In both computing education and the tech industry, we see a common bad habit: Treating ethics as a specialization, or someone else’s job. And these kinds of separations also map onto (often gendered) hierarchies that have long shaped what “counts” as computing and therefore who belongs. This problem seems particularly urgent today as significant ethical issues surrounding artificial intelligence are impacting all of us. And accordingly our definition of “AI literacy” needs a similar reframing: not how to use AI, but how these systems work and what their impacts are. Though AI development suffers from the same representation shortcomings as other parts of the tech industry, a far greater diversity of people can learn enough to be empowered to critique. And that empowerment doesn’t happen by accident — it requires educators, industry professionals, and students to recognize ethics and social impact as shared responsibility and a core competency in the future we’re building.
AI Ethics for Everyone with Casey Fiesler
