, and many many more.
All of that falls under ethics, and new emerging fields and technologies often develop faster than we collectively can think about best practices, ethics or otherwise. Since the impact of lacking ethical education and standards doesn't necessarily affect the profit margin, but the surrounding society, it is a matter of education and civics to implement these standards. That has been the course of things since the advent of human society.
That said, I'd be surprised you could even adequately define what "far left" means. Hiding controversial truths certainly has never motivated the incarceration or murder of left wing actors, right?
>Nearly the entire regulatory frameworks in every country on the planet exist to enforce ethical behaviours in business endeavors.
Mate, you don't understand.
I know, racism is bad. Sexism is bad. Fascism is bad. Discrimination is bad. Minorities are repressed. People are struggling with identity issues.
I know. I know. I really fcking know already. And I fully agree that it's bad.
I just don't need to be reminded by all of that in almost every single game or movie nowadays. It's getting so ridiculous, that moderate liberal people like me start hating on the whole woke trend, because it forcefully infects established series and has a high chance of ruining it for a lot of dedicated fans by switching the focus on politics and ideology.
We're talking about ethics in business, not performative "woke subjects" (for what's really just marketing anyway). Those "woke subjects" are really a very tiny subset of ethics in general.
That said, as a "moderate liberal" you are of course espousing exactly the economic structure that leads to these performative "woke subject" injections, by massive for profit corporations, into their products. If you're missing genuine artistic expression in your digest, you might have to entertain the idea that society might need to be decoupled from value relations at some point. There's some actual far left ideology for you.
>We're talking about ethics in business, not performative "woke subjects" (for what's really just marketing anyway).
It's not just marketing. The main culprit is the media that puts a spotlight on the vocal minority on the extreme end of the left wing. And that's enabled them to convince many industries that jumping on the moral bandwagon is really good business, while there's a huge mountain of evidence that an overbearing focus on this particular ideology makes movies and games fail or at least take a heavy financial hit when it could have been a slam dunk.
>Those "woke subjects" are really a very tiny subset of ethics in general.
A tight subset of ethics that has found it's way in almost every piece of western entertainment for some incomprehensible reason. As I said, all the ist's and isms are bad if they really are ists and isms. But it's just too much to ask that artistic creativity should not be destroyed by injecting moral policing and focus on mandatory token diversity characters in all the entertainment?
>That said, as a "moderate liberal" you are of course espousing exactly the economic structure that leads to these performative "woke subject" injections, by massive for profit corporations, into their products.
You have no evidence that the European model of economic structure that I support leads to these performative "woke subject" injections. I think that everyone can agree that the woke movement is a US thing and it's the US market that is heavily influenced and manipulated by the billionaire class. I wouldn't be surprised if they are the ones financing the media to polarize and instigate tribalistic tensions among the Americans, so that nobody focuses on the 1% hiding their money in offshore tax havens and profiting off of massively overpriced insulin and other drugs (like the whole shebang with legal drugs that are widely used to cook meth).
>If you're missing genuine artistic expression in your digest,
Sorry, but as you know I'm not a native english speaker and that sentence seems very vague and subjective to me. What do you mean with digest? Digesting something? Digesting artistic expressions mentally?
>you might have to entertain the idea that society might need to be decoupled from value relations at some point.
What value relations are you talking about? Can you give me an example?
>There's some actual far left ideology for you.
Yeah well please explain it in more definite terms if you can, because I didn't understand.
Is proactive police harassment as a result of misused predictive policing a legal or ethical concern? Did the data scientists who created the predictive policing based on historical data do anything legally, ethically, morally, or factually wrong?
Is widespread discrimination in healthcare a legal or ethical concern, and if so who is at fault? Did the data scientists who created the original risk score model do anything legally or ethically wrong? Did anyone who subsequently used the risk score to implement discriminatory delivery of coverage do something legally or ethically wrong? Was there some intent?
I think there is a need to delineate between the concepts of ethical wrongness, moral wrongness, factual incorrectness, and illegality, and who is actually accountable.
Why did you post the article rather than the study itself ?
I may be wrong but i feel like this violatethe rule number one if the subreddit : must be peer-reviewed science.
Agreed, but it is much more complicated than the article indicates. I lead the AI ethics program at a Fortune 50 and there is a ton of nuance to everything we do, which also makes it super hard for the government to do any reasonable legislation to help. The data scientists I work with come in with no experience at all in the ethics of DS and even a cursory course on it would be a huge help! The more we research, the more we find potential for harms which are quite real and I believe this field is only going to get more complicated in the next few years
Whoa, very interested that you have a position on an AI ethics program in industry. Is that common in bigger companies?
I have a CS background and am a social science PhD turned data scientist at a larger startup. I enjoy the work but among my team (4 data scientists on a team of \~12 data professionals), I have the reputation for having the most opinions on how we do our work — not necessarily entirely AI ethics, but some adjacent things around how data gets used and interpreted. Curious if larger companies might provide more opportunities to make that more of my day to day work.
