How to Teach Data Ethics

Computer scientists now sit in corporate boardrooms, and their decisions fundamentally affect the workings of our society. Scandals in recent years over the misuse of data have increased calls for the inclusion of ethics in the training of computer scientists.

This interactive talk from Miranda Mowbray will give suggestions for content and teaching style for a course on ethics for computer science students. In addition to the educational literature and the design of previous courses on this topic, she will draw on her personal experiences as a practitioner in the high-tech industry. Miranda suggests an approach that is practical: teach practices to students that will assist them in handling the ethical dilemmas that they will encounter in their subsequent industrial careers.

Miranda Mowbray is a lecturer at the University of Bristol, and a co-Investigator for a new PhD programme in Interactive AI. Her research interests include machine learning for cyber security, and ethics for big data. She spent most of her career in industrial research, at Hewlett Packard Labs. She has been involved in the design of ethical codes of practice for data analysis for both governmental and industrial organizations.

Lunch will be provided.