National Academies Report Published

Seth Lazar was a co-author on a report by a study committee of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, Fostering Computing Research: Foundations and Practices. This report was commissioned by the NSF and is to be presented to the US congress.

With computing technologies increasingly woven into our lives, institutions, and constructed environment, it is vital that the ethical and societal impacts of computing research and the technologies enabled by that research become first-order concerns of the computing research community. The report calls on the computing research community to reshape the ways research is formulated and undertaken to ensure that ethical and societal consequences are considered and addressed appropriately from the start.

The report recommends practical steps that researchers, organisations that sponsor and carry out research in academia, industry, and government, scientific societies, and scholarly publishers should take to help identify and mitigate potential harms as well as promote research providing ethical and societal benefits. It also recommends ways to encourage and support researchers to engage with the public about the impacts of computing technologies and urges changes in computing education to help ensure that future computing professionals are better equipped to address ethical and societal concerns.

As well as a public briefing, report chair Barbara Grosz has briefed the NSF CISE Advisory Committee today, by whom the report very well received. Margaret Martonosi, the NSF AD for CISE, closed by saying how important it was to have the report and that it is "a great service to the nation." Barbara also presented to a group of Australian heads of CS departments and leaders in responsible computing, and Amanda Stent will be presenting to a similar group of US department chairs in a few weeks.