A chatbot becomes hostile. A test version of a Roomba vacuum cleaner collects images of users in private situations. A black woman is wrongly identified as a suspect based on facial recognition software, which is typically less accurate at identifying women and people of color.
These incidents are not just disruptions, but examples of more fundamental problems. As artificial intelligence and machine learning tools become more integrated into everyday life, ethical considerations increase, from privacy concerns and racial and gender bias in coding to the spread of misinformation.
The general public depends on software engineers and computer scientists to ensure that these technologies are created in a safe and ethical manner. As a sociologist and doctoral candidate interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, we are currently investigating how engineers in many different fields learn and understand their responsibilities to the public.
Yet our recent research, as well as that of other scientists, points to a troubling reality: the next generation of engineers often seems unprepared to grapple with the social implications of their work. Moreover, some seem apathetic about the moral dilemmas their careers may pose – just as advances in AI are exacerbating such dilemmas.
Conscious, but unprepared
As part of our ongoing research, we interviewed more than 60 electrical engineering and computer science master’s students at a top engineering program in the United States. We asked students about their experiences with ethical challenges in technology, their knowledge of ethical dilemmas in the field and how they would respond to scenarios in the future.
First, the good news: Most students recognized the potential dangers of AI and expressed concerns about personal privacy and its potential to cause harm – such as the way biases about race and gender can be written into algorithms, intentionally or unintentionally .
For example, one student expressed dismay at AI’s environmental impact, saying that AI companies are “using more and more greenhouse gases, [for] minimal benefits.” Others discussed concerns about where and how AI is being applied, including for military technology and to generate falsified information and images.
However, when asked, “Do you feel equipped to respond in concerning or unethical situations?” Students often said no.
“Outright no. … It’s kind of scary,” one student responded. “Do YOU know who I should go to?”
Another was concerned about the lack of training: “I [would be] dealing with this without experience. … Who knows how I will react.”
Other researchers have also found that many engineering students are unhappy with the ethics training they receive. Joint training tends to emphasize professional codes of conduct, rather than the complex socio-technical factors underlying ethical decision-making. Research shows that engineering students, even when presented with certain scenarios or case studies, often have difficulty recognizing ethical dilemmas.
‘A box to tick’
Accredited engineering programs are required to “include topics related to professional and ethical responsibilities” in some capacity.
Yet ethics training is rarely emphasized in formal curricula. A study assessing undergraduate STEM curricula in the US found that coverage of ethical issues varied widely in content, amount, and how seriously it was presented. Furthermore, an analysis of the academic literature on engineering education found that ethics is often considered non-essential training.
Many engineering faculty are dissatisfied with student understanding, but report feeling pressure from engineering colleagues and students themselves to prioritize technical skills in their limited class time.
Researchers in a 2018 study interviewed more than fifty engineering faculty and documented the reluctance—and sometimes outright resistance—to including public welfare issues in their engineering classes. More than a quarter of the professors they interviewed regarded ethics and social impact as something outside ‘real’ engineering work.
About a third of the students we interviewed in our ongoing research project share this apparent apathy toward ethics training, calling ethics classes “just a box to check.”
“Paying money to take an ethics course as an engineer makes me furious,” one person said.
These attitudes sometimes extend to the way students view the role of engineers in society. For example, one interviewee in our current study said that an engineer’s “responsibility is just to create that thing, design that thing and… tell people how to use it. [Misusage] issues are not their concern.”
One of us, Erin Cech, followed a cohort of 326 engineering students from four American colleges. This research, published in 2014, suggested that engineers actually became less concerned about their ethical responsibilities and understanding the public impacts of technology over the course of their studies. When we followed them after they left college, we found that their concerns about ethics did not recur when these new graduates entered the job market.
Participate in the working world
If engineers get ethical training as part of their studies, it seems to work.
Together with engineering professor Cynthia Finelli, we conducted a survey among more than 500 employed engineers. Engineers who receive formal training in ethics and public welfare in school are more likely to understand their responsibility to the public in their professional role and recognize the need for collective problem solving. Compared to engineers who received no training, they were 30% more likely to have noticed an ethical problem in their workplace and 52% more likely to have taken action.
More than a quarter of these practicing engineers reported that they had faced an ethical situation of concern at work. Yet about a third say they have never received training in public welfare – neither during their education nor during their career.
This gap in ethics education raises serious questions about how well prepared the next generation of engineers will be to navigate the complex ethical landscape of their field, especially when it comes to AI.
It’s fair to say that the burden of looking after the public’s well-being doesn’t fall solely on the shoulders of engineers, designers and programmers. Companies and legislators share the responsibility.
But the people who design, test and refine this technology are the public’s first line of defense. We believe that education programs owe it to them – and the rest of us – to take this training seriously.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit organization providing facts and trusted analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Elana Goldenkoff, University of Michigan and Erin A. Cech, University of Michigan
Read more:
Elana Goldenkoff receives funding from the National Science Foundation and Schmidt Futures.
Erin A. Cech receives funding from the National Science Foundation.