Author: Dennis Hirsch
Publisher: Centre for Information Policy Leadership
Publication Year: 2021
Summary: The following article discuses what exactly is data ethics. Dennis Hirsch, a lawyer from Ohio State, asks this question in a study conducted in late 2021. In his study, he interviewed more than 20 data scientists and surveyed 50 more to gather information on data ethics from different perspectives. He found that, in its current iteration, it has mostly been seen as a response to new risks being posed by the use of data for analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). With issues arising through not only privacy violations but also other factors such as black-box algorithms, bias, and data manipulation, a focus on ensuring data is not used maliciously was necessary, bringing about the field of data ethics. In this sense, data ethics is not entirely a topic of its own, but rather a subject dependent on the current trends of data science and how it makes use of data.
