Ethics4EU Event
Informatics Europe as partner in the Erasmus+ Project Ethics4 EU - Ethical Computer Science Education for Europe organized online an Ethics4EU Event on 22 April 2021, 09:00-12:00 CEST, with the main theme "Dealing with the Complexities of Teaching Ethics to Future Computing Professionals". The event was free of charge and held via Zoom. It included prominent speakers and a discussion panel including experts in Ethics, academics, and professionals working in areas, roles or projects where ethical or legal aspects take central stage.
The digital ethical landscape is changing at an astonishing rate, as technologies become more complex, and people choose to interact with them in new and distinct ways. It is vitally important that creators and developers of these technologies do not live in an ethical vacuum, that they think, instead, about the impact, uses and abuses of their creations, and take some measure to prevent others being harmed by their work. To equip them with the knowledge to rise to this challenge and create a positive future for the use of technology, it is important that Ethics becomes integral part of Computer Science higher education across Europe.
With regard to Ethics and Social Responsibility there is a very wide range of issues that can be explored including concerns about privacy and agency of personal information, digital literacy, big data including governance and accountability, the dominance of a small number of large network platforms, pervasive technology, the Internet of Things and surveillance applications, Artificial Intelligence and algorithmic decision and automating intelligence for robotics or autonomous vehicles. Crucially digital ethics, not only in terms of hardware and software, but how systems, people, organisations and society interact with technology, needs to be a part of the foundations and the work practices of current and future ICT professionals.
Informatics Europe, on 22 April 2021 (09:00-12:00 CEST), organized online an event with the main theme "Dealing with the Complexities of Teaching Ethics to Future Computing Professionals" within the Ethics4EU project. The main goals of the event were to disseminate and create awareness about the core issues addressed by the project, as well as to foster a networking of people working or interested in the topics mentioned above. The event included keynote speakers and a discussion panel including experts in Ethics, academics, and professionals working in areas, roles or projects where ethical or legal aspects are central or highly relevant.
The event was chaired by Professor Viola Schiaffonati from Politecnico di Milano, Italy and involved all partners of the project.
Program
9:00-09:05 - Welcome
09:05-09:40 - "The Ethics4EU Project: An Overview" - Dympna O'Sullivan, TU Dublin, Ireland - 20 min Talk followed by 15 min Q&A
09:40-10:20 -"Striving for Interdisciplinarity: On Evolving Roles and Finding Common Ground in Digital Health" - Julia Amann, Health Ethics and Policy Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland - 20 min Talk followed by 15 min Q&A
10:20 - 10:50 - Break
10:50 - 11:55 - Discussion Panel on "Dealing with the Complexities of Teaching Ethics to Future Computing Professionals"
Chair: Viola Schiaffonati, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Panellists:
- Andrea Curley, TU Dublin, Ireland
- Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Mälardalen University & Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
- J. Paul Gibson, Télécom SudParis, Institute Mines-Télécom, France
- Damian Gordon, TU Dublin, Ireland
11:55 - 12:00 - Conclusion
Speakers
Julia Amann
Health Ethics and Policy Lab, ETH Zurich
Dympna O'Sullivan
School of Computer Science, TU Dublin
Viola Schiaffonati
Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano
About Ethics4EU Project
The Ethics4EU project aims at creating open source, widely used concrete resources for the teaching of Ethics in Computer Science higher education programmes across Europe. Digital Ethics deals with the impact of Digital Information and Communication Technologies on our societies and the environment at large. It encompasses a range of issues and concerns from privacy and agency around personal information, digital literacy, big data including governance and accountability, the dominance of a small number of large network platforms, pervasive technology, the Internet of Things and surveillance applications, Artificial Intelligence and algorithmic decision making including the fairness, accountability, and transparency of those automated decisions, and automating human intelligence for robotics or autonomous vehicles. Importantly, it is not only about hardware and software, but it also concerns systems and how people, organizations, society and technology interact.
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