Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing
The MIT Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) aims to advance new efforts within and beyond the Schwarzman College of Computing. The specially commissioned and peer-reviewed cases are brief and intended to be effective for undergraduate instruction across a range of classes and fields of study, and may also be of interest for computing professionals, policy specialists, and general readers.
The series editors interpret “social and ethical responsibilities of computing” broadly. Some cases focus closely on particular technologies, others on trends across technological platforms. Others examine social, historical, philosophical, legal, and cultural facets that are essential for thinking critically about present-day efforts in computing activities. Special efforts are made to solicit cases on topics ranging beyond the United States and that highlight perspectives of people who are affected by various technologies in addition to perspectives of designers and engineers.
New sets of case studies, produced with support from the MIT Press’ Open Publishing Services program, will be published twice a year and made available via the Knowledge Futures Group’s PubPub platform. The SERC case studies are made available for free on an open-access basis, under Creative Commons licensing terms. Authors retain copyright, enabling them to re-use and re-publish their work in more specialized scholarly publications.
If you have suggestions for a new case study or comments on a published case, the series editors would like to hear from you! Please reach out to serc-cases@mit.edu.
Winter 2024
Integrals and Integrity: Generative AI Tries to Learn Cosmology
How Interpretable Is “Interpretable” Machine Learning?
AI’s Regimes of Representation: A Community-Centered Study of Text-to-Image Models in South Asia
Past Issues
Pretrial Risk Assessment on the Ground: Algorithms, Judgments, Meaning, and Policy by Cristopher Moore, Elise Ferguson, and Paul Guerin
To Search and Protect? Content Moderation and Platform Governance of Explicit Image Material by Mitali Thakor, Sumaiya Sabnam, Ransho Ueno, and Ella Zaslow
Emotional Attachment to AI Companions and European Law by Claire Boine
Algorithmic Fairness in Chest X-ray Diagnosis: A Case Study by Haoran Zhang, Thomas Hartvigsen, and Marzyeh Ghassemi
The Right to Be an Exception to a Data-Driven Rule by Sarah H. Cen and Manish Raghavan
Twitter Gamifies the Conversation by C. Thi Nguyen, Meica Magnani, and Susan Kennedy
“Porsche Girl”: When a Dead Body Becomes a Meme by Nadia de Vries
Privacy and Paternalism: The Ethics of Student Data Collection by Kathleen Creel and Tara Dixit
Differential Privacy and the 2020 US Census by Simson Garfinkel
The Puzzle of the Missing Robots by Suzanne Berger and Benjamin Armstrong
The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage by Steven Gonzalez Monserrate
Algorithmic Redistricting and Black Representation in US Elections by Zachary Schutzman
Hacking Technology, Hacking Communities: Codes of Conduct and Community Standards in Open Source by Christina Dunbar-Hester
Understanding Potential Sources of Harm throughout the Machine Learning Life Cycle by Harini Suresh and John Guttag
Public Debate on Facial Recognition Technologies in China by Tristan G. Brown, Alexander Statman, and Celine Sui
The Case of the Nosy Neighbors by Johanna Gunawan and Woodrow Hartzog
Who Collects the Data? A Tale of Three Maps by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein
The Bias in the Machine: Facial Recognition Technology and Racial Disparities by Sidney Perkowitz
The Dangers of Risk Prediction in the Criminal Justice System by Julia Dressel and Hany Farid