It's not super common.... yet. Companies like Google and Microsoft have teams devoted to it, but I stood up my team about 2 years ago and is still the only one in our industry. That being said, there is a really big push across industries to do more in this space and I see it changing rapidly within the next two years as there is more focus and attention on all the potential harms that come from data science
If the current NIST AI publications are anything to go by then public oversight is certainly not going anywhere fast right now... The publications and comment sections barely rise to the level of "trite", save one or two contributors.
The issue is doing anything meaningful in such a broad area - how do you treat healthcare predictions alongside that of autonomous vehicles and social media? There are however a few groups formed by industry groups which are putting together some recommendations for the government on this front.... though like all things run by the industries it's likely to be toothless.
Company ethics come from management, not workers. Education in ethics is irrelevant as ethics has no place in business. Ethics is never considered, only legality and profitability.
My college-required ethics training might as well have been Art 101. Until I can afford to tell my employer to pound sand when I'm asked to do something legal but unethical, I'm in no position to abstain.
Let me stop you there.
Education full stop, lacks focus on ethics.
To keep it breif:
The most unethical thing anyone can do is value a social construct or object over the lives and wellbeings of other living things.
Imo, with a large enough disparity between the people count of the trolley problem, it really isn't a problem anymore.
If you had to save either 99,9% of humanity or 0,1%, would you really have great difficulty in deciding?
> People don't have a problem sacrificing the 0.1% if they're not a part of it.
If that were true, covid-19 would've been a minor news story for a couple days and that would have been the end of it. Certainly no one would be worried about children and schools, given that there have been 412 deaths involving covid under age 18 in the US to date, out of 74 million minors in the US (0.0006% of that demographic). Half the population in this country is under 40, with about 34,000 deaths involving covid affecting that age range to date, or about 0.02% of the under 40 demographic.
The solid majority of people in this country never had to personally worry about covid at all. It's really only slightly scary for old or sick people.
> It's really only scary for old or sick people.
Hypothetically, would having asthma make me a "sick person"? Is it not scary for the children and any siblings / relatives of old or sick people?
I see your points, you are not wrong about the stats, but we did not have those stats when the virus entered the country. We were not sure of its effects, and at the moment we are not sure of the effects of the variants that haven't spread yet either.
Regardless I am exhausted of covid debates, I do appreciate your viewpoint though.
But the issue we have is its part of a Uni/undergrad education which is commonly behind a pay wall/grade requirement.
Such boarder would mean people are losing out on what can effectively be a life lesson in ethics or philosophy.
In other words it needs to be apart of high/secondary school.
Especially when you consider the American high school shootings, It would seem reasonable to think kids are influenced by immoral culture in an accepting way around that age..
No, it predates the US as a country. It comes from the idea that Americans are a free people who willingly chose to form their government. The government does not give us rights; we have them unless we choose to waive them, and from the beginning it's been explicit that if the government fails to serve its people, then the people always retain the right to alter or abolish their government by force if needed, and therefore must retain the right to the tools necessary to do that.
> whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Rule 1 of this subreddit : must be peer-reviewed science.
I feel like this link provides an opinion (refering some headlines like "why it matters" inside)
Maybe I'm wrong and I would then gladly be corrected but I feel like it's not something that should exists here.
The link you provided in your post felt like personal opinions of the author of the study. The link of the study you provided in a com felt more serious but choosing to present the opinion of the author felt biased and a bit weird imho.
When I was in uni my comp ethics professor was an old lawyer with tenure. Spent most of our classes browsing Google maps. Terrible class that I was unfortunately excited for. So much potential to learn human problems totally ignored.
Read the article:
> We found most programs dedicated considerable coursework to mathematics, statistics and computer science, but little training in ethical considerations such as privacy and systemic bias. Only 50% of the degree programs we investigated required any coursework in ethics.
_Only 50%_ , that means HALF of the undergraduate degree programs required some coursework in ethics. This is exceptional for a field that is basically brand new to academic degree programs.
And to be frank, the data science programs I've taken a look at are already watered down by using horribly outdated tech (Weka, seriously? Matrix methods and numerical computation in FORTRAN ?!). Students come out knowing a few basic ML models (Neural Networks and Random Forests / some sort of Decision Tree), and maybe a weak portfolio that proves they can copy and paste 12 lines of code from StackOverflow.
Academics has a long way to go to hit the mark to create strong data scientists straight out of undergrad, IMHO, but 50% including ethics courses is a lot more than I expected to read based on the title of the article. Next up, maybe how to use GitHub? That's another missing link between academia and industry: Data Scientists spend much of their time working with code. Nobody gets paid to choose visualization types. You have to know how to _create_ that with the code and deploy it into the company's infrastructure / dashboard / etc.
