Wednesday, May 01, 2019

With Great Code Comes Great Responsibility

Omidyar Network, Mozilla, Schmidt Futures, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies recently announced the winners of the Responsible Computer Science Challenge. The challenge, and grants of up to $150,000, go to universities but the programs might have some use in high schools. Maybe. At some point.

The winners’ proposed curricula are novel: They include in-class role-playing games to explore the impact of technology on society. They embed philosophy experts and social scientists in computer science classes. They feature “red teams” that probe students’ projects for possible negative societal impacts. And they have computer science students partner with local nonprofits and government agencies.

Of course it is wonderful that these universities are integrating ethics into their courses. Society will benefit more as these universities package, promote, and see their programs expanded into other universities. That is the goal of the Responsible Computer Science Challenge. There is a second round of grants with that as the prime goal. It makes sense to develop and test programs before expanding them.

I hope that these institutions will seriously consider helping to adapt these programs, tools, methods, and other resources so that they can be incorporated in high school (maybe even lower grades) in the future.

Responsible Computer Science Challenge banner with logos

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