597

REL597 Course Description:

In a world where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives — the internet, smartphones, thousands of apps, cloud-based voice systems, screens in our classrooms, artificial intelligence, robotics, the gig economy, video gaming, virtual reality, and numerous other products and applications currently under development — what ethical challenges are raised by their ubiquity? Through a series of case studies in an industry where a well-known motto is “move fast and break things,” this course will explore whether ethical considerations have kept pace with evolving technologies. Where does goodness fit in the knowledge revolution? If we have “outsourced our brain to Google,” as some would claim, have we also outsourced our ethics to it and other big tech companies? When we do a Google search, is Google also searching us? What are the ethical considerations of what companies do with our information in this so-called “surveillance economy”? What are the ethical consequences associated with posting personal information on social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or WeChat, and who has access to that information and for what purposes? Using specific case studies drawn from the vast and complicated world of technology, this course will assist students in identifying these various ethical issues and in developing strategies to deal with them. To assist students in identifying some of the ethical challenges that technology presents, the course explores chapters from works such as Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology, Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression or Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction.

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