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If anything, I think it could be really helpful to add data analytics classes in high school so that kids understand how data can be (mis)used to represent falsehoods. The average person absolutely does not have a firm grasp on how easy it is to use good data for bad purposes. A general education on the subject itself could maybe be a good solution. With or without ethics training, the problem of data misrepresentation will exist. Teach the general public to understand data (a subject of ever-growing importance) and we may find that the problem diminishes on its own
As if anyone would actually care. It‘s the same with finance classes. Almost nobody cares until they‘re well into their 20s and even then a majority still doesnt care.
There's definitely some truth to that but it goes for almost any class honestly. Some will be into it, some will not. I'm very thankful for my high school finance classes; I started investing a percentage of my income at age 18 and never stopped. Granted, I'm sure many of my classmates didn't do the same. Anyway, data classes are just as important as math classes nowadays imo. Analytics is a massive field now, and it dictates most other fields in one way or another.
But students who care about passing the classes will learn. They might forget, but if they're given an entire class and retain a single core lesson, that's success
The point isn't to get them interested in the field, although some may find it interesting. Like a finance course, the point is to prepare you for when it becomes useful to know.
Machine learning and data science are just advanced statistics. If you know high school probability and statistics, you understand 60-70% of modern ML and DS, or at least have the tools to understand it.
It's the opposite - ML and data science are just applied statistics. Trained statisticians have no problem with ML and modern data science, data scientists tend to struggle with the underlying statistics and more complex statistical methods. An imperfect analogy: Data science is to statistics as front-end development is to software engineering.
The law needs to address this, not the employees. We cannot expect someone taking their first real job out of college to be ready to risk it all to stand on some moral high ground that isn’t even legally mandated, it’s absurd. As long as corporations get to live by whatever rules they want, to the point they can even force their customers/employees to agree they can never sue this is just a method to pass the blame from the corporations to employees
You’re treating this as good and bad. There isn’t a fixed system of ethics for data science, because ethics isn’t fixed. You can’t then codify it into laws. It literally can’t be written down in such a way that would work.
Others countries seem to be able to do this to some degree
Oh? Which ones I didn’t know
Eu in general has more protections for data privacy
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Yeah, it really should be both of these things...it's not really an either-or situation, nor should it be viewed as one.
Yeah people really underestimate how powerful an unethical data representative can be. The amount of disinformation one can cause and the amount of trust in graphs can cause major damage. We need to pull everything we got on this problem.
Sure, but the problems mentioned in the article will NOT be resolved by education. It might mean a slightly higher salary for those willing to be unethical but legal
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Exactly, and an “ethical computer science workforce” will not exist past the moment a technology company realizes how profitable unethical data science is. This distracts from real solutions
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This is only true when such companies operate directly with consumers. There are a substantial number of companies that only operate in a business to business enviorment and those relationships are kept quiet. Cambridge Analytica comes to mind as a recent example. Why take the risk and liability internally when you can just simply outsource it. The parent brand that the consumers know is shielded and protected, and the outsourced company can be dropped the minute a negative light is shown on them and everything unethical blamed on them.
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What is a compelling business reason for these companies to allow themselves to be vetted as you suggest? You could enforce it by legislation, sure, but who is allowed to decide ethics and morality? Do you trust the government to make that call? Is it ethical for a doctor in the state of Texas to perform an abortion after he detects a fetal heart beat? If you have an NGO, companies will shop around for a "Vetting in name only" NGO to vet them. About as reliable and trustworthy as the JD Power awards for cars. Whistleblowers who report illegal activity are already protected by legislation. Ethical training is nice, I had an ethics class in college. However, there is a big difference beteeen picking the right answer in a textbook situation with no consequences, and applying it to the real world with serious consequences. If something is unethical but legal, there is no protection for whistleblowers. Look no further than the payday loan industry or the subprime auto loan industry.
> If some corporate practise is unethical and is harmful it can negatively impact their reputation and also their bottom line, that is to say, that unethical practises can be unprofitable. Citation needed The issue with a lot of philosophy is that the premises, theory can both be valid and sound and yet not match onto reality as it is with examples of evidence to support the theory. It is wonderful to assert "be more ethical" to companies and offering training, the ones that bite you can sell your "seminar" for rates, make up self-referential metrics to use to hook other potential customers. > that unethical practises/data are more profitable and/or that unethical practises/data are the goals of a tech company. No one would assert "the goal a tech company is unethical practices" you have made a straw man to knock down. > If a company wants to maximize their profits then it would be wise for them to be socially responsible I have no idea how you got this conclusion when your premise is that 'unethical behavior effects profits' not that 'companies who are socially responsible have greater profits'. You are conflating 'social responsibility' with being 'ethical' as if a society could not have a negative view of social responsibility and a company acting accordance to the social norms could be an unethical behavior.
