PALO ALTO, Calif. — The medical
profession has an ethic: First, do no harm.
Silicon Valley has an ethos: Build it first and ask for
forgiveness later.
Now, in the wake of fake news and other troubles at tech
companies, universities that helped produce some of Silicon
Valley’s top technologists are hustling to bring a more
medicine-like morality to computer science.
This semester, Harvard University and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology are jointly offering a new course on the
ethics and regulation of artificial intelligence. The University
of Texas at Austin just introduced a course titled “Ethical
Foundations of Computer Science” — with the idea of eventually
requiring it for all computer science majors.