I want to live in the world I want to live in is I want the technologists who are designing these technologies to get smarter and more responsible. I want the technologies and their businesses to be more transparent.
Right. And I want us to, to not just assume that the shiny new thing has is only good is only gold.
Thanks.
So the next question is back to the education piece it says that from a moral issues, it's evident that we need to educate students to be savvy of these negative consequences of technology and target, way beyond STEM students.
Can you share it. Can you share with us your thoughts on how do we do that effectively. There are already many ethics and Ei minors concentrations in various University, but one issue, we see is that there is no real jobs with the students could go.
So, you know, when I was at the Federal Trade Commission, I started on a journey that alongside many other foundations like the Ford Foundation that MacArthur Foundation New America and so forth.
To enter the town. Well, let me actually add to the question I think you'll appreciate it. So, what I saw at the FTC. I'm like, Oh my god, we've got the FTC is kind of the police department of the internet because it's responsible for deceptive add practices
and, and so forth. And the most of the tech companies are American company so we became kind of the de facto Police Department of the internet. And one of the things that's interesting is how all of these investigators and people that we have at the FTC
don't really have a way of doing their job, and the technological lens, so I set up a lab, I hired people to work in the lab, and we started doing these kinds of experiments and these kinds of tool building inside of the FCC, it was very powerful.
It was amazing. It was just exciting. So the question was how do we do this on steroids so one day the chairwoman says, I like a bureau of you guys, I need I need, I could take 100 100 technologists, and you realize, but we don't teach anyone to do that.
Right, that even if she were to hire tomorrow, that there's no one who's actually doing that task.
And so that started a path that we've been on, you know, called public interest technology. And part of that public interest technology Since that time we've collectively worked to put people in Congress up Sorry guys, to put to put a technologist in
Congress so that they can, as advisors, and we're it right now there are about 60 schools and the public interest Tech University network aimed at trying to train students to do this kind of work is sort of public interest technology work.
And I would encourage you know, there's still a lot of development and thoughts to go into what it all means and what the curricula might look like and so forth.
And it may be there. If there are 60 schools or 60 visions of that.
And that's just a natural thing at this point but I would encourage, it would be great to get more and more people involved in that.
Yeah, so I think that's good to know.
And again the next question is kind of building upon that in the sense that you know the student projects work that you've, you know where you took 36 students create so the question is, you know, that are.
Great. So the question is, you know, that are. If you want to teach more of our students that, how do we scale these projects.
I couldn't ask for a better question. So we just, we started a new project at Tech studies.net, I'll give it a big shout out text studies done that. And so the idea is instead of me.
And so the idea is instead of me. Instead of me starting a class where I have a portfolio of like 10 of these projects and give them to students and they start working on them. Instead I teach the students to spot these issues and identify interesting
projects that could really have the same kind of impact. And then they write up this plan we call them a study plan.
And so, we now have about 100 of these that are very timely, the same kind of impact and so forth. and we're making them available to teachers and schools around the country.
And we have some resources to help you if you wanted to use them. So if you're interested, you should sign up at Tech studies.net. And then the next generation won't be me saying it will be some group of us all saying it together about where it goes.
Okay, thanks.
So another related question was there unites, and this one is that you say that help helping the helpers is fantastic regularly but I regularly find that technology folks or whosoever involved do not know about history.
So the question is, you know, do we need to regularly hear from the humanities or in general you know what all disciplines, do you think should be involved in some of these educational efforts and, and what context, should you place.
Yeah, this is a fantastic question because I have had the luxury of going where the problem is. And yanking whatever I needed from disciplines that had some light to share the classes that I teach, we get students from all kinds of disciplines.
And one of the things that's been interesting is, students even from the history of science have done some amazing work. And, of course, students from computer science have done amazing and everybody in between has done some some some really noteworthy
things. And so as a result of that I've come away learning that the problem that if you have 100 problems like the ones I described, you can cherry pick which ones, what your disciplinary knowledge is, is best to serve.
So if you're on the, on the issues, adding this technology in the marketplace, how do we help the helpers, then that's a way to think about doing it. If it's early on and you're in the design stage of development stage or the students are thinking of
ideas, then actually taking time to think about what's our risk assessment, where are the what are going to be the stakeholder concerns that this could go wrong, and actually engaging the developers with that knowledge is really important.
So, that's a way to bring other disciplines into the conversation as relevant to the technology that you're building at the end of the day, the developer the designer.
The inventor has to be able to incorporate it.
Thank you, switch gears a little bit so the next question is by Alex, for instance, he says, in most system privacy seems to be an afterthought, would you encourage developers to think about privacy of a product at design time.
Do we have enough tools to enable privacy by design techniques, and to anticipate privacy issues early on. So again the general question is that from the systems that you been looking at what would your advice if you were to develop them from scratch
you know how do you sort of take privacy into account as a first principles.