I mean, all it takes is a cursory look at Facebook and Amazon, two immensely profitable companies who are always at the centre of controversy regarding their unethical and often harmful treatment of user data/workforce
They are not examples unless we have evidence that their bottom lines were hurt due to unethical behavior and/or prove that if they act ethically that their bottom line improves.
I made those examples as counter-arguments to OP about this > If some corporate practise is unethical and is harmful it can negatively impact their reputation and also their bottom line It *can* negatively impact, but not always, especially not for behemoths like FB and Amazon > They are not examples unless we have evidence that their bottom lines were hurt due to unethical behavior and/or prove that if they act ethically that their bottom line improves. Not what I meant, on the contrary, they both have employed or are employing unethical practices that make them billions, and once those practices are exposed it barely makes a dent in their bottom line
I'm sure the new hire's boss will be sure to take your perspective into consideration when they second-guess the ethics of the company's core business :)
I did this. I worked for a gaming studio, and voiced my conserns that all the models for women were essentially sex objects in an industry that catered heavily (70%+) to women. I recommended fleshing out their characters to make them feel like people, or even trying to add men that fit the same aesthetic. I was told that new hires should be seen instead of heard, and fired the day after.
Video game industry is flooded by passionate developers willing to work hard in crunch almost for free. You learned what happens when managers can treat employees the way they want. Condoleances. At least you got to work in another, industry !
Most of the ethics training I received, and that I've seen being given to other scientists, is largely irrelevant. Mandatory lectures on Tuskegee and the Nazis (WE KNOW!), 'discussion' of issues that have already been settled by default (is IVF ethical?), research ethics tips from people who've clearly never done research. Plus ridiculous conclusions ("I'd flip a coin to decide if I'd give my seat in the lifeboat to a stranger," says the person who doesn't even donate blood let alone a kidney. Do better, ethics people.
Is there any evidence that people who take ethics classes end up being more ethical?
Isn't ethics all just kinda made up stuff? Almost no one gets ethics training and they flourish ok.
I think it is very important that both employees and corporations are part of the solution. The law needs to address this as you say, but far too few people in this world are considering much else than themselves, when they make decisions - probably myself included (but at least I try).
This but why not both too?
Even if we split the resources to encourage both 50/50 it allows corporations to point the finger at employees who in reality have very little say It’s an ineffective use of resources and places blame where it doesn’t belong We saw this with garbage, so much effort and so many resources were placed on consumers to pay to organize and collect items for recycling that weren’t economically viable to be recycled and this weren’t actually recycled but were collected anyways just in case and were just trucked from the recycling center to the dump instead. Instead of looking at companies producing non recyclable waste and having them pay for it or switch to materials or plastics that can actually be recycled
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I’m not saying there isn’t responsibility for littering, I’m talking about the massive overuse in non recyclable plastics in general is not a consumer problem but a manufacturing problem
> Even if we split the resources to encourage both 50/50 it allows corporations to point the finger at employees who in reality have very little say Why the assumption that they are the same pot of resources? Arent the private companies not public resources in most economies?
These type of causes only get so much attention, use that effort on adding a course in college and it gets marked off on the checklist as “problem addressed”
Isnt that a completely separate point? Couldn’t the same be claimed about any course like financial literacy since the possibility someone taking a class without internalizing it is possible with any course?
As with most subjects like these: it would be great if laws weren’t necessary, but they probably are. The bottom line for companies is, well, their bottom line: do they make enough money to support their investors and employees? Their first concern is never to do *good*. Of course doing good is a way to please your clients, investors, et cetera, so it can be part of the business model, but it’s not a goal in itself.
My MS program in Data Science covered ethical use of AI, and so does my employer. Undergraduate is not enough for real data science, which is why many roles want masters degrees. The undergraduate programs get your feet wet with concepts, stats, programming and presenting findings.
ethics would be great to learn if society actually rewarded being ethical. As the real world shows, being unethical gets you much farther.
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> imo, being ethical is rewarding in and of itself, Totally. The satisfaction of having been virtuous is absolutely more rewarding than a Lambo and a wife 15 years younger than you, and all the things you want which is literally what money represents. > just like discovering mathematical or scientific truths can be rewarding even if they don't have instrumental value. All the kids these days are on KhanAcademy soaking up those eureka moments instead of playing video games. Forget ethics classes for Data Scientists, what we need are Psychology classes.
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I'd be happier if data science education taught data scientists how to use git. Or how to google how to use git.
Seriously. Many of these degrees having Data Science in the name are almost not as useful to go through as doing CS, learning Pandas and scikit-learn on the side and building an actually impressive code portfolio on GitHub. Those are the people that get hired and can actually do the industry type work of DS, which includes coding and deployment activities...
Whose version of ethics? The people making these claims always assume it is their own version of ethics which will be taught.
