Researcher discusses social implications and responsibilities of computing

The members of the working group organized

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ourselves into two subgroups. One focused on undergraduate and graduate education and curriculum. The other was thinking about research and broader external engagement. We did benchmarking of other centers, departments, and units, and examined how they achieved facets of what we would want to achieve here at MIT.

On both the curricular and research sides, the working group coalesced around the vision of being able to make it a habit of mind and a habit of action, for people to be able to analyze both ethical challenges and societal challenges, and then train our students, as well as us, as researchers, to be equally facile at engineering both technical solutions and policy solutions. In the College of Computing, we need to be the catalyst for bringing together the numerous disciplines that have input into these issues. We have great potential to create collaboration.

And we do have growing public discomfort regarding the implications of computation, technology, AI, and machine learning. There are social implications, including economic inequality, lack of diversity and inclusion, and bias in data and systems. Human rights are at issue, as well as potential impacts on the labor market, and issues around trust, transparency, and accountability. This is an important moment.

Q: What are some of the core ideas the working group has actively discussed?

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-discusses-social-implications-responsibilities.html