-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: [DigHum Lecture Series] Next talk on February 21: Tina Peterson “Abstracted power and responsibility” Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2023 12:50:02 +0100 From: Enrico Nardelli <nardelli@mat.uniroma2.it> Organization: Universita' di Roma "Tor Vergata" (apologies for cross posting)

We are pleased to invite you to the next talk in our Lecture Series:

Date and time: *Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 5:00 p.m.* (17:00) Central European Summer Time (UTC+2)

Topic: *“Abstracted power and responsibility”* (scroll down for abstract and CV)

Speaker: *Tina Peterson* (University of Texas, Austin) Moderator: *Carlo Ghezzi* (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

To participate via *Zoom* go to: https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/96389928143?pwd=UU5YRkNuRmdoWHV4MFBwMWRCcUErdz09 <http://xuxss.mjt.lu/lnk/AUUAAAxb4NQAAAAg2JQAAAHQYFAAAAAARcEAADJzABG7CQBj5Sz0...>

(Password: 0dzqxqiy)

The talk will be live streamed and recorded on our *YouTube* channel: https://www.youtube.com/digitalhumanism <http://xuxss.mjt.lu/lnk/AUUAAAxb4NQAAAAg2JQAAAHQYFAAAAAARcEAADJzABG7CQBj5Sz0...>

For further announcements and information about the speakers in the Lecture Series, see https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at/news-events <http://xuxss.mjt.lu/lnk/AUUAAAxb4NQAAAAg2JQAAAHQYFAAAAAARcEAADJzABG7CQBj5Sz0...> Please note that you can access the slides and recordings of our past events via that link.

Upcoming talks: *March 07, 2023* at 5:00 p.m for *“Seize the Means of Computation”* Speaker: *Cory Doctorow* (craphound.com) Moderator: *Allison Stanger* (Middlebury College, USA) *March 09, 2023* at 5:00 p.m Speaker: *Gerry Marcus* (garymarcus.com)

We are pleased to announce that the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt) <https://bidt.digital>, an Institute within the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, is a cooperation partner for DigHum Lecture Series.

We are looking forward to seeing you!

Hannes Werthner ----- Sign the Vienna Manifesto: https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at Follow us on Twitter @DigHumTUWien <https://twitter.com/dighumtuwien> -----

*ABSTRACT:*

Technology often serves as a lever to extend and amplify our power. It is increasingly possible in the 21st century to make decisions that have profound impacts on people thousands of miles away from us. As it extends our reach geographically and culturally, this long arm of technology can also distance us perceptually from impacts of our decisions and make the consequences easier to ignore. We call the outcome of this phenomenon ‘abstracted power,’ and identify it as an important obstacle to overcome as we promote social responsibility in engineering education. Our work is with computer science students, but abstracted power could apply to any engineering field and indeed may find traction beyond those disciplinary boundaries. In this interactive talk I will introduce the concept of abstracted power and the highlights of a paper my colleagues Rodrigo Ferreira and Moshe Vardi and I recently published on the subject. Next I will describe how I have used this concept in my computer science ethics classes and share some students’ observations of this phenomenon in the ‘real world.’ I will then invite members of the audience to share their thoughts on this concept in the context of their own disciplines. Finally I will talk about ways to un-abstract power and make computer scientists and others feel a greater sense of personal responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

*Short Bio of Tina Peterson:*

Tina L. Peterson is an assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on ethics and social responsibility in computer science, including AI and robotics. She is senior personnel on a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship program, The Convergent, Responsible, and Ethical AI Training Experience (CREATE) for Roboticists. She received the B.Sc. degree in Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder, in 2000, the M.A. degree in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies from the University of Nottingham, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree in Mass Media and Communication from Temple University, in 2012. In addition to teaching and research, she is the author of the children’s book ‘Oscar and the Amazing Gravity Repellent’ (Capstone, 2015).

*Short Bio of Carlo Ghezzi:*

Carlo Ghezzi is an Emeritus Professor at Politecnico di Milano, where he has been teaching and doing research for over 40 years. He is an ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, member of Academia Europaea, and member of the Italian Academy of Sciences (Istituto Lombardo). He received the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award. He has been President of Informatics Europe. He has done research on programming languages and software engineering. He has published over 200 papers in international journals and conferences and co-authored 6 books. He is interested in the ethical implications of research in computer science. He is currently chairing the Ethics Committee at Politecnico di Milano.

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-- -- EN https://www.hoepli.it/libro/la-rivoluzione-informatica/9788896069516.html ====================================================== Prof. Enrico Nardelli Presidente di "Informatics Europe" Direttore del Laboratorio Nazionale "Informatica e Scuola" del CINI Dipartimento di Matematica - Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" Via della Ricerca Scientifica snc - 00133 Roma home page: https://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~nardelli blog: https://link-and-think.blogspot.it/ tel: +39 06 7259.4204 fax: +39 06 7259.4699 mobile: +39 335 590.2331 e-mail: nardelli@mat.uniroma2.it online meeting: https://blue.meet.garr.it/b/enr-y7f-t0q-ont ====================================================== --