@acm-ethics
Helping promote ethics in computing & related professions. Re/posts ≠ endorsement - intended to inspire discussion. ethics.acm.org is where you can find the Code and other supporting resources #ACMCodeofEthics #IReadTheCode
A bit about a pattern I've been seeing in how ordinary people are using coding tools in probably unproductive ways. If you are new to coding, you may thing the problem you want to solve is build more things. The reality is you want to build *less* things.
If an AI can go to school for you what’s the point of going to school? For Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein, it's just like horses. “They used to pull carriages, but when cars came around, I'd argue horses became a lot more free."
www.404media.co/whats-the-po...
"Gen Z teachers are the first cohort of classroom educators that entered adolescence just as smartphones became ubiquitous. They grew up with much of their social lives online" #edtech #ILoveEdTech #ImFutureReady #elearning #AIEdu
New statement from the ACM U.S. Technology Policy Committee on AdTech & DHS privacy/security: computing experts urge stronger safeguards around government use of advertising-tech data collection. #Privacy #Security #TechPolicy
acm.org/binaries/con...
Computing experts call for clearer, tech-grounded standards in Evidence Rule 707 for handling digital evidence in court. #TechPolicy @ACMorg
www.acm.org/binaries/con...
The Cyber Safety Review Board is dormant, and that's a cybersecurity risk in itself. ACM US Tech Policy Committee is calling for the CSRB to be reactivated and given a permanent legislative foundation, subpoena power, and full-time expert staff. shorturl.at/ufrs8
#Cybersecurity #CSRB #TechPolicy
Buying vs. Building AI: How should governments navigate the LLM frontier?
New ACM TechBrief offers a deep dive into the strategic choices facing nations today—balancing control, cost, and capability.
Essential reading for policy makers: dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....
#AI #Policy #SovereignAI #Tech
Aside from security, memory unsafety can be the cause of reliability issues and is notoriously expensive to debug. In the latest issue of "Queue: In Practice," four software engineers argue that the best place to start today is by improving our standard libraries.
Learn more: buff.ly/w8VJYpj
The use of AI on the DL has been a big point of discussion, prompting a new ACM Presidential Task Force (PTF) on the Responsible Use of AI. If you have input to share with the PTF, please reach out at sigchi-president@acm.org.
Building a more sustainable CHI 🌍 We’re sharing resources and guidance to help the community reduce the environmental footprint of the conference. Learn more about sustainability efforts for CHI 2026: chi2026.acm.org/2026/03/02/s...
#CHI2026 #CHICommunity #HCI #SustainableCHI
Join us in the upcoming #ACMDSPLecture, "A Hands-On Workshop: Building Advanced AI Applications and Agents in One Hour" with speaker Mehdi Bahrami at Fujitsu Research of America. The hybrid event will take place on March 20, 2026. More info here: buff.ly/BOQxPuI
#distinguishedspeaker #computing
Vibe Coding: What It Is, How It’s Changing Software, and What Comes Next？
Join Responsible Tech for an online discussion for:
- A clearer understanding of what vibe coding actually changes
- Language to discuss intent, boundaries, and responsibility with your teams
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What's in the latest issue of #AdvancesInComputing:
- digital companions 🤖
- privacy for the young generation 👶
- designing for sufficiency 🏞️
and more.
Subscribe if you haven't already 👇
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Build the future of Agentic & AI systems at the inaugural ACM CAIS!
Held May 26-29 in San Jose, California, the conference is dedicated to the design, evaluation, and engineering of compound and agentic AI systems.
For more details: www.caisconf.org
Submit your research by Feb 27, 2026!
What are YOU doing Feb 25? Because the 6th Annual SIGEcom Winter Meeting is free, virtual, 10:30am-5pm about CS, AI & Law. Register to participate! forms.gle/LVjX7TPk9kba...
Organized by Rachel Cummings and @inbaltalgam.bsky.social!