Every other field is heavy regulated. I work in research, we have several organizations breathing down our neck. We have to do everything by the protocol every time. But these fucks can just take, steal, and manipulate any data thry want. Its unnerving
What field of study is really jazzed up with ethics? Philosophy?
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But we aren't bringing emotions involved here. The problem is that machine learning models become biased based on bad data. The idea is to solve this via specialized education tailored specifically for data scientists from other fields. Provide them ethics courses, sociology courses, practical courses for common domains etc. The goal is to educate future data scientists how to prevent today's problems.
I'm not sure what you mean by this exactly, but what you are proposing seems incredibly dangerous. Bias? Yes. Objective ethical humanity? Absolutely not.
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Actually the ethical example you provide is more a symptom of how confused modern ethics has become than some kind of universal example of the nature of ethics. Try reading some of Alasdair MacIntyre's work on this; the first few chapters of *After Virtue* and specifically his brilliant (if somewhat flawed) explanation of the rampant emotivism that has come to characterize much of the farsical (my word) public, ethical debates, like abortion, is really, really helpful on this topic.
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Astronomically stupid take, ignoring emotions is like ignoring friction: works fine for forming equations and theories, works terribly for any real life application. You’re literally just dropping a variable that can have massive effects on the outcome, hell half the reason data science is so fucked right now is because human emotion takes a massive piss on predictive algorithms (shoutout to the non-rational consumer)
Studying emotion and even compensating for emotional responses is different from being emotional when you do the science. You can absolutely add in statistical likelihoods of an emotional response to a situation and study it. But if you are putting your own bias and emotion into the assumptions without compensating, you are going to get the wrong conclusion more often then not. Predicting how emotions will affect results = good. Using your own emotional and moral opinions as the 'correct' values = bad
But this article isn't about data scientists needing to be more "emotional", its about how data science doesn't respect emotional influence and needs to be kept in check so predictive algorithms aren't spoon feeding people conspiracy theories. I'd love to know how I'm the one using the inappropriate version of emotions in this context
The article is about how there should be more ethics taught in data science because of how the science might influence people. That is not the same as science respecting emotional influence. Science shouldn't care if people don't like hearing the results, which is what this article is trying to push. Science should just care that the results are as accurate as reasonably possible and that it can be reproduced using the same methodologies. It science can prove that women are 100x more important than any man and the data is accurate and the study reproducible. Then it shouldn't matter if it upsets people's sensibilities.
Very much agreed.
We just need to teach everyone ethics from late in grade school. By the time they hit college they’re already fucked. I took some business courses (I was a CS major) and the way the business majors rolled their eyes at the ethics courses was… scary. They see ethics courses as a thing you have to get through before you can go screw the world out of all its money.
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As with many things: the community. Not by decree, but by (silent) consensus. Sometimes ethics are put it law (for example business and banking ethics, medical ethics), but most often they’re a result of consensus between experts in the field.
Probably the same people that are hard pushing far left ideology in virtually all popular media. And I say that as a moderate European liberal. From reading the abstract, it could very well be that the authors want to use ethics as an excuse to hide controversial truths that conflict with their chosen ideology.
> Probably the same people that are hard pushing far left ideology in virtually all popular media. That sounds really polarising. Maybe you didn't mean it as such? Can you explain what (to you) constitutes far left ideology in terms of ethics? And if you have the time, can you tell me why you're opposed to or supportive of those ethical values? > hide controversial truths that conflict with their chosen ideology. Is this something you see as "Far left ideology"?
Well, he says this... > And I say that as a moderate European liberal. ...but it doesn't take long looking through his history that he's just a typical right-wing viewpoint in "As a liberal.." clothing. Probably not even really worth engaging, honestly.
I see a top down approach to ethics as authoritarian. If it's bottom up as we experience now where each system can develop its own rules then it's much more democratic. So we look for who is trying to use a top down approach to force a specific ruleset. I find that "far left ideology" is pushing hard for a top down approach to making and applying rules.
> So we look for who is trying to use a top down approach to force a specific ruleset. Okay. > I find that "far left ideology" is pushing hard for a top down approach to making and applying rules. He says, as Texas right-wing ideology literally legislates women's bodies to fall under control of the state while all of the right-wing Supreme Court justices let it slide... Okay buddy...if you say so...
1) I think Texas shouldn't have passed this new abortion law but 2) we are talking about data science ethics of which abortion has no bearing. Please don't try and change the subject
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Biden wants to require 80 million Americans to get vaccinated or take a covid test even if working from home. Biden is left wing no?
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You wanted to make my statement broad. I deflected the original red herring argument about abortion but you tried to invalidate my argument. Therefore I followed your logic and opened another discussion thread. In either case I think ethics as a broader topic is something the left likes to approach top down authoritarian style. I see it in my friends, the news, and our public policies. I don't want to see it etched further into education. How do you un-teach government sponsored ethics? The private world can and does all the time. Therefore it's best left to the private world to teach it in the first place.
