Understandably, there is a lot of reading in any post-graduate program. However, a data ethics program’s content types and formats vary greatly. There are course handbooks, formal academic texts, white papers, news articles, press releases, formal laws and ordinances, and more. Stepping back, this makes sense. As we heard during the “Welcome” lecture in week 1, ethics is not a single thing; it’s...
There are so many things that I learned about the MSc degree and program. One of which is that we have an assignment to design an “intervention.” There aren’t too many details about this yet, but the idea seems to be that you choose an area, topic, or domain struggling or dealing with an ethical AI issue and then design an intervention, be it legal, ethical, etc., to help mediate or solve it. The...
The Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) has historically been housed in a different part of the campus, in a less-than-inspiring building. Those days are over. The new home for EFI is in the historic Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, right in the middle of town. While it’s been recently renovated from top to bottom, its history still endures. I’ve met a few people in Edinburgh who were born there, and all...
This MSc program has a mix of mandatory courses and electives. There are two mandatory courses in Semester 1: Interdisciplinary Futures and Data and Artificial Intelligence Ethics, Law and Governance. Interdisciplinary Futures, taught by Dr Linda O’Keeffe, is something every cohort takes and is meant to help students develop the critical and creative skills necessary to...
I met Shannon Vallor today, the Director of the entire Data & Artificial Intelligence Ethics program and a massive force within the Centre for Technomoral Futures. Launched in 2020 as an integral part of the University of Edinburgh’s Futures Institute, the Centre supports EFI’s larger aim: to pursue and promote the participatory knowledge and critical understanding needed to support...
Within the University of Edinburgh, a group called the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) is dedicated to solving the world’s most complex challenges. While I am in the Data and Artificial Intelligence Ethics cohort, other cohorts are working on different challenges such as Planetary Health, Education, and Circular Economy. During the induction lecture today, I met a guy in the Sustainable...
It’s hard not to fall in love with Edinburgh. It’s old but beaming with life. It’s one of those places where everything looks historic—and is—yet approachable and welcoming at the same time. I spent the day wandering around the city, getting my bearings and a sense of its scale. Edinburgh’s population is around 500,000, about the size of Kansas City, so it’s actually quite manageable. Every fifth...