Topics, Readings, and Assignments
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Sign up for a discussion section here by 11 AM on 09/17!
Essay |
Essay Assigned |
Essay Due |
Peer Reviews Due |
1 |
09/17 |
09/24 |
10/01 |
2 |
10/08 |
10/15 |
10/22 |
3 |
10/29 |
11/05 |
11/12 |
09/3 Free Speech (Slides)
- Optional: Ellis, Emma Grey, "Win or Lose, the Alex Jones Lawsuit Will Help Redefine Free Speech"
- Optional: Malcolm, Jeremy and Cohn, Cindy and O'Brien, Danny, "Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression"
- Optional: Fisher, Max, "Inside Facebook's Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech"
- Optional: Stone, Geoffrey R. and Volokh, Eugene, "Interactive Constitution: The meaning of free speech"
- Optional: Jeong, Sarah, "The History of Twitter's Rules"
- Optional (from lecture): Derzsy, Noemi, "Strategies for combating online hate" (see also original research article—requires VPN)
09/10 Privacy (Slides)
Please complete this survey by 9 AM before class!
- Popken, Ben, "Sites Spying on You in Weird New Ways, Princeton Study Exposes"
- Menand, Louis, "Why Do We Care So Much About Privacy?"
- Homayoun, Ana, "The Secret Social Media Lives of Teenagers"
- Optional: Rachels, James, "Why Privacy is Important" (VPN required)
- Optional: Powazek, Derek, "I'm Not The Product, But I Play One on the Internet"
- Optional: Piovesan, Carole, "How Privacy Laws Are Changing To Protect Personal Information"
09/17 Copyright (Slides)
Assignment 1 has now been released! Please view and submit it here.
Please complete this survey by 9 AM before class!
- de Cardenas, Antonio, "Patent vs. Copyright Protection for Computer Software" (short, read first)
- Stallman, Richard, "Misinterpreting Copyright—A Series of Errors"
- Reynolds, Matt, "What is Article 13? The EU's divisive new copyright plan explained"
- Optional: Mullin, Joe, "'Your criticisms are completely wrong': Stallman on software patents, 20 years in"
- Optional: Stallman, Richard, "The Danger of Software Patents" (video)
- Optional: Heckel, Paul, "Debunking the Software Patent Myths"
09/24 Jobs (Slides)
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- CGP Grey, "Humans Need Not Apply"
- Williams, Alex, "Will Robots Take Our Children's Jobs?"
- Surowiecki, James, "The Great Tech Panic: Robots Won't Take All Our Jobs"
- Optional: Dalai Lama, The, "Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded"
- Optional: Bernstein, Raman "The Great Decoupling: An Interview with Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee"
- Optional: McKinsey Global Institute, "Harnessing automation for a future that works" and the "Appendix"
10/01 Guest Lecture: Technology, Policy, and Modes of Regulation (Slides)
Please complete this survey by 9 AM before class!
Readings this week are all optional but encouraged.
10/08 Guest Lecture: Free Time and Attention (Slides)
Assignment 2 has now been released! Please view and submit it here.
Please complete this survey by 9 AM before class!
- Twenge, Jean M., "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?"
- Becker, Rachel, "Why calling screen time 'digital heroin' is digital garbage"
- Tufecki, Zeynep, "YouTube, the Great Radicalizer"
- Optional: Schwartz, Casey, "Finding It Hard to Focus? Maybe It's Not Your Fault"
- Optional: Harris, Tristan, "How better tech could protect us from distraction"
- Optional: Lil B, "The Age of Information"
10/15 Algorithmic Bias (Slides)
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- Angwin, Julia, "Make Algorithms Accountable."
- Davies, Sam, and Pierson, Emma, and Feller, Avi and Goel, Sharad, "A computer program used for bail and sentencing decisions was labeled biased against blacks. It's actually not that clear."