Yeah, if I pulled in a technology and privacy could be an issue. Almost every time you ever think about it a little change in the design can offset the privacy issue.
And sometimes it can't, which means I have to do a lot more work, but the kind of knobs that you have when you're building it in are far better both from the utility standpoint of the technology that comes out, and the little things that can be done,
That will have that big impact are much easier to do during the development and design stage it gets baked in.
And that's the spirit of privacy by design but privacy by design itself is a set of principles. And so if you go to the principles you'll just do the checkoff list and that's not what I mean when I say that you really want to understand what's the concern
with this technology and the concern that's most likely to occur and be the most adverse is the society is the one I need to solve in design. Those are I think those are one of the best ways to go to go forward and thinking about it.
So, just say, I would just say, because if you just think about it for a minute, a mute button, or a camcorder.
Less than a fraction of a penny, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah that's that's an excellent example.
So you know you talked about you know how where the jobs are and how do you so so this is a related question is, says that sounds like the big need of computer science, there is a big need for computer scientists and technologies technologies to support
the regulatory agencies, particularly at the federal level.
As scientists, engineers how best can we support this given the disparity between tech and government salaries.
Yeah, exactly. I still feel that pain.
I mean we have been successful at setting up some digital service initiatives. Digital Service initiatives, often will allow you to offset like your student loans and things like that if you work in the digital service program.
You know, we don't have a lot of them.
So, so that might be a direction as people go forward to offset it, but you know one of the things that's kind of amazed me is the popularity of my say the students how my classes to save the world classes, and, and, over time, what i what i see our students,
choosing to come to those classes because they want a different path that they feel an obligation and a calling. And that's a pretty powerful.
it that becomes a pretty powerful option to so that it may, it may be that there are a diff, they just feel like they're a different group of students than the students that I was getting earlier on who were interested in societal issues interested in
making sure their inventions didn't cause harm, but as opposed to students who are passionate about making sure Technology and Society are harmonized.
Thanks.
So I know you've worked with many different research groups and you give several examples of, you know, people surfacing certain problems. So this question by, Olivia Lee is.
Have there been any work on whether more diverse research groups tend to do a better job of recognizing the potential technology bias in what they develop.
So, yeah, so rather diverse research groups are better in surfacing these are understanding these biases.
So, so I just tell you straight up I'm at Harvard. When I was at Harvard decades earlier. You know, I was a black female among the sea of white guys, if you walk into a classroom at Harvard today, you feel like you walked into the United Nations.
They literally have cherry pick people from around the world all different walks of life all different income levels, and so forth just bringing students together, who are among the best and brightest and it has totally changed the fabric of the school,
it changes the classroom, it changes how we can engage it changes what we engage in. It's just it's, it's just amazing. It's just really a fantastic, and as a result the students who come out.
They really are citizens of the world they're scholars of the world that they're learning things that we don't that are intangible in terms of our curriculum, but still as a part of who they are as they go out.
That's also true in a technology development company, it's also true in any other group, the more diverse the group. And this has nothing to do with skill set.
This is just, you know, you want the skill set that you need to do the job. But having more different voices will make for a richer experience period.
Sometimes it will expose to opportunities and concerns and issues that you that we were all bias we you know we only, we only have so much brain capacity we only have so much focus attention.
You know, they're just things that we don't think about, and sometimes those people will surface those things, but that's not why they're there, they're there to enrich the entire experience to broaden and make the product and the and the work environment
that much better, because then the product is more product of the world.
I don't, I wouldn't want to say that Gee, if I have, you know, one black one Asian one light next, and so forth, that somehow my product is going to be okay for blacks right and that's because that's not going to get you there you need some of these other
tools to get there that's not my that's about it. Thank you. And all the running towards the end of time and there are many many questions I'm going to pick some of them.
and so this one is
somewhat related to NSF so it says how do you see NSF programs addressing the concerns that you have discussed, and what suggestions do you have moving forward.
Well, you know, first of all, as you look over the arc of the decades, you see an evolution constantly at NSF moving towards trying to figure out how to play in these spaces.
Every time these issues surface. you see movement in SF.
And, you know, so in itself is working with disciplinary knowledge, which is sort of the and I've talked about cross disciplinary endeavors. Right. And so I think the ability for NSF to help Shepherd, things like public interest technology would be a
phenomenal great way to start, or to go from here. It's not that NSF doesn't already have initiatives like that they do.
But let's be honest, you know, in the, in the academy.
You know, we're trying to build disciplinary silos, what I've been talking about is cross disciplinary work. These are always going to be massive challenges for this, for the Academy.
And so to the extent that National Science Foundation can help massage that I think what society and academia will be better served for it.