The FATE of technology at Penn, today

Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics are topics on which economics and computer science intersect each other , and some other fields as well:

The “FATE” of Technology: Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics

October 17, 2018 | Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology

Wednesday, October 17th, 2018

Glandt Forum, Singh Center for Nanotechnology

Celebrating Five Years of the Warren Center

Reception to follow

1:00 pm: Welcome and brief remarks

Michael Kearns, Professor and National Center Chair of Computer and Information Science

Rakesh Vohra, George A. Weiss and Lydia Bravo Weiss University Professor

1:10 pm: Aaron Roth, Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science

“Ethical Algorithms”

1:30 pm: Annie Liang, Assistant Professor of Economics

“Predicting and Understanding Human Behaviors through Machine Learning”

1:50 pm: Sandra González-Bailón, Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication

“Digital Technologies and Access to News”

2:15 pm: Break
2:30 pm: Panel with members of the Warren Center

Emily Falk, Associate Professor of Communication, Psychology, and Marketing

Junhyong Kim, Patricia M. Williams Term Professor of Biology

Konrad Kording, Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor of Neuroscience and Bioengineering

3:00 pm: Keynote: Matthew Salganik, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University

“The Fragile Families Challenge”

4:00 pm: Michael Kearns, Professor and National Center Chair of Computer and Information Science

“The AlgoWatch Initiative”

4:30 pm: Concluding remarks by Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean

Ethics and Market Design by Shengwu Li

Here's a take on an important and elusive question, by someone well qualified to discuss both ethics and market design. (That said, I have no expectation of ever seeing the last word on this particular subject, and that seems to be Shengwu's position too...)

Ethics and Market Design, by Shengwu Li
forthcoming, Oxford Review of Economic Policy

The paper begins with these two quotes:

[. . . ] just as there is a chemical engineering literature (and not just literature about theoretical and laboratory chemistry) and a medical literature (and not just a biology literature), economists need to develop a scientific literature concerned with practical problems of design. (Roth and Peranson, 1999)

It is, in fact, arguable that economics has had two rather different origins [. . . ] concerned respectively with ‘ethics’ on the one hand, and with what may be called ‘engineering’ on the other. (Sen, 1987) 

Normative Ethics and Welfare Economics at HBS, and Behavioral Ethics, also at HBS (at the same time:)

There are two (competing) conferences on ethics at Harvard this weekend, one on Friday and Saturday and the other on Friday, both at HBS.

I'll be speaking at this one:

2016 Normative Ethics and Welfare Economics Conference

October 21-22, Harvard Business School

Organizers: Itai Sher and Matt Weinzierl

All sessions will take place in the Chao Center, room 340

Transportation to the HBS campus from the Hyatt Regency Cambridge Hotel will be provided.

Oct 21

A Harvard University shuttle bus will depart the Hyatt at 8:00 am

8:15-8:45	Breakfast
8:45-9:00	Opening Remarks
9:00-10:30	Population Ethics Partha Dasgupta and Johann Frick Discussant: Glen Weyl Papers: Birth and Death Socially Embedded Preferences, Environmental Externalities, and Reproductive Rights
10:30-11:00	Break
11:00-12:30	Reasons and Preferences Justin Snedegar and Itai Sher Discussant: Caspar Hare Papers: Overlapping Reasons Comparative Value and the Weight of Reasons
12:30-2:00	Lunch
2:00-3:30	Public Reason Matt Weinzierl and Sean Ingham Discussant: Lucas Stanczyk Papers: A Dilemma for Theories of Public Reason A Welfarist Role for Nonwelfarist Rules: An Example with Envy
3:30-4:00	Break
4:00-5:30	Forbidden Transactions Michael Sandel and Al Roth Discussant: Stefanie Stantcheva
5:30-6:00	Break
6:00-8:30	Dinner for Speakers & Discussants Location TBA Transportation will be provided.

