10.01 | Spring 2020 | Undergraduate

Ethics for Engineers

Readings and Viewings

Buy at Amazon Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins. University of Chicago Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780226026756.

Barbaro, Michael. “The Chinese Surveillance State, Part 1” (New York Times podcast). 6 May 2019.

Bayrasli, Elmira, and Roger McNamee. “Facing Up to Facebook” (Project Syndicate podcast). 26 March 2019.

Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. (1789.)

Bryson, Joanna J. “The future of AI’s impact on society.” MIT Technology Review, 18 December 2019.

Busby, Mattha, and Anthony Cuthbertson. “‘Killer Robots’ Ban Blocked by US and Russia at UN Meeting.” The Independent, 3 September 2018.

Central Intelligence Agency. “Background to ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections’: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution” (PDF - 1.5 MB). 6 January 2017.

Churchill, Winston S. “Mankind is Confronted with One Supreme Task” (PDF). News of the World, 14 November 1937.

Conger, Kate. “Google Plans Not to Renew its Contract for Project Maven.” Gizmodo, 1 June 2018.

Cossins, Daniel. “Discriminating Algorithms: 5 Times AI Showed Prejudice.” New Scientist, 27 April 2018.

Cranach, Lucas (the Elder). “Adam and Eve.” Oil on panel, 1528.

Crawford, Kate. “The Trouble with Bias” (YouTube). Keynote from NIPS 2017. 10 December 2017.

Devlin, Kate. “Sex Robots.” TEDx talk (YouTube). 4 April 2017.

Emerging Technology from the arXiv. “Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill.” MIT Technology Review, 22 October 2015.

European Union External Action. “EU Statement Group of Governmental Experts Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.” Geneva, 27–31 August 2018.

Franklin, Benjamin. “On Freedom of Speech and the Press.” Pennsylvania Gazette, 17 November 1737.

Freedman, David H. “Basic Income: A Sellout of the American Dream.” MIT Technology Review, 13 June 2016.

Future of Life Institute. “Lethal Autonomous Weapons Pledge.”

Garland, Alex. Ex Machina. Film4 / DNA Films, 2014. 

Geneva Conventions of 1949. “Additional Protocol I, Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts.” 8 June 1977.

Goldman, David P. “Inside China’s Plan for Global Supremacy.” Tablet, 19 March 2019.

Grey, C.G.P. “Humans Need Not Apply” (YouTube.) 13 August 2014.

Grush, E. S., and C. S. Saunby. “Fatalities Associated with Crash Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires.” Ford Motor Company memo, 1977.

Hague Convention (IV) on the Law and Custom of War on Land (1907), excerpts (PDF), 18 October 1907.

Hague Convention (VIII) Relative to the Laying of Automatic Submarine Contact Mines, 18 October 1907.

Hamilton, Alexander. The Federalist Papers, #84 (1788).

Hao, Karen. “This Is How Gender Bias Really Happens—and Why It’s So Hard to Fix.” MIT Technology Review, 4 February 2019.

Horowitz, Michael, and Gregory C. Allen, Elsa B. Kania and Paul Scharre. “Strategic Competition in an Era of Artificial Intelligence.” Center for a New American Security, 25 July 2018.

Hughes, Chris. “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook.” New York Times, 9 May 2019.

Human Rights Watch. “Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots.” 19 November 2012.

Jefferson, Thomas. First Inaugural Address. 4 March 1801.

Jordan, Michael I. “Artificial Intelligence—The Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet.” Medium, 19 April 2018.

Kissinger, Henry A. “How the Enlightenment Ends.” The Atlantic, June 2018.

Kissinger, Henry A., Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher. “The Metamorphosis.” The Atlantic, August 2019. 

Konnikova, Maria. “The Limits of Friendship.” The New Yorker, 7 October 2014.

Law Library of Congress, Global Legal Research Directorate. “Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: International and Regional Approaches.” January 2019.

Leonardo da Vinci. Images, notebooks.

Lieber, Francis. General Orders No. 100, “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field.” 24 April 1863 (Union Army’s Law of War Code) VII.119–127. 24 April 1863.

Lin, Patrick. “The Ethical Dilemma of Self-Driving Cars.” TED talk (YouTube). 8 December 2015.

Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government (1690).

Lynch, Jennifer. “Face Off: Law Enforcement Use of Face Recognition Technology.” Electronic Frontier Foundation, 12 February 2018.

Madison, James. Letter to W.T. Barry. 4 August 1822.

Michelangelo Buonarotti. Sistine Chapel paintings (1508–1541).

Møller, Michael. “Secretary-General’s Message to Meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems.” United Nations Secretary-General. 25 March 2019.

Buy at Amazon O’Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Introduction and Chapter 1. Broadway Books, 2017. ISBN: 9780553418835.

Buy at Amazon Plato. The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom. Basic Books, 1991. ASIN: B0040689EY. Book 1: “Thrasymachus,” 336b1–354c3, and Book 2: 357a1–382c5.

Rabkin, Jeremy, and John Yoo. “‘Killer Robots’ Can Make War Less Awful.” Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2017.

Rahwan, Iyad. “What Moral Decisions Should Driverless Cars Make?” TED talk (YouTube). 8 September 2017.

Buy at Amazon Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. First and Second Discourses, trans. Roger D. and Judith R. Masters. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 1969. ISBN: 9780312694401.

Schaub, Diana. “Unfriending Friendship.” Claremont Review of Books, 20 June 2011.

Buy at Amazon Schumpeter, Joseph A. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 3rd edition. HarperCollins, 2008. ISBN: 9780061561610.

Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”).

Shakya, Holly B., and Nicholas A. Christakis. “Association of Facebook Use with Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study.” American Journal of Epidemiology 185(3) (1 February 2017), pp. 203–211.

Tufekci, Zeynep. “It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech.” WIRED, 16 January 2018.

Turing, Alan M. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” Mind, Vol. LIX, Issue 236, 1950, pp. 433–460.

Buy at Amazon Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, 2012. ISBN: 9780465031467.

U.N. News. “Autonomous Weapons That Kill Must Be Banned, Insists UN Chief.” 25 March 2019.

U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School. “Law of Land Warfare” (PDF - 5.9 MB). 1 September 1943, reissued 1 July 1945.

U.S. Constitution, First Amendment (ratified 1791).

U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, Art. 133 (10 USC §933).

Wu, Tim. “Is the First Amendment Obsolete?” Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-573 (2018).

Zuboff, Shoshana. “You Are Now Remotely Controlled.” New York Times op-ed, 24 January 2020.

Zuckerberg, Mark. Address delivered at Georgetown University on free speech (YouTube), 17 October 2019.

Zuckerberg, Mark. “Building Global Community.” Letter to Facebook community, 16 February 2017.