WA04 - Ethical Case Analysis

The reading assignments thus far this semester have focused on ethical reasoning. In this assignment and the next 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, and produce a public facing-blog post that summarizes your analysis.

Assignment

For this assignment you will do the backround work to identify and understand your real-world case study, and perform the ethical analysis of it. In the next assignment you will produce the public-facing blog post that summarizes your analysis.

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 happend.
  • Contain identifiable ethical issues to be analyzed.
  • Be supported by numerious sources that provide sufficent 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 chosoe 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 appropraite real-world case studies:
  • Fictionalized case-studies (e.g. LifeDesign, George and the Jet).
  • General topcis (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 additioanl context for each step as related to this assignment.

1. First, briefly describe the roles (e.g. sofware engineer, manager, lawyer, etc.) of the key decision makders in your case and the decisions that they made. Then, respond to the framework questions for each of those roles and decisions.
2. The answer to this should be yes given the guidance for selecting a case study. If not, you will need to reconsider the case study you selected.
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.
4. No clarification necessary.
5. We know from #1 the specific decisions that have been made by the key decision makers in the case. For each decision that you identified in #1, briefly describe some alternative options that would have been viable at the time the decision was made.
6. Select one of the decisions from #1 and respond to the questions for each of the six lenses using the decision that was made and the alternative options that you identified for that decision in #5. In addition to the 6 lenses listed, also apply the ACM’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct by identifying the most relevant clauses and justifying those choices using language from the Code.
   • It is highly recommended that you read the essays about each lens. These provide clarification and practical easy to grasp examples. These essays are are linked in the Framework for Ethical Decision Making document and also here for convenience.
     • Rights
     • Justice and Fairness
     • Calculating Concequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics
     • The Common Good
     • Ethics and Virtue
     • Care Ethics
   • You might also consider reading the more detailed description of the lenses in Technology and Engineering Practice: Ethical Lenses to Look Through by Shannon Vallor, Irina Raicu, Brian Green.

4. Turn It In

1. Create a COMP492 folder in your Dickinson WiD Repository on GitHub.
2. Place a PDF of your document named WA04-CaseAnalysis.pdf in your COMP492 folder.

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