Oct 22

A Harvard University shuttle bus will depart the Hyatt at 8:00 am

8:30-9:00	Breakfast
9:00-10:30	Business Ethics Rebecca Henderson, Karthik Ramanna, and Wayne Norman Discussant: Nien-hê Hsieh Papers: Business Ethics, Democratic Theory, and the Regulatory State: Merriment & Diversion when Regulators and the Regulated Meet? Business Ethics Do managers have a role to play in sustaining the institutions of capitalism?
10:30-11:00	Break
11:00-12:30	Behavioral Economics and Welfare Economics John Doris, Julia Haas, and Dan Benjamin Discussant: Ben Lockwood Papers: Moral Psychonomics Reconsidering Risk Aversion
12:30-1:30	Lunch​​
1:30 - 3:00	Prioritarianism Matthew Adler and Hilary Greaves Discussant: Jerry Green Papers: Justice, Claims and Prioritarianism: Room for Desert? Antiprioritarianism
3:00-3:30	Break
3:30-5:00	Closing Panel Marc Fleurbaey, Dan Hausman, Greg Mankiw, Tim Scanlon Moderator: Nathan Hendren
	Adjourn

************************
It turns out that there is a lot of interest in ethics at Harvard, and so there is another ethics conference at the same time, also meeting at HBS:

Symposium - "Behavioral Ethics: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives" Featuring Peter Singer

Date: 

Friday, October 21, 2016 (All day)

See also: Ethics

Location: 

Spangler Auditorium, Harvard Business School

Organizers: Max Bazerman and Joshua Greene

Sponsors: Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard Business School, Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School

This symposium will integrate psychology and philosophy to explore a goal state for ethical behavior, why we fail to achieve that goal state, and what society can do create more ethical behavior.

Event Participant Bios

9:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Welcome
Danielle Allen and Max Bazerman

10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.         
What does the greatest good look like in contemporary society?
Peter Singer, "What is the Most Good We Can Do?"

Joshua Greene, TBD

Steven Pinker, “Measuring and Defining Progress”

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.           
Lunch Break

1:15 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.             
Why don’t we get there?
Mahzarin Banaji, "The Difficulty with Discretion"

Fiery Cushman, “Is Non-Consequentialism a Feature or a Bug?”

Michael Norton, "Spreading the Wealth (and Health): Evidence for a Universal Desire for Greater Equality"

3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
What can be done to change behavior (nudging and beyond)?
Francesca Gino, “To Do or Not To Do: Motivating Ethical Behavior”

Iris Bohnet, "Gender Equality by Design"

Max Bazerman, "Prescriptions for Creating Greater Good"

4:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.             
Closing Statement
Max Bazerman

Jean Tirole on the morality of markets: « La Moralité et le marché »

Jean Tirole, on the morality of markets:
La Moralité et le marché -- Pour une éthique du libéralisme (update: the pdf file has been removed, but here's the video... https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3nnmov_fondation-ethique-economie-conference-de-jean-tirole_news

As near as I can make out with my deteriorating high school French and the increasingly helpful Google Translate, Tirole argues that critics of markets (and of economists) like Michael Sandel are ignorant of decades of economic research...and that it is easier to condemn markets for kidneys if one ignores the deaths of patients with kidney disease...


see also this blog post by Prof  Alexandre Delaigue referring to Tirole's talk, and concentrating on compensation for kidney donors L'interdiction de vente de rein est-elle morale?

Ethics and Market Design: Stanford, Jan 8 (update, note room change)

If you're on the Stanford campus tomorrow, you're invited to hear a panel discussion, with Anat Admati, Debra Satz and me on repugnance and, more generally, Ethics and Market Design

EVENT OVERVIEW

Markets depend on legal and institutional structures. These structures raise questions of ethics: are they fair? Do they generate harms?  If harms are unavoidable, do these structures fairly manage and distribute the risks of harm?This panel discussion brings together prominent  philosophers and economists to discuss the potentials and limits of designing markets with ethics in mind. Cases in point will be markets for donated organs and financial markets. 

This is an RSVP event. RSVP here.

SPEAKER

Anat Admati, George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, author of The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It.

Al Roth, Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University & Gund professor of economics and business administration emeritus at Harvard University, winner of the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work on market design.

Debra Satz, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, author of Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Limits of Markets.

4:00PM ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 2015 AT STANFORD LAW SCHOOL, CROWN QUADRANGLE, MANNING FACULTY LOUNGE (ROOM 270)

Sponsored by The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society / ethicsinsociety@stanford.edu

***********
Update (with room change) from the organizers:
"Just a quick update on tomorrow's panel discussion: we've been overwhelmed with RSVPs (over 100), so we booked a larger room for the panel discussion (180 in the Law School - we'll put up signposts tomorrow), and we had to close the list for the dinner. "

Is freedom to do social science research like freedom of the press?

 A group of British social scientists (who appear to mostly be involved in survey research) think that the current system of institutional review of research in Britain is better suited to medical experiments than to social science.

Here's the story:

Social Science Ethics

March 14, 2013 - 3:00am

By

Paul Jump for Times Higher Education

British social scientists are drawing up a common set of ethical principles aimed at freeing research from what they see as excessive ethics oversight frameworks that hamper their ability to improve social understanding.