- Tucker, Catherine, "Algorithmic Bias or Fairness: The Importance of Economic Context"
- Optional: Danks, David and London, Alex John, "Algorithmic Bias in Autonomous Systems"
- Optional: Podcast - "Fairness in Machine Learning with Hanna Wallach" (transcript)
- Optional: "Attacking discrimination with smarter machine learning"
- Related Resource: Algorithm Tips, a curated list of algorithms in use by the US Federal government
10/22 Finance (Slides)
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- Faggella, Daniel, "Machine Learning in Finance - Present and Future Applications"
- Orcutt, Mike, "Why it's time to start talking about blockchain ethics"
- Kelly-Pitou, Katrina, "Stop worrying about how much energy bitcoin uses"
- Optional: Hern, Alex, "Energy cost of 'mining' bitcoin more than twice that of copper or gold"
- Optional: Uzzi, Brian, "How AI Machines Could Save Wall Street Brokers' Jobs"
10/29 Software Risks and Professional Ethics (Slides)
Assignment 3 has now been released! Please view and submit it here.
Please complete this survey by 9 AM before class!
- Hao, Karen, "Should a self-driving car kill the baby or the grandma? Depends on where you're from." (Optional: take the test, visualize the results, or read the journal publication)
- Fabio, Adam, "Killed by a Machine: The Therac-25"
- Marshall, Aarian, "What Boeing's 737 MAX Has to Do With Cars: Software"
- ACM, "Professional Code of Conduct"
- Optional: Neumann, Peter G., "Risks of Automation: A Cautionary Total-System Perspective of Our Cyberfuture" (need to read on campus or through campus VPN)
- Optional: Tufekci, Zeynep, "We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads" (video)
- Optional: Travis, Gregory, "How the Boeing 737 MAX Disaster Looks to a Software Developer"
11/05 News and Politics (Slides)
Please complete this survey by 9 AM before class!
- Diakopoulos, Nicholas, "Reporting in a Machine Reality: Deepfakes, misinformation, and what journalists can do about them"
- Tufekci, Zeynep, "Russian Meddling Is a Symptom, Not the Disease"
- Bertoni, Steven, "How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House"
- Optional: Kolbert, Elizabeth, "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds"
- Optional: Keegan, Jon, "Blue Feed, Red Feed: See Liberal Facebook and Conservative Facebook, Side by Side"
- Optional: Garrett, R. Kelly and Resnick, Paul, "Resisting Political Fragmentation on the Internet" (requires campus VPN)
- Optional: Podcast - "Jennifer Earl, Internet Activism and Fake News"
11/12 Governments (Slides)
Please complete this survey by 9 AM before class!
- Lucas, Edward, "The Spycraft Revolution"
- Manaugh, Geoff, "Drone Cops Take Flight in Los Angeles"
- Kosoff, Maya, "China's terrifying surveillance state looks a lot like America's future"
- Optional: Maniam, Shiva, "Americans feel the tensions between privacy and security concerns"
- Optional: Gallagher, Ryan, "Senior Google Scientist Resigns Over 'Forfeiture of Our Values' in China"
- Optional: Kayyali, Dia, "FBI's 'Suicide Letter' to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance"
Please complete this survey by 9 AM before class!
- O'Connell, Mary Ellen, "Banning Autonomous Killing"
- Greenberg, Andy, "The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History"
- Wakabayashi, Shane, "Google Will Not Renew Pentagon Contract That Upset Employees"
- Optional: Chan, Melissa K., "China and the U.S. Are Fighting a Major Battle Over Killer Robots and the Future of AI"
- Optional: Valentino, Benjamin, "Moral Character or Character of War? American Public Opinion on the Targeting of Civilians in Times of War" (requires being on campus or Berkeley VPN)
- Optional: Walzer, Michael, "Just & Unjust Targeted Killing & Drone Warfare" (requires being on campus or Berkeley VPN)
- Optional: Dunlap Jr., Charles, "The Military-Industrial Complex" (requires being on campus or Berkeley VPN)
11/26 NO CLASS (Thanksgiving week)
12/03 Guest Lecture
Please complete this survey by end of day December 13!