Making Ethics at Home in Global CS Education: Provoking Stories from the Souths

Abstract

Despite the increase in university courses and curricula on the ethics of computing there are few studies about how computer science (CS) programs should account for the diverse ways ethical dilemmas and approaches to ethics are situated in cultural, philosophical, and governance systems, religions, and languages. We draw on the experiences and insights of 46 university educators and practitioners in Latin America, South-Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australian First Nations who participated in surveys and interviews. Our modest study seeks to prompt conversation about ethics and computing in the Global Souths and inform revisions to the Association of Computer Machinery's curricular guidelines for the Society, Ethics and Professionalism knowledge area in undergraduate CS programs. Participants describe frictions between static and anticipatory approaches to ethics in globalised regulations and formal codes of ethics and professional conduct and local practices, values, and impacts of technologies in the Global Souths. Codes and regulations are instruments for international control and their gap with local realities can cause harm, despite local efforts to compensate. However, our insights also illustrate opportunities for university teaching to link more closely to priorities, actions, and experiences in the Global Souths and enrich students’ education in the Global North.