Tech Ethics: Avoiding Unintended Consequences

Embed ethics into your product development workflow. Explore examples of tech gone wrong—and how to avoid ethical issues in your own projects—in this lighthearted course.

Introduction

• Technology and consequences

1. Tech Ethics: Why Now?

• Unintended consequences: History and overview
• We are all ethicists

2. The Wheel of Misfortune: Eight Major Risk Zones

• Imagining future risk today
• The wheel of misfortune: Eight emerging risk zones
• Risk zone 1: Truth, disinformation, and propaganda
• Risk zone 2: Addiction and the dopamine economy
• Risk zone 3: Economic and asset inequalities
• Risk zone 4: Machine ethics and algorithmic bias
• Risk zone 5: Surveillance state
• Risk zone 6: Data control and monetization
• Risk zone 7: Implicit trust and user understanding
• Risk zone 8: Hateful and criminal actors

3. Actions: The Checklist

• Why use checklists?
• Example checklist
• Customize your checklist

4. Integrations

• Accountability: Making change stick

Conclusion

• Ethical next steps