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

在过去五年里，所谓的“技术冲击”迫使越来越多的科技公司和公共部门工作场所雇用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斥性不平等。因此，现在有一种新的技术专家的愿景，能够解决道德和公平的问题，并朝着我们称之为“道德技术”的职业迈进。这一职业是最重要和增长最快的就业领域之一。科技公司已经创造了数千个职位，如“道德黑客”，“数据道德和完整性协调员”和“道德官员”。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，或者如何为这支劳动力队伍提供使他们成功的背景，几乎没有数据或现有的理解。该项目旨在了解道德技术作为一种新兴职业的范围和特征，并解决道德技术工作的未来。该项目进一步寻求这种理解，以创造一种新的STEM和人文教育方法。这样的理解将提高这些角色的工作者的效率，并影响大学如何为这一新职业培养学生。首先，该项目将探讨道德技术作为一种职业和组织概念，为未来的工作和评估道德技术人员在工作场所的功能。该项目还将确定道德技术工作清单中的关键术语，并探索构成这些清单需求的专业的关键组成部分。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，根据调查结果确定道德技术专业和研究议程。最后，该项目将支持开发一个跨学科课程，以试点教育战略，向学生介绍这一新兴职业所必需的主要概念和做法。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道德和技术本质的知识交叉理解。这种方法对于探索和定义这一新兴职业的多个维度，并对其在更广泛的技术生态系统中的效用、动态和影响产生强大的知识是必要的。该项目因此填补了关于道德推理，技能和实践在劳动力中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，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

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.