But again, I am highly appreciative of the intention behind this. Doing something to encourage authors to write about research ethics in their papers is far more than most publication venues do, especially in computing.
Maybe my take on this relates to the work I've done on ethics education. Ethical considerations in special sections of papers at the very end that many people won't read makes me think of the senior level standalone CS ethics class you take after none of your profs mentions ethics for 4 years.
Ethical Considerations Statement. Can be included at submission time This statement is a description of the ethical concerns and potential adverse impacts that authors considered and mitigated while conducting the work. Authors should describe the ethical challenges they faced in their submission and how they addressed such challenges. In particular, submissions that (1) describe experiments with human subjectsusers and/or deployed systems (e.g., websites or apps), or (2) rely on sensitive user data (e.g., social network information) must adhere to precepts of ethical research and community norms. These include compliance with applicable laws and applicable professional ethical codes; respect for privacy; secure storage of sensitive data; voluntary and informed consent when appropriate; avoiding deceptive practices when not essential; beneficence and non-maleficence (maximizing the benefits to an individual or society while minimizing harm to the individual); risk mitigation; and post-hoc disclosure of audits. See also the section on Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct above. We also encourage authors to discuss any potential adverse or unintended impacts the work might have once published, and how they have mitigated those potential impacts.
Now to be clear! My assumption that the *reason* for ethical considerations sections being part of endmatter is that the conference wants to encourage such statements by not counting them towards the page limit. So good intention, but...
1. death to page limits
2. come onnnnnnnn
Same with positionality/reflexivity -- this should be part of the methods. This is also a section that authors are instructed to put at the end in FAccT papers.
(I have some thoughts about this one as well, but appreciate the thoughtful pointer to medium.com/@caliang/ref... )
I actually feel the same way (stronger, actually) about limitations and am completely baffled by why it's the norm for some fields/publications to put limitations at the end.
I need to know about limitations to appropriately interpret the findings! Why do I care about them when I get to the end!
For example, let's say that you make a well informed ethical decision to obfuscate data in some way in order to protect the privacy of social media users. The reader is wondering why there aren't direct quotes in the findings or why some information is redacted. They should know this going in.
I think that decisions about how to conduct research ethically are at the exact same level as any other methodological decision -- e.g. how to recruit participants or what statistical analyses to run. They are also often just as relevant to understanding and interpreting the findings.
(That last bit is directed at authors. :) )
If as a researcher you're going to leave your ethical decision making out of a paper because you need to find 150 words to cut elsewhere, then you probably shouldn't be submitting to a conference with "transparency" in the title.
As I finish reviewing for FAccT I'd love to get other opinions on a topic. (I'm trying to decide if this is worth raising to decision makers or if I'm overreacting.)
TL;DR Ethical considerations should be in the methods section, so explicitly instructing authors to put them at the end is bad. 🧵
Timeline cleanse! Perhaps Mr. Glass is playing this www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nBE...
A 1988 VHS privacy law could block how advertisers get your data. The Supreme Court will decide if sharing email credentials for targeted ads violates video rental protections #privacy #dataprivacy #dataprivacyweek www.techspot.com/news/111090-...
It’s the final day of #DataPrivacyWeek!
Shrink your digital footprint by deleting old accounts and requesting the removal of outdated info.
Webinars: https://www.staysafeonline.org/events/data-privacy-week-2026-webinars
Find more tips: cyber.nj.gov
#NJCCIC #DataPrivacyWeek
Online age verification mandates can endanger our #privacy & #security.
During #DataPrivacyWeek, read OTI's pieces on this, including a brief on zero-knowledge proofs: a possible path to privacy-preserving age verification.
🔗 https://bit.ly/463L2AR
🔗 https://bit.ly/4qB2oxj
Our video about the controversial AI2027 paper has now been watched more than 10m times on YouTube. My biggest ever video and the 2nd biggest ever for World Service. I'm especially proud of this one as I made it completely on my own. Scripting, prompting and editing.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uuf...