Ethical Data Futures
So far, Ethical Data Futures has been very developmental and I have learned a lot, particularly from studying the case studies and going in depth on certain topics. I think that there are definitely readings which could inform my final project such as the books Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins and Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell.
It has been extremely interesting to look further into issues such as algorithms, AI, and many other technologies and systems from an ethical perspective, especially as I have been interested in this area of study before and touched upon it in my undergraduate degree and dissertation. I think this perspective, interrogation, and area of study is crucial in EFI and is often looked at either briefly or through a wider, less specific lens in other programmes. Here, cases, examples, and issues are looked at and explored in depth and debated about. The theory is complex and interesting to look at critically and this is encouraged. I felt challenged but in a good way and although at times was confused I definitely learned a lot about certain theories, theorists and their positions, where certain issues stem from, and what needs to be done in organisations to make things better/more ethical.
This course will definitely relate to the reasoning behind my project – the need for certain stories and narratives to be told, and therefore also links to the real world connections and examples that link to sci-fi stories (e.g. racial bias in AI and algorithms, amongst a plethora of other issues). I think some of the cases and texts explored in this course could most certainly be linked to the theory of my project — based on Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto — and could most certainly be useful.
I was also really interested in the ethics of the intersection of mental health and technology – specifically algorithms, bots, and AI — and explored in the course, the case study of Crisis Text Line. This topic was extremely interesting, especially as someone who struggles with mental health and has had therapy, and the online discussions with classmates (although sometimes less fruitful) was very in-depth and fascinating for this case. The topic reminded me of many things, including character.ai and the visual novel game Eliza which explores the ethics of technology and mental health in an extremely complex and insightful way.
