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Ethics Working Group

Despite the many ways new technologies have improved life, they cannot be regarded as unambiguously beneficial or even value-neutral. Recent experience shows they can lead to unintended but harmful consequences. Our Working Group, as part of the Informatics Europe community, can contribute among others at the following levels:

  • As an Informatics community, we need to ensure that socio-technological systems in the domain of informatics have a socially beneficial and ethical impact. This is especially important when it comes to emergent technologies, particularly for the new artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies in all phases of their development, from the design to implementation and in different applications. The current EU Artificial Intelligence Act, The European Approach to AI, presents a basis for the discussion.
  • Likewise important for us as a community of educators in Europe is to help introduce the teaching of ethics and social aspects at technical universities in Europe. ETHICS4EU project provides a foundation for continuing work on ethics education. Implementation of the ETHICS4EU results should be done through the various departments.

We want to educate our students to think not only about which systems they could build, but whether they should build them in the first place. We need to find ways to encourage informatics students to think about:

    • What are the intended and thinkable unintended consequences of a product or feature?
    • What are the positive consequences we want to focus on?
    • What are the consequences we want to mitigate?

Long-term Goals

  • Create a sustainable European Community of Practice in Informatics ethics
  • Ensure that the importance of teaching ethics in Informatics degree courses is recognized
  • Increase literacy on ethics among Informatics lecturers
  • Increase literacy on ethics among decision-makers (CEOs, policymakers political organizations)

WG Operation

2022 - 2023 Objectives and Related Activities

  • Identify gaps in Informatics lecturers’ knowledge of ethics
  • Better understand the European landscape in relation to teaching practices for Ethics in Informatics and related disciplines
  • Raise awareness about the importance of teaching Ethics to students in Informatics and related disciplines
  • Disseminate best practices in teaching Ethics to Informatics students

Activity 1: Survey - Teaching Practices for Ethics in Informatics

We would like to see if the landscape with respect to teaching ethics in CS and Informatics has moved in the last number of years. To that extent, we would like to elicit knowledge to compare with our findings from the Ethics4EU project in 2019, but also to gain an understanding of how other issues (Covid-19, AI regulations, new AI tools, new legislation) have impacted the status quo.

Activity 2: Community of Practice - Instruction of Ethics

While the launch of the Working Group itself is the seed of our CoP at large, in 2023 we plan to organize a series of online events about the instruction of Ethics.
Invited speakers will on the one hand highlight their experiences of teaching Ethics to students in Informatics, and on the other share industry views and concerns with regard to computing ethics and what skills they want graduates to have in this area.

Activity 3: Best Practice Repository 

Development and dissemination of a repository of open and accessible online curricula, teaching, and assessment resources to support teaching ethics to Informatics and Computer science students.

Would you like to join us in our current diversity initiatives or suggest a new task force to promote and enrich diversity in informatics? Join our Working Group here.

Visit our Ethics webpage to know more about initiatives and outcomes on the topic by the Informatics Europe community.