{"id":655884,"date":"2020-03-03T10:30:12","date_gmt":"2020-03-03T18:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&#038;p=655884"},"modified":"2020-05-04T11:45:19","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T18:45:19","slug":"an-ethical-crisis-in-computing","status":"publish","type":"msr-video","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/video\/an-ethical-crisis-in-computing\/","title":{"rendered":"An Ethical Crisis in Computing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Computer scientists think often of &#8220;Ender&#8217;s Game&#8221; these days. In this award-winning 1985 science-fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, Ender is being trained at Battle School, an institution designed to make young children into military commanders against an unspecified enemy. Ender&#8217;s team engages in a series of computer-simulated battles, eventually destroying the enemy&#8217;s planet, only to learn then that the battles were very real and a real planet has been destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>Many of us got involved in computing because programming was fun. The benefits of computing seemed intuitive to us. We truly believe that computing yields tremendous societal benefits; for example, the life-saving potential of driverless cars is enormous! Like Ender, however, we realized recently that computing is not a game&#8211;it is real&#8211;and it brings with it not only societal benefits, but also significant societal costs, such as labor polarization, disinformation, and smart-phone addiction.<\/p>\n<p>The common reaction to this crisis is to label it as an &#8220;ethical crisis&#8221; and the proposed response is to add courses in ethics to the academic computing curriculum. I will argue that the ethical lens is too narrow. The real issue is how to deal with technology&#8217;s impact on society. Technology is driving the future, but who is doing the steering?<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/05\/44845_An_Ethical_Crisis_in_Computing.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Slides<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Computer scientists think often of &#8220;Ender&#8217;s Game&#8221; these days. In this award-winning 1985 science-fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, Ender is being trained at Battle School, an institution designed to make young children into military commanders against an unspecified enemy. Ender&#8217;s team engages in a series of computer-simulated battles, eventually destroying the enemy&#8217;s planet, only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":655887,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"research-area":[13560,13559],"msr-video-type":[206954],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-655884","msr-video","type-msr-video","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-research-area-social-sciences","msr-video-type-microsoft-research-talks","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/AAp4SJZITPc","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_video_file":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/655884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-video"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/655884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655911,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/655884\/revisions\/655911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=655884"},{"taxonomy":"msr-video-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video-type?post=655884"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=655884"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=655884"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=655884"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=655884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}