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Associate Professor Casey Fiesler researches and teaches in the areas of technology ethics, internet law and policy, and online communities. At University of Colorado Boulder she is also a Fellow in the Silicon Flatirons Institute for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship and holds a courtesy appointment in Computer Science. Her work on technology ethics, ethics education, and broadening participation in computing has been funded by Mozilla's Responsible Computer Science Challenge, the Omidyar Network, and the National Science Foundation, including an NSF CAREER grant. Her research has also been covered everywhere from The New York Times to Teen Vogue, and she is a prolific public scholar who is passionate about educating the public about technology ethics and policy, whether it's in an op-ed or on TikTok (@professorcasey). Fiesler holds a PhD from Georgia Tech in Human-Centered Computing and a JD from Vanderbilt University Law School.

AI has social consequences, but who pays the price? Tech companies’ problem with ‘ethical debt’

As a technology ethics educator and researcher, Carey Fiesler has thought about AI systems amplifying harmful biases and stereotypes, students using AI deceptively, privacy concerns, people being fooled by misinformation, and labor exploitation. Fiesler characterizes this not at technical debt but as accruing ethical debt. Just as technical debt can result from limited testing during the development process, ethical debt results from not considering possible negative consequences or societal harms. And with ethical debt in particular, the people who incur it are rarely the people who pay for it in the end.

Subjects: AI, Cyberlaw, Education, Ethics, Human Rights, KM, Legal Ethics, Technology Trends