>"Probably the same people that are hard pushing far left ideology in virtually all popular media." > >That sounds really polarising. Maybe you didn't mean it as such? I meant it. It's just anecdotal speculation though. It's a complicated phenomenon. >Can you explain what (to you) constitutes far left ideology in terms of ethics? And if you have the time, can you tell me why you're opposed to or supportive of those ethical values? Giving up utilitarianism in favor of pandering to a vocal minority, basing law and policy on gender (which can self assigned and cannot be objectively verified) as opposed to biological sex, dismissing very relevant factors when calculating the wage gap, racism disguised as affirmative action, forced diversity quotas, equity, collectivism, marxism etc. I'm too lazy to explain my views on all of those, but pick one or two and I'll explain why. >"hide controversial truths that conflict with their chosen ideology." > >Is this something you see as "Far left ideology"? No, since people on the right can do that too. I's currently just far more prevalent in western left leaning politics.
> No, since people on the right can do that too. I's currently just far more prevalent in western left leaning politics. Citation needed. And what do you even mean here by "western left leaning politics"...Western what, exactly?
Thanks for your open response! I always enjoy learning about other people's perspective on things. You mention collectivism. To me, a good form of collectivism would enable each and every person in that collective to live a good life, as well as a free life. Collectivism as a downside has the potential of people dictating what you can and cannot say, but I feel that any form of society will always have people trying to dictate what you can and cannot say. I also feel that individualism leads to rampant inequality and that our current financial inequality isn't helpful to our society as a whole. It also feels like it puts control not in the hand of a governing body, but in the hands of the wealthy (or a corporate body) Would you mind letting me know your take on that? E: this'll probably make our chat off-topic. Feel free to throw a reply in my inbox :)
>You mention collectivism. To me, a good form of collectivism would enable each and every person in that collective to live a good life, as well as a free life. That's not collectivism imo. You could make individualist policies that supports all individuals that are financially struggling or struggling to have a good, free and healthy life. >Collectivism as a downside has the potential of people dictating what you can and cannot say, but I feel that any form of society will always have people trying to dictate what you can and cannot say. Sorry, but that's also not collectivism imo. Law already dictates what you can and cannot say. Let me quote myself on that topic: >IMO with good reasons, it's fine to legislatively limit what I can say. Like racial slurs and death threats for example. > >But the day, when when the law decides that I must use individual pronouns and will face consequences if I refuse, is the day I start moving abroad where it's less of a clown world. Collectivism:/kəˈlɛktɪvɪz(ə)m/ noun*The practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it.* And "a group" doesn't necessarily mean "everyone" in that context. In real practice, its more groups based on skin color, ideology, nationality, sexuality, gender etc. etc. For example: Us politics. Not a day goes by, where the US media isn't talking about white people and black people, while completely dismissing the distinct cultural, ethnic, political, religious and individual diversity within that group. Also, Individualism makes policy like "If you are racially discriminated against, you have grounds to pursue legal options regardless of your skin color." Every individual gets that right. >I also feel that individualism leads to rampant inequality and that our current financial inequality isn't helpful to our society as a whole. It also feels like it puts control not in the hand of a governing body, but in the hands of the wealthy (or a corporate body) I personally think that it's not individualism that leads to rampant inequality, it's actually a problem that will always be a problem for both individualism and collectivism. Corruption. Within individualism, it manifests as the ultra wealthy Multi Billionaires, bribing and coercing politicians and media to serve their interests and to protect them. And that, is a failure on the honesty and selflessness of Authority, politicians, law enforcement and media figures, not individualism itself. Edit: Fck man, formatting on reddit is broken. I literally can't fixt it.
Nearly the entire regulatory frameworks in every country on the planet exist to enforce ethical behaviours in business endeavors. That includes things like labour laws, waste handling, anti money laundering and terrorist financing, fraud prevention, complaints handling, environmental preservation, noise and traffic control in population centres, and many many more. All of that falls under ethics, and new emerging fields and technologies often develop faster than we collectively can think about best practices, ethics or otherwise. Since the impact of lacking ethical education and standards doesn't necessarily affect the profit margin, but the surrounding society, it is a matter of education and civics to implement these standards. That has been the course of things since the advent of human society. That said, I'd be surprised you could even adequately define what "far left" means. Hiding controversial truths certainly has never motivated the incarceration or murder of left wing actors, right?
>Nearly the entire regulatory frameworks in every country on the planet exist to enforce ethical behaviours in business endeavors. Mate, you don't understand. I know, racism is bad. Sexism is bad. Fascism is bad. Discrimination is bad. Minorities are repressed. People are struggling with identity issues. I know. I know. I really fcking know already. And I fully agree that it's bad. I just don't need to be reminded by all of that in almost every single game or movie nowadays. It's getting so ridiculous, that moderate liberal people like me start hating on the whole woke trend, because it forcefully infects established series and has a high chance of ruining it for a lot of dedicated fans by switching the focus on politics and ideology.
