Overview

The Integrated Ethics initiative uses evidence-backed methods to teach socially-responsible computing to Princeton University's computer science (CS) students. Students are encouraged to clarify their own values, enter into ethical reflection with their fellow engineers and other stakeholders, and use their voice to affect the tech choices made in startups, tech companies, public interest orgs and government.  

Building on the pioneering work in computing ethics by CITP Director Arvind Narayanan – and with the substantial support of CS Chair Szymon Rusinkiewicz – Integrated Ethics was founded to help CS students improve their technical skills and put them to use for a better society.  

Students may, for instance, be asked to reflect on the social effects of different technological fixes to a problem. They may be introduced to competing explanations of a value like privacy, and be asked to assess a privacy design from multiple perspectives. They may role play as members of a development team, encountering tech choices in a true-to-life scenario exactly as engineers encounter them. They may be asked to do an ethical impact assessment of a class project. Or they might hear lectures on important real-world cases and ethical principles.

The mission of Integrated Ethics is “Better Technologists” – better technically-skilled, and better able to express shared values in their work.

Activities

CITP and the Princeton Council on Science and Technology have made our unique role play system, Agile Ethics, available for the use of college instructors anywhere.

Research on Integrated Ethics

A recent study at Princeton adds to growing evidence that tech-ethics instruction complements students’ technical skill growth, improves students’ awareness of ethical questions in tech development, and helps retain a broader group of students in CS majors/minors. Watch Integrated Ethics lead Steven Kelts present findings that suggest tech-ethics students rely less on intuition and more on reasoning to solve problems; are better able to spot ethical issues and seek stakeholder input on them; and are more aware of the complex corporate environments in which decisions get made. 

Read the research paper here (link coming soon). Special thanks to Google Responsible Innovation for an unrestricted gift supporting this research.

Read a justification of the pedagogy here (link soon).

Complementary Efforts

This program seeks to integrate ethics into each class in the CS curriculum, beginning with introductions to the field.  But standalone courses in the ethics of computing are also necessary.  Integration aims for seamless tie-ins to technical content and project design processes, as well as showing students case studies in the social benefits and potential wrongs of computing applications.  Standalone courses for advanced students focus on how they can utilize their technical skills to produce more of the benefits and fewer of the wrongs.

Learn more about the advanced standalone course: COS 350: Ethics of Computing.

CITP’s minor program – Computing, Society and Policy – seeks to give students with at least a basic understanding of computing (especially ML), the tools to address social problems through their technical work, through policy, or as civil society advocates. (Link coming soon.)

Press

Integrated Ethics was covered by Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: “Learning to use computing skills, ethically.”

The Agile Ethics roleplay system is deployed outside of the classroom, too: “Leveling Up Responsible AI Through Simulations.”

Watch Dr. Kelts give an overview of Integrated Ethics to Princeton’s CS faculty (slides here). And watch Kelts outline the five classroom approaches that make up the evidence-backed core of Integrated Ethics (link coming soon).

People

Contact program lead Steven Kelts at [email protected].

Steven Kelts is a lecturer in Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy and Department of Computer Science. He has been an expert ethics advisor to the Responsible A.I. Institute, and a director for the non-profit All Tech Is Human. Kelts also has led the GradFutures initiative on Ethics of AI for the Princeton Graduate School, with the objective of encouraging Ph.D. candidates in all disciplines to apply their expertise in the field of tech ethics, at universities or in corporations.