Ethics for Engineers with Steven Kelts

Pondering AI

Steven Kelts engages engineers in ethical choice, enlivens training with role-playing, exposes organizational hazards and separates moral qualms from a duty to care.

Steven and Kimberly discuss Ashley Casovan’s inspiring query; the affirmation allusion; students as stochastic parrots; when ethical sophistication backfires; limits of ethics review boards; engineers and developers as core to ethical design; assuming people are good; 4 steps of ethical decision making; inadvertent hotdog theft; organizational disincentives; simulation and role-playing in ethical training; avoiding cognitive overload; reorienting ethical responsibility; guns, ethical qualms and care; and empowering engineers to make ethical choices.

Steven Kelts is a lecturer in Princeton’s University Center for Human Values (UCHV) and affiliated faculty in the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP). Steve is also an ethics advisor to the Responsible AI Institute and Director of All Tech is Human’s Responsible University Network.

Additional Resources:

• Princeton Agile Ethics Program: https://agile-ethics.princeton.edu
• CITP Talk 11/19/24: Agile Ethics Theory and Evidence
• Oktar, Lomborozo et al: Changing Moral Judgements
• 4-Stage Theory of Ethical Decision Making: An Introduction
• Enabling Engineers through “Moral Imagination” (Google)

A transcript of this episode is here.