Ethics, Public Policy & Technological Change
The hard questions tech creates (bias, privacy, power, harm) and frameworks for actually reasoning about them.
AI tutor is turned off for this class
Use the CS182 lectures, notes, and assignments below to keep learning.
Big Idea
Societal Impact
Grade bands
K-2 · 3-5 · 6-8 · 9-12
AI literacy pillar
How AI works · Ethics
Lesson overview
The hard questions tech creates (bias, privacy, power, harm) and frameworks for actually reasoning about them. This module climbs from an everyday intuition to the real mechanism, then names the Stanford course it descends from.
Teacher script · ~45 min
- 0–5
Hook
Technology constantly makes new things possible: tracking everyone, ranking everyone, automating jobs. 'Can we build it?' is an engineering question. 'Should we, and for whom?' is a different kind of question, and ducking it doesn't make it go away; it just means someone else lives with your answer.
- 5–15
Explore
Students do the activity in pairs: Imagine training a 'good employee' predictor on a company that rarely promoted women. What does it learn? Who's accountable for that?
- 15–30
Explain
Ethics isn't just opinions. Philosophers offer tools: weigh total consequences (utilitarian), honor rights and duties regardless of outcome (deontological), ask what a good person would do (virtue). Real dilemmas (privacy vs safety, speech vs harm) get clearer when you reason through several frameworks instead of one gut reaction.
- 30–40
Connect to the summit
Show students this is the real thing professionals build: CS182, the real thing. The hard questions tech creates (bias, privacy, power, harm) and frameworks for actually reasoning about them.
- 40–45
Check
Run the formative check below. Anyone who can explain a key term in their own words has it.
Student activity
Imagine training a 'good employee' predictor on a company that rarely promoted women. What does it learn? Who's accountable for that?
Slides
Formative check
- 1.In your own words, what is "Algorithmic bias"? (Looking for: When a system reproduces or amplifies unfairness present in its data or design.)
- 2.In your own words, what is "Privacy"? (Looking for: People's claim to control information about themselves and how it's used.)
- 3.In your own words, what is "Utilitarian vs deontological"? (Looking for: Judging by outcomes for everyone vs by duties and rights that hold regardless.)
Carry-away concepts
- Algorithmic bias
- When a system reproduces or amplifies unfairness present in its data or design.
- Privacy
- People's claim to control information about themselves and how it's used.
- Utilitarian vs deontological
- Judging by outcomes for everyone vs by duties and rights that hold regardless.
- Accountability
- Who answers for a system's effects, never just 'the algorithm.'
From the summit · the Stanford source
You analyze the ethical and policy dimensions of computing using real cases, philosophy, and a builder's responsibility lens.
This module descends from CS182 at Stanford. Students who climb the full ladder arrive here.