Computing Ethics Case Study

Throughout the semester, you will iteratively develop a fictional case study examining an ethical issue in computing. This assignment will consist of multiple parts that will build on each other, bringing together ethical frameworks and codes of ethics, relevant laws and regulations, and your own personal values. Along the way, you will give and receive peer feedback. At the end of this assignment, your final task is to make a set of policy recommendations for addressing the underlying issue that you have raised.

All parts of this assignment are to be done as your own writing. You may not use generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT) to develop your ideas or to automate the writing process. You may only use these tools to assist with improving your existing narrative, such as asking the tool to rephrase a small portion to adjust the tone or to improve clarity. Any such use must be explicitly documented in your submission, including the prompts used and other input provided.

Part One: Case Study Proposal

In this first phase, you will select a topic or issue to address in your case study. You are encouraged to be creative here and explore a topic that reflects your interests. As some examples to get you started, consider the following scenarios:

While working as a volunteer at a local polling precinct, Sarah discovers that the electronic voting machines are connected using an unsecured Wi-Fi network.
As a paid contractor doing content moderation for a social media company, Jake encounters sexually explicit images of an adult user and someone who appears to be a pre-teen adolescent.
While employed as a developer for an AI startup, Pedro uses his laptop on a personal project to train a model that can detect fraudulent cryptocurrency transactions.
As an intern for a non-governmental organization (NGO) that provides medical care to impoverished communities, Jillian builds a facial recognition tool using public social media feeds to identify individuals at risk of acquiring or spreading HIV.

Your deliverable for this phase must contain the following:

A 2-3 paragraph fictional narrative that describes the context, including the technology involved, the individuals, and the dilemma faced. Be creative and try to make your narrative compelling!
A short (250 words maximum) description of how you plan to analyze this scenario. This description should address the following considerations:
- What stakeholders are involved and who might be affected beyond those immediately discussed in the narrative?
- What ethical frameworks or principles from ethical codes are you considering? (Note that while the ACM Code is encouraged and likely helpful, you might research codes of ethics from other relevant professions, such as medicine or law.)
- Which of your personal values are impacted and how do they bias your view of the issue?
- What other perspectives will you need to address? How could someone else view the situation differently?

At this stage, you do not need to do the full analysis and prescribe any action that needs to be taken. This initial draft is focused more on identifying the issues and what needs to be considered to make a recommendation.

Part Two: Case Study Draft

For this phase, you will revise and expand on your previous submission for additional feedback. While this may involve revising your fictional narrative, most of the work will be to draft a full analysis of the situation. Building on the description from above, your aim is to identify and prioritize the stakeholders, explain the actor(s) obligations and possible actions, describe the most relevant ethical principles and limitations of their choices, and make a recommendation of how they should deal with the situation. While you are not required to use it, the Proactive CARE for Computing Professionals approach offers additional questions that you may consider addressing.

For this phase, you will submit an anonymized document that will be used for peer review. After the submissions are received, you will be randomly assigned two case narratives to review. You will provide anonymous feedback to both authors that they will incorporate into their final draft. You will be given a text document with specific prompts and guidance on this peer review, addressing aspects such as the quality of the scenario narrative, the clarity of the argument, and a judgment regarding the recommendation.

Note that completing the peer review is required to receive credit for this part.

Part Three: Case Study Recommendations

In this final stage, you will start by incorporating the feedback that you received in part two. In addition to revising the narrative and/or the analysis, you will include a brief statement (ideally, one paragraph) describing how you have incorporated their feedback. Note that you are not required to agree with your peers; you may use this statement to explain why you did not use specific recommendations.

In addition to revising your case study, you may draft a brief policy proposal addressing the underlying issue. Specifically, you will start with something like the ACM Code, § 230, GDPR, or the AI Act, and define 5-10 specific principles that should be followed for similar situations. Each principle should be very terse (such as "Respect the autonomy of users") and followed by a sentence or two of what this principle means in relation to this specific context. (Note that "specific context" means something "hate speech in microblogging platforms," not "Alvin used the racial slur '****' on this particular date.")

The policy proposal is required in order to earn a grade of A or B on this project. (Including a proposal is necessary but not sufficient.)

Submission and Grading

This project will be graded based on a holistic specification using the following criteria:

A requirements

The fictional narrative is compelling and raises an interesting moral dilemma.
The analysis is well-written and grounded in existing ethical frameworks and literature.
The peer review feedback was fair and helpful, demonstrating a good-faith engagement with the case.
The policy recommendations are sound, integrating and building on existing literature.

B requirements

All components are completed, though one or more of the elements do not meet the quality specified for an A. This could include (but is not limited to):

The fictional narrative raises only minor dilemma that does not require in-depth analysis.
The analysis does not integrate multiple perspectives or frameworks.
The peer review feedback did not provide specific guidance or new considerations for the author(s).
The analysis and/or policy recommendations demonstrated errors or a lack of understanding of prior work.

C requirements

The work generally meets the B requirements, but the peer review feedback and/or policy recommendations were missing. A grade of C may also be given for submissions that contain a superficial case or analysis that fails to demonstrate critical engagement with the issues.

You will be granted a total of three (3) late days for the project. You may use all of these late days at once (e.g., Part One is late but the other Parts are on time) or spread out (e.g., each Part is submitted one day late). Parts submitted after these late days will be considered missing and will result in an automatic letter grade deduction in addition to the evaluation based on the rubric above.