Hardly a day passes without a new technology ethics scandal–from privacy violations on social media platform to biased algorithms to controversial data collection for training facial recognition systems. In computing practice and research, good intentions sometimes still lead to negative consequences. This talk describes three lessons from my research that inform ethical practices in studying, building, and teaching about technology: (1) empirical work towards best practices for research ethics in data science, including understanding possible harms from data collected without consent; (2) ethical debt (as a parallel to technical debt) in technology design and research as the precursor to the types of unintended consequences that underly ethical controversies; and (3) the importance of empowering everyone to not just create but to critique technology.
[…]