In the past few years, the term “ethics” has increased in prominence with regard to computer science and related disciplines. It’s everywhere—in New York Times opinion articles, grants from the Mozilla Foundation, and in standards discussion groups at the IEEE. In many ways, this increased prominence tracks growing awareness with the ills of computational disciplines. It responds to privacy scandals at Facebook, flying killer robots assisted by Google, and in technological encroachment described as colonial. In this talk, I describe the state of ethics in computer science, why it matters, who is involved, and what it accomplishes.

Jared Moore is a research fellow at the Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence where he builds tools, writes policy, and forwards ethics. He has a master’s in computer science from the University of Washington where he worked with Richard Anderson on digital financial services and taught a course on computer ethics. He has written for venues like TechCrunch.