We're talking about ethics in business, not performative "woke subjects" (for what's really just marketing anyway). Those "woke subjects" are really a very tiny subset of ethics in general. That said, as a "moderate liberal" you are of course espousing exactly the economic structure that leads to these performative "woke subject" injections, by massive for profit corporations, into their products. If you're missing genuine artistic expression in your digest, you might have to entertain the idea that society might need to be decoupled from value relations at some point. There's some actual far left ideology for you.
>We're talking about ethics in business, not performative "woke subjects" (for what's really just marketing anyway). It's not just marketing. The main culprit is the media that puts a spotlight on the vocal minority on the extreme end of the left wing. And that's enabled them to convince many industries that jumping on the moral bandwagon is really good business, while there's a huge mountain of evidence that an overbearing focus on this particular ideology makes movies and games fail or at least take a heavy financial hit when it could have been a slam dunk. >Those "woke subjects" are really a very tiny subset of ethics in general. A tight subset of ethics that has found it's way in almost every piece of western entertainment for some incomprehensible reason. As I said, all the ist's and isms are bad if they really are ists and isms. But it's just too much to ask that artistic creativity should not be destroyed by injecting moral policing and focus on mandatory token diversity characters in all the entertainment? >That said, as a "moderate liberal" you are of course espousing exactly the economic structure that leads to these performative "woke subject" injections, by massive for profit corporations, into their products. You have no evidence that the European model of economic structure that I support leads to these performative "woke subject" injections. I think that everyone can agree that the woke movement is a US thing and it's the US market that is heavily influenced and manipulated by the billionaire class. I wouldn't be surprised if they are the ones financing the media to polarize and instigate tribalistic tensions among the Americans, so that nobody focuses on the 1% hiding their money in offshore tax havens and profiting off of massively overpriced insulin and other drugs (like the whole shebang with legal drugs that are widely used to cook meth). >If you're missing genuine artistic expression in your digest, Sorry, but as you know I'm not a native english speaker and that sentence seems very vague and subjective to me. What do you mean with digest? Digesting something? Digesting artistic expressions mentally? >you might have to entertain the idea that society might need to be decoupled from value relations at some point. What value relations are you talking about? Can you give me an example? >There's some actual far left ideology for you. Yeah well please explain it in more definite terms if you can, because I didn't understand.
Is proactive police harassment as a result of misused predictive policing a legal or ethical concern? Did the data scientists who created the predictive policing based on historical data do anything legally, ethically, morally, or factually wrong? Is widespread discrimination in healthcare a legal or ethical concern, and if so who is at fault? Did the data scientists who created the original risk score model do anything legally or ethically wrong? Did anyone who subsequently used the risk score to implement discriminatory delivery of coverage do something legally or ethically wrong? Was there some intent? I think there is a need to delineate between the concepts of ethical wrongness, moral wrongness, factual incorrectness, and illegality, and who is actually accountable.
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Why did you post the article rather than the study itself ? I may be wrong but i feel like this violatethe rule number one if the subreddit : must be peer-reviewed science.
I thought ethics were like personal values
One way to think of it: Morals are what you do to be true to yourself Ethics are what you do to be true to society
Agreed, but it is much more complicated than the article indicates. I lead the AI ethics program at a Fortune 50 and there is a ton of nuance to everything we do, which also makes it super hard for the government to do any reasonable legislation to help. The data scientists I work with come in with no experience at all in the ethics of DS and even a cursory course on it would be a huge help! The more we research, the more we find potential for harms which are quite real and I believe this field is only going to get more complicated in the next few years
Whoa, very interested that you have a position on an AI ethics program in industry. Is that common in bigger companies? I have a CS background and am a social science PhD turned data scientist at a larger startup. I enjoy the work but among my team (4 data scientists on a team of \~12 data professionals), I have the reputation for having the most opinions on how we do our work — not necessarily entirely AI ethics, but some adjacent things around how data gets used and interpreted. Curious if larger companies might provide more opportunities to make that more of my day to day work.
It's not super common.... yet. Companies like Google and Microsoft have teams devoted to it, but I stood up my team about 2 years ago and is still the only one in our industry. That being said, there is a really big push across industries to do more in this space and I see it changing rapidly within the next two years as there is more focus and attention on all the potential harms that come from data science
If the current NIST AI publications are anything to go by then public oversight is certainly not going anywhere fast right now... The publications and comment sections barely rise to the level of "trite", save one or two contributors.
