Integrating Ethics and Responsibility in the Product Development Cycle
What is the responsibility of the builder in the process of developing new technology products? The question reaches beyond company culture, internal policies, or governmental regulations. Ethical considerations need to be central to the product development lifecycle. The builders of technologies need to raise questions about their potential harm, such as the impact the technology can have on non-users, and the unintended consequences of their product, for example, a social media platform becoming an avenue for misinformation. A shift in approach to consider ethical implications as part of the product development cycle would add value across many areas and industries, ranging from the government through the non-profit sector and academia to consumer tech and consulting.
Kathy Pham is a Fellow and Faculty of Product Management and Society at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a product leader, computer scientist, and founder who has held roles in product management, software engineering, data science, consulting, and leadership in the private, non-profit, and public sectors. She currently also serves as the Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the Federal Trade Commission in the United States, Senior Advisor at the Mozilla Foundation, and Product Advisor at the United States Digital Service. Her expertise lies at the intersection of technology, ethics, and responsibility, with a focus on ethical principles in practice in product management, design, and engineering.
Resources:
equityXdesign: https://courses.equitymeetsdesign.com...
Design Ethically: https://www.designethically.com/
Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble
Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil
Automating Inequality by Virginia Eubanks
Artificial Unintelligence by Meredith Broussard
Technically Wrong by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
Geek Heresy by Kentaro Toyama
Leading Ethically in the Age of AI and Big Data is the product of a grant to Purdue University’s College of Liberal Arts from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. Learn more about the project at https://bit.ly/LeadingEthically. A new Purdue Bachelor of Arts major in Artificial Intelligence will teach students to ask fundamental questions about intelligence and the ethical principles guiding the development of AI. Learn more at https://bit.ly/PurdueAI.
