FW-HTF-P: Assessing the profession of ethical technology for the future of tech work

在过去五年的所谓“技术冲击”中，越来越多的科技公司和公共部门的工作场所迫使它们雇佣有能力应对道德挑战的员工。这些挑战包括解决有偏见的技术系统、对隐私的威胁、日益严重的信息可信度危机以及就业中的排他性不平等。因此，现在出现了一种新型技术专家的愿景，他们有能力解决伦理和公平问题，并朝着我们称为“伦理技术”的职业迈进。这一职业构成了最重要、增长最快的就业领域之一。科技公司已经创造了数千个工作岗位，他们的头衔包括“道德黑客”、“数据道德和诚信协调员”和“道德官”。然而，关于这些新的“道德技术专家”履行这些角色所需的技能、培训和知识，或者如何为这些劳动力配备使他们能够成功的背景，几乎没有数据或现有的理解。本项目旨在了解伦理技术作为一种新兴职业的范围和特点，并探讨伦理技术工作的未来。该项目进一步寻求利用这一理解，以便为STEM和人文教育创造一种新的方法。这样的理解将提高工作者在这些角色中的效率，并影响大学为这一新职业培养学生的方式。该项目是围绕一系列补充活动构建的。首先，该项目将探索伦理技术作为一种职业和未来工作的组织概念，并评估伦理技术员在工作场所的职能。该项目还将确定伦理技术工作列表中的关键术语，并探索构成这些列表中需求的职业的关键组成部分。该小组还将召集来自私营部门、公共利益技术和教育的利益相关者，根据调查结果制定伦理技术专业和研究议程。最后，该项目将支持开发一个跨学科的班级，以试点教育战略，向学生介绍对这一新兴专业至关重要的主要概念和做法。该项目汇集了社会科学家、计算机科学家和工程师以及人文主义者的跨学科专业知识，他们的贡献将提供对伦理和技术本质的跨领域的智力理解。这种方法对于探索和定义这一新兴职业的多个维度，以及产生关于其在更广泛的技术生态系统中的效用、动态和影响的可靠知识是必要的。因此，该项目填补了关于劳动力中伦理推理、技能和实践的确切需求和功能的知识的关键空白。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The last five years of what has been called a “techlash” have pressured a growing number of technology companies and public sector workplaces to hire workers equipped to respond to ethical challenges. These challenges include addressing biased technical systems, threats to privacy, the growing information credibility crisis, and exclusionary inequities in employment. Consequently, there is now a vision for a new kind of technologist equipped to tackle questions of ethics and equity, and a move toward a profession we call “Ethical Technology.” This profession constitutes one of the most important and quickly growing employment fields. Tech companies already have created thousands of jobs with titles such as “Ethical Hacker,” “Data Ethics and Integrity Coordinator,” and “Ethics Officer”. However, there is little data or existing understanding about the skills, training, and knowledge these new “Ethical Technologists” need to perform these roles, or how to equip this workforce with a background that will allow them to succeed. This project seeks to understand the scope and the character of Ethical Technology as an emerging profession, and to address the future of Ethical Technology work. The project further seeks to enlist this understanding in order to create a novel approach to STEM and humanities education. Such an understanding will increase the efficacy of workers in these roles and influence how universities train students for this new profession.The project is structured around a number of complementary activities. First, the project will explore Ethical Technology as a profession and organizing concept for the future of work and assess the functions of Ethical Technologists in the workplace. The project will also identify key terms in Ethical Technology job listings and explore the key components of the profession that constitute the demand in the these listings. The team will also convene stakeholders from the private sector, public interest technology, and education to define an Ethical Technology profession and research agenda based on the findings. Finally, the project will support development of an interdisciplinary class to pilot educational strategies to introduce students to major concepts and practices essential to this emerging profession. The project brings together interdisciplinary expertise of social scientists, computer scientists and engineers, and humanists, whose contributions will provide an intellectually intersectional understanding of the nature of ethics and technology. Such an approach is necessary to explore and define the multiple dimensions of this emerging profession, and to produce robust knowledge about its utility, dynamics, and impact in the broader technological ecosystem. The project thus fills in critical gaps in knowledge about the exact needs and function of ethical reasoning, skills, and practices in the workforce.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.