Author: Dawn Rzeznikeicz
Publisher: Fortune Education
Publication Year: 2022
Summary: The following article asks whether data scientists/computer scientists have any obligation to practice data ethics and do they place technological advancements over ethical considerations. Those questions start with how we are educating students in these disciplines. Students argue that the ethics taught is not always relevant to their learning content. However, ethics is not a course but rather a practice. It is a mindset that needs to be developed. The problem is that there aren’t many academics in this space that can cross the bridge between a data scientist and an ethicist. Ethics is viewed as a checkbox rather than a serious area of thinking and reflection. These fields can be very black and white, while ethics is more of a gray area. There is a lack of incentive to care about ethics in the workplace. The standard is to build it out, then apologize later. However, everyone involved has a part to play in ethics. It’s not just the legal team, the developers, their managers, and the executives; it is everyone. We need students to believe in ethics and actively apply principles and frameworks to eliminate bias in the technologies they implement. We cannot stand and believe that technology is always neutral and objective.