WA01- Ethical Case Analysis

The reading assignments thus far this semester have focused on ethical reasoning. In this assignment you identify a real-world cases study of interest, perform an ethical analysis of your case study based on the Markkula Center’s Framework for Ethical Decision Making and the ACM’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Then in the next assignment you will produce a public facing-blog post that summarizes your analysis.

AI Use

For this assignment you may use AI tools for brainstorming, clarification questions, as a research assistant, and to analyze your work for gaps and redundancies. However, all text contained in the final submission must be solely your output. It may not be generated, drafted or revised using AI tools. The reasoning here is that this work is an exercise to build up your understanding and facility with ethical reasoning and the facts of your case study. To do that the information must be in your mind, and evidence suggests that using AI to perform writing tasks is particularly susceptible to cognitive surrender cited studies show significantly reduce comprehension and facility with the knowledge:

“A recent study of 26,000 Chinese secondary-school students found that A.I. adoption led to an 18 percent increase in homework scores, but a 20 percent decline in scores on secure exams.”

“One 2025 study out of M.I.T. found that people who used chatbots as writing assistants struggled to remember what they had written only minutes after finishing their essay.”

As such, the evaluation of the written product for this assignment will focus on its content and logical organization rather than on quality of the writing and grammatical minutia.

Assignment

For this assignment you will do the background work to identify and understand your real-world case study, and perform an ethical analysis of it.

This assignment is made up of the following parts.

1. Identify your Real-World Case Study

Identify a real-world ethical case study that is technology related, of interest to you, and distinct from the ones we have read about or discussed in class.

• The case-study you select must:
  • Be a specific event, decision, product or feature created, etc. that was actually happened.
  • Contain identifiable ethical issues to be analyzed.
  • Be supported by numerous sources that provide sufficient information for you to perform an analysis.
• The following are some examples that illustrate the types of cases that would be appropriate. However, you are free to choose your own case.
  • The Google StreetView Case from class.
  • The Flock Safety and Ring’s Search Party Feature
  • ChatGPT’s Theft of Training Data
  • Tesla’s Driving Profiles and the Rolling Stop Feature
• A few examples of topics that would not be appropriate real-world case studies:
  • Fictionalized case-studies (e.g. LifeDesign, George and the Jet).
  • General topics (e.g. AI Power Consumption, Self Driving Cars).

If you have any concerns about whether the case study you are interested in fits the criteria, please discuss it with the instructor.

2. Describe your Case-Study

Create a document that starts with a brief description of the case you have selected. This does not have to be highly polished at this point, but it should help the instructor to understand the case you have selected. Include a list of the links or sources that you have used to learn about the case.

3. Use the Framework

Add to your document by adding responses for the first 6 steps of the Markkula Center’s Framework for Ethical Decision Making. The numbered entries below provide additional context for each step of the framework as related to this assignment.

• Step 1: Briefly identify the key decision makers in your case study.
  • For each decision maker briefly describe:
    • their role (e.g. software engineer, manager, lawyer, etc.).
    • the decision that they had to make. Do not describe the decision that they actually made, instead describe the decision that they had to make (e.g. add or not add feature X, release or not release product Y, increase or decrease transparency, blow the whistle or not, etc.).
  • Select and identify one of the decision makers and the decision that they had to make.
    • You will complete the remaining steps from the perspective of that decision maker.
  • Identify the types of harms that might be caused/increased or avoided/decreased by making the decision. Briefly explain how the decision might caused/increased or avoided/decreased each harm you identify.
    • The Types of Harms examples from class may be a good starting point, but keep in mind that this list is not comprehensive and there may be other types of harms in any given case.
• Step 2: Given the guidance for selecting a case study, the answer to the question posed here should be yes. If not, you will need to reconsider the case study you selected.
  • Identify the specific ways in which the decision is about more than “what is legal” or “what is most efficient.”
    • The Types of Ethical Failings from class may be a good starting point, but keep in mind that this list is not comprehensive and there may be other types of failings in any given case.
• Step 3: Here you will need to do some research. Read a wide range of sources that discuss the case, what lead to it, and what the outcome was (or its current state if it is unresolved). Focus on trying to understand the situation and what the decision makers knew at the time of their decisions. For each useful source provide the URL or citation and a sentence or two describing what it adds to your understanding of the case.
• Step 4: This step is asking you to identify the significant stakeholders.
• Step 5: In Step 1 you selected a specific decisions that had to be made by one of the key decision makers in the case. Briefly describe the decision that was made and several alternative options that would have been viable at the time the decision was made.
• Step 6: respond to the questions for each of the six lenses with respect to decision that was made and at least the most viable alternative option that you identified for that decision in Step 5.
  • Identify at least one lens that seems the most relevant to the decision to be made.
  • Read:
    • the section(s) of Technology and Engineering Practice: Ethical Lenses to Look Through relevant to the lens(es) that you identified.
    • the short essay(s) about the lens(es) that you identified.
      • Rights
      • Justice and Fairness
      • Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics
      • The Common Good
      • Ethics and Virtue
      • Care Ethics
  • Expand and deepen the response you produced for the lens(es) that you identified.

4. Use the ACM Code of Ethics

In addition to the 6 ethical lenses above, examine the case study using the ACM’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Identify the the most relevant clauses from the code and justify their relevance using language from the Code.

Submitting the Assignment

Submit your assignment as follows:

1. Create a PDF of your draft blog post with the filename WA01-Analysis.pdf.
   • Ensure that the links in your document appear and work in the PDF.
     • In Microsoft Word this can be done by using “File” -> “Save as”, choosing “PDF” as the “File Format”, and selecting “Best for electronic distribution and accessibility”.
2. Ensure that your Dickinson WiD Repository on GitHub is well organized.
   • There should be one folder for each course (e.g. COMP132, COMP256, etc…)
   • All content should be stored in the folder for the appropriate course.
3. Create a COMP491 folder in your Dickinson WiD Repository.
4. Place your WA01-Analysis.pdf file in your new COMP491 folder.

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All textual materials used in this course are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

All executable code used in this course is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3 or later