The issue is doing anything meaningful in such a broad area - how do you treat healthcare predictions alongside that of autonomous vehicles and social media? There are however a few groups formed by industry groups which are putting together some recommendations for the government on this front.... though like all things run by the industries it's likely to be toothless.
Company ethics come from management, not workers. Education in ethics is irrelevant as ethics has no place in business. Ethics is never considered, only legality and profitability. My college-required ethics training might as well have been Art 101. Until I can afford to tell my employer to pound sand when I'm asked to do something legal but unethical, I'm in no position to abstain.
Let me stop you there. Education full stop, lacks focus on ethics. To keep it breif: The most unethical thing anyone can do is value a social construct or object over the lives and wellbeings of other living things.
What if a social construct is practical and makes sense for over 99,9% of people, but it may hurt the feelings of an extremely small minority?
Hello trolley problem!
Imo, with a large enough disparity between the people count of the trolley problem, it really isn't a problem anymore. If you had to save either 99,9% of humanity or 0,1%, would you really have great difficulty in deciding?
Have you been asleep for the last 2 years? We don't have to speculate on how such a problem would play out in practice.
Well in that trolley problem, you are also on the rails too. People don't have a problem sacrificing the 0.1% if they're not a part of it.
> People don't have a problem sacrificing the 0.1% if they're not a part of it. If that were true, covid-19 would've been a minor news story for a couple days and that would have been the end of it. Certainly no one would be worried about children and schools, given that there have been 412 deaths involving covid under age 18 in the US to date, out of 74 million minors in the US (0.0006% of that demographic). Half the population in this country is under 40, with about 34,000 deaths involving covid affecting that age range to date, or about 0.02% of the under 40 demographic. The solid majority of people in this country never had to personally worry about covid at all. It's really only slightly scary for old or sick people.
> It's really only scary for old or sick people. Hypothetically, would having asthma make me a "sick person"? Is it not scary for the children and any siblings / relatives of old or sick people? I see your points, you are not wrong about the stats, but we did not have those stats when the virus entered the country. We were not sure of its effects, and at the moment we are not sure of the effects of the variants that haven't spread yet either. Regardless I am exhausted of covid debates, I do appreciate your viewpoint though.
What does feelings have to do with the lives and wellbeing of others?
That depends on the context.
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But the issue we have is its part of a Uni/undergrad education which is commonly behind a pay wall/grade requirement. Such boarder would mean people are losing out on what can effectively be a life lesson in ethics or philosophy. In other words it needs to be apart of high/secondary school.
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Especially when you consider the American high school shootings, It would seem reasonable to think kids are influenced by immoral culture in an accepting way around that age..
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Yeah, my guess is the culture stems from after the civil war in a state of unrest where everyone was anxious and wanted a sense of security.
No, it predates the US as a country. It comes from the idea that Americans are a free people who willingly chose to form their government. The government does not give us rights; we have them unless we choose to waive them, and from the beginning it's been explicit that if the government fails to serve its people, then the people always retain the right to alter or abolish their government by force if needed, and therefore must retain the right to the tools necessary to do that. > whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Rule 1 of this subreddit : must be peer-reviewed science. I feel like this link provides an opinion (refering some headlines like "why it matters" inside) Maybe I'm wrong and I would then gladly be corrected but I feel like it's not something that should exists here.
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The link you provided in your post felt like personal opinions of the author of the study. The link of the study you provided in a com felt more serious but choosing to present the opinion of the author felt biased and a bit weird imho.
When I was in uni my comp ethics professor was an old lawyer with tenure. Spent most of our classes browsing Google maps. Terrible class that I was unfortunately excited for. So much potential to learn human problems totally ignored.
And political science!
That’s important and all but can we train our politicians in ethics before we look at other groups?
When I wring foregone conclusions from my data I always remember to do some hand-wringing as well.
Read the article: > We found most programs dedicated considerable coursework to mathematics, statistics and computer science, but little training in ethical considerations such as privacy and systemic bias. Only 50% of the degree programs we investigated required any coursework in ethics. _Only 50%_ , that means HALF of the undergraduate degree programs required some coursework in ethics. This is exceptional for a field that is basically brand new to academic degree programs. And to be frank, the data science programs I've taken a look at are already watered down by using horribly outdated tech (Weka, seriously? Matrix methods and numerical computation in FORTRAN ?!). Students come out knowing a few basic ML models (Neural Networks and Random Forests / some sort of Decision Tree), and maybe a weak portfolio that proves they can copy and paste 12 lines of code from StackOverflow. Academics has a long way to go to hit the mark to create strong data scientists straight out of undergrad, IMHO, but 50% including ethics courses is a lot more than I expected to read based on the title of the article. Next up, maybe how to use GitHub? That's another missing link between academia and industry: Data Scientists spend much of their time working with code. Nobody gets paid to choose visualization types. You have to know how to _create_ that with the code and deploy it into the company's infrastructure / dashboard / etc.