Fostering Responsible Computing Research Foundations and Practices (2022) / Chapter Skim
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4 Conclusions and Recommendations
4 Conclusions and Recommendations
Pages 103-132
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From page 103... ...
(The term "computing research" is used in this report to include research in computer science and engineering, information science, and related fields.) Chapter 2 of this report describes a set of core ethical concepts (Section 2.1)
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From page 105... ...
Recommendation 4 complements Recommendation 3 by identifying ways computing research institutions along with research sponsors and scientific and professional societies can provide computing researchers with access to scholars and scholarship in ethics and social and behavioral sciences. Recommendations 5 and 6 focus on the two key actors in the computing ecosystem who vet computing research and can assess whether particular efforts adequately address ethical and societal impacts, namely research sponsors and scholarly publishers.
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From page 107... ...
First, as responsible computing research is taken up by other researchers and technology developers and deployers, it will serve as a model for them to be responsible as well. Second, the recommendations for changes in computing education will help ensure that future computing professionals across industry, including those in product groups and leadership and governance positions, not just research, are better equipped to address ethical and societal concerns.
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From page 109... ...
If they do not engage the relevant stakeholders, computing researchers run the risk of building systems that may work for themselves (or their friends and colleagues) but may not perform equally well for other populations including ones not originally targeted by the developer.
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From page 110... ...
Both research sponsors and research institutions should encourage and support the pursuit of such projects. Responsible computing research involves both efforts to mitigate potential harms arising from the use of computing research (preventive)
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From page 111... ...
Such work must, of course, adhere to responsible computing guidelines. • Public–private partnerships that support academic access to industry data in support of responsible computing research objectives.
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From page 113... ...
Universities, scientific and professional societies, and research and education sponsors should support the development of the expertise needed to integrate social and behavioral science and ethical thinking into computing research. Responsible computing research requires that all participants in com puting research possess a broader scope of expertise than is typical of most undergraduate majors or graduate programs.
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From page 115... ...
Existing examples include the minor in Societal and Human Impacts of Future Technologies at Carnegie Mel lon University and the Master's in AI Ethics program at Cambridge University. • Develop incentives -- such as reduced course loads and support for course development -- for faculty in both computer science departments and relevant social and behavioral sciences and humanities departments to collaborate in integrating the teaching of ethics and consideration of societal impact into the computer science curriculum.
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From page 116... ...
Conference organizers, journals, and research sponsors should provide computing researchers with guidelines and training opportunities on the appropriate ways to review ethical and societal issues in papers and proposals. This guidance is particularly critical as researchers are increasingly required (e.g., by conferences and funding programs -- see Recommendations 5.1, 5.3, and 6)
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From page 117... ...
Research sponsors should support the develop ment of techniques and capacity for evaluating the effectiveness of different approaches to enabling researchers to address ethical and societal implications of computing research. The computing research community has not yet been able to establish best prac tices for responsible computing research.
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From page 118... ...
Recommendation 4.2. Scientific and professional societies of comput ing researchers should help their members identify experts whom they can consult when developing proposals and carrying out research 118 FOSTERING RESPONSIBLE COMPUTING RESEARCH
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From page 119... ...
The best way to speed progress is to share best practices and other knowledge as widely as possible throughout the research community. 4.5 INTEGRATE ETHICAL AND SOCIETAL CONSIDERATIONS INTO COMPUTING RESEARCH SPONSORSHIP Recommendation 5.
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From page 120... ...
Implementers of this recommendation can draw on the experiences of recent ex periments with oversight of responsible computing research at the proposal stage. Two recent examples are the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence's Ethics and Society Review board11 and the Microsoft Research Ethics Review Program.12 There are other interesting examples of ethics oversight in the corporate sector that are in service of product development rather than research and are not addressed here.
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From page 121... ...
Recommendation 5.3. Computing research sponsors should require that project reports address ethical and societal issues that arose.
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From page 123... ...
Conferences and journals should include in their evaluation criteria and metrics an assessment of how well a paper ad dresses ethical issues and societal impacts associated with the research, approaches taken by the researchers to mitigate these issues, and potential approaches that future researchers or developers using these results should take to mitigate potential negative impacts. Conclusions and Recommendations 123
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From page 125... ...
Specifically: • Publication venues should consider whether to assign ethics review as a standard reviewer responsibility or to assign ethics review to a separate set of reviewers. • If ethics review is a standard reviewer responsibility, reviewers need to be edu cated about the responsible computing research guidelines adopted by the venue.
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From page 127... ...
Computing researchers who are involved in the de velopment or deployment of systems should adhere to established best practices in the computing community for system design, oversight, and monitoring. Computer science and information science and engineering scholarship along with best practices developed in industry provide a wealth of information about such practices.
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From page 129... ...
Research sponsors, research institutions, and scientific and professional societies should encourage computing re searchers to engage with the public and with the public interest and support them in doing so. Individuals and societies as a whole are often affected by new technologies and would benefit from opportunities to better understand what's going on "under the hood." Note that public engagement (Recommendation 8.1)
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From page 131... ...
As new technologies are developed, some research sponsors may want to fund research on whether and where new regulations may be needed. Importantly, in addition to permitting "good regulation" it helps avoid "bad regulation," including potential stifling of innovation.
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