Course objectives:

Basic awareness of major Western schools of ethics and how to use their precepts to resolve ethical dilemmas

Ability to define “big data” and recognize its use across industries

Broad awareness of collection, retention, use, and transmission of big data about individuals and groups of people across industries

Ability to recognize potential and actual harms in the collection, retention, use, and transmission of big data about individuals and groups of people, including but not limited to bias, loss of autonomy, loss of privacy, loss of free expression, manipulation, redlining, security breaches

Ability to recognize and respond to common “ethics smells”—poor rationalizations/justifications—for collection, retention, use, and transmission of person-specific big data across industries