Ethics, Public Policy, and Technological Change

Syllabus and Reading List, 2022

Rob Reich, Jeremy M. Weinstein, Mehran Sahami (Stanford University)

For more information, feedback, or permissions questions, contact megan11@stanford.edu

This Syllabus is the Reading List for the 2022 cohort of Ethics, Public Policy, and
Technological Change. 2023’s course will include additional emergent topics, including
Political Economy, Generative AI, and the Future of Work.

Course Overview

Our goal is to explore the ethical and social impacts of technological innovation. By integrating
perspectives from computer science, philosophy, and social science, the course will provide
learning experiences that robustly and holistically examine the impact of technology on humans
and societies.

The course will challenge students to think about their roles as enablers and shapers of
technological change in society. Instead of accepting a common view that what others do with
new technologies is their responsibility, students will explore their responsibilities as innovators,
designers, coders, engineers, corporate leaders, policymakers, citizens, and consumers. With
every new innovation, students will ask: What am I enabling others to do? What responsibilities
does this imply for me as an innovator, a citizen, and a human being?

Details and Structure

Our course will meet each Wednesday evening at 5:00PM PST from January 19 to March 2,
2022. The course will be focused on five core topics.

Topic Sub-topics of interest

Algorithmic ● Use of predictive algorithms in public vs. private settings, with

Decision-Making emphasis on the criminal justice system
● Comparative approaches to algorithmic transparency and
accountability (e.g., auditing, technological due process)
● Trade-offs between predictive accuracy and competing values
(e.g., fairness, transparency, explainability)

Data Collection, ● Changing norms and laws around privacy across time and cultures,
Privacy, and Civil including how people balance privacy vs. other goals
Liberties ● Data aggregation, matching, and de-anonymization strategies
● Facial recognition technology (used by public and private actors)
● Consent for different types and uses of data

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 Artificial ● Aggregate and distributional consequences of automation (e.g., on
Intelligence and labor markets, inequality)
Autonomous ● Role of policy in shaping the impact of AI and automation broadly,
Systems as well as specific policy responses (e.g., universal basic income)
● Competitive global landscape of AI development, comparative
approaches to governance, and historical precedents for
responses (e.g., Asilomar conference)

Platforms and the ● Transition from an analog to a digital public sphere, with
Public Sphere speech and associational rights regulated by companies;
virality over veracity in online discourse; tensions between
quantity and quality of information; implications for democracy
● Business model concerns, including new conceptions of
monopoly and market power of digital platforms, as well as
government efforts to promote market competition (e.g.,
antitrust regulation)
● Technology behind efforts to regulate speech in online
communities, including content moderation practices (e.g.,
banning/deleting speech, upranking/downranking content),
frontiers/innovations in speech regulation
● Comparative analysis of how global platforms operate in
diverse communities with different speech traditions and politics

Technology, ● Issues of diversity and culture within the tech industry—who is

Inclusion, and represented at these companies and for whom are they creating
Inequality products and services
● Who is included in the prosperity created by tech companies and
who is not (i.e., gentrification, gig workers)
● How tech and its specific business models are prone to market
concentration and exacerbate U.S. economic inequality
● Tech worker-led organizing to create change

Sessions will be kicked off by our team of instructors, and, at times, feature distinguished guest
speakers from the tech industry and beyond. After an opening provocation and discussion with
the faculty, you will be broken out into cohorts with discussions led by cohort leaders who have
taken and helped teach the course in past years. You will be assigned to a cohort before the
first session and remain in that cohort for the duration of the class.

Preparing for Class

Please come to each class prepared to engage in interactive discussion of the course readings
and topics. All participants should come with considered views about: what the main claims
offered in the texts or case studies are; the arguments offered in favor of these claims; whether

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these are good or plausible arguments; what alternatives to the claims and arguments exist; and
whether some alternative is superior to the claim under discussion.

Capstone Project
In addition to course readings and participation, there will be a project during the final weeks of
the class to help you apply your learning in the course to ethical questions you are facing in your
roles today. We will share more information about this in mid-February.

Reading List

January 19: Opening Session

● "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. LeGuin

January 26: Algorithmic Decision-Making and Accountability

● Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and
Threatens Democracy, Introduction and Chapter 1 (Crown Publishing Group, 2016)
● Stanford Case Study: Algorithmic Decision-Making and Accountability
● “A Guide to Solving Social Problems with Machine Learning" by Jon Kleinberg, Jens
Ludwig, Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard Business Review, 2016)

February 2: Privacy and Digital Civil Liberties

● “I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy by Daniel Solove
(San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, p. 745, 2007)
● "Privacy and human behavior in the age of information” by Alessandro Acquisti, Laura
Brandimarte, and George Loewenstein (Science, 2015)
● "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It," NY Times (2019)
● “What is Differential Privacy?” by Matthew Green (A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic
Engineering, 2016)

February 9: AI and Autonomous Systems

● “Artificial Intelligence, Automation and Work” by Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo,
pp. 1-15 (NBER, 2018)
● "Automation in Everyday Life" by Aaron Smith and Monica Anderson, pp. 1-10, skim 17-
38 (Pew Research Center, 2017)
● “A Basic Income for All” by Philippe Van Parijs (Boston Review, 2000)

February 16: Platforms and the Public Sphere

● Chapter 2 of On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (republished by Heterodox Academy, 2019)
● “A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace” by John Perry Barlow (1996)
● “Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump,” Statement by Twitter (2021)
● “Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler, an App That Drew Trump Supporters,” New
York Times (2021)

February 23: Technology, Inclusion, and Inequality

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 ● Tech Leavers Study (supported by Kapor Center for Social Impact and Ford Foundation)
● “We’re the Organizers of the Google Walkout. Here Are Our Demands” by Claire
Stapleton, Tanuja Gupta, Meredith Whittaker, Celie O'Neil-Hart, Stephanie Parker, Erica
Anderson, and Amr Gaber (The Cut, 2018)
● “When Does Activism Become Powerful?” by Hahrie Han (New York Times, 2019)

March 2: Conclusion
● “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” by N.K. Jemisin (2018)