According to Robert Dingwall, professor of social science at Nottingham Trent University, a "free" social science research base is as important to a healthy democracy as a free press. But in the past decade, British and international funders have required universities to vet all research involving human subjects via institutional ethics committees.

"You can imagine how outraged journalists would feel if they had to pre-check with a committee that their questions would not upset someone," he said.

Dingwall, a member of an Academy of Social Sciences working group on the issue, said committee members often had no expertise in ethics or the research field in question, and were primarily concerned with the university's reputation. Their risk aversion fed back to academics, who were often disinclined to undertake research that could incur disapproval even if it was potentially important.

The situation was exacerbated, Dingwall said, by the application to social science of frameworks developed for biomedicine. He said the balance of individual risk and social benefit was different in the social sciences because most research posed a minimal risk to individuals and offered significant benefit to the community.

He said that although the U.S. and Canada have recognized that the regulatory system was in crisis, Britain has yet to join efforts to redress it.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/14/british-social-scientists-propose-new-approach-ethics-review#ixzz2NYEV2Xos
Inside Higher Ed 

Through the looking glass of medical ethics: compatible pairs in kidney exchange

Some time ago my colleagues and I observed that there would be really large gains in terms of increased numbers of transplants from inviting compatible pairs into kidney exchange, largely because it would increase the supply of O donors.

(see Roth, Alvin E., Tayfun Sonmezand M.Utku Unver A Kidney Exchange Clearinghouse in New England American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 95,2, May, 2005, 376-380.

As with many discussions of organ transplantation, discussions of efficiency are interspersed with discussions of ethics, and almost no good deed goes unquestioned (recall the story of the kidney doc who donated a kidney to a patient*). The current issue of Transplantation has a comment that takes issue with some of the prior discussion of ethics.

Compatible-Incompatible Live Donor Kidney Exchanges, by David Steinberg,Transplantation, 91(3):257-260, February 15, 2011.

Abstract: "The participation of an immunologically compatible donor-intended recipient pair in a kidney exchange that is unnecessary for them can significantly increase the number of kidneys available for transplantation. Despite their utilitarian value transplant ethicists have condemned this type of organ exchange as morally inappropriate. An opposing analysis concludes that these exchanges are examples of moral excellence that should be encouraged."


*Doctor's unique donation prompts ethical concerns: A Chicago-area nephrologist's gift of a kidney to her patient raises the question of whether doctors should be living organ donors.

Bioethics and bioethicists

Sally Satel on bioethicists:

"Ask almost any hospital physician about bioethicists and you will get, in reliable sequence, an eye roll, a sigh, and then an earful of anecdotes about swaggering cowboys posing as arbiters of right and wrong (“Wizards of Oughts,” as one critic put it). In the media, the coverage of almost any biomedical controversy is sure to contain a quotation from a bioethicist with oracular pretensions. The unmistakable message of ethics punditry is clear: anyone who disagrees with us is thoughtless or unethical.
Such arrogance discomfits some bioethicists..."

From The Right (and Wrong) Answers, her book review of Observing Bioethics by Renee C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey

And here: The Limits of Bioethics

Law clerks for Massachusetts courts

One consequence of the poor economy is that Massachusetts courts have reneged on offers of judicial clerkships made to new law graduates. There is a proposal to fill these positions instead, for free, with other new law graduates who have been put on half pay and had their start dates delayed by Massachusetts law firms.
Law firms may provide clerks for courts: Proposal raises ethical issues

There is some concern that having employees of law firms clerking for judges might involve impropriety or its appearance. The proposed solution strikes me as unworkable:

"But because the issue raised ethical concerns, Mulligan recently asked the committee for its opinion about a special “double blind’’ arrangement.
The Flaschner Judicial Institute, which provides continuing education to state judges, would deal with the law firms that supply the interns. Judges and court officials would have no contact with the donating firms, and the firms would be instructed not to identify the interns on their websites. The interns would be barred from disclosing which firms are paying their stipends.
On June 8, the SJC’s ethics committee approved the arrangement, emphasizing that the clerks must keep the identity of their law firms secret even from the judges they are working for.
“Structuring the program in such a way that the law firms’ involvement is unknown not only to the public but also to the judges who will be ‘employing’ the volunteer interns will negate any impression that those law firms are in a special position to influence the judge,’’ said the committee’s opinion, which was reported last week by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.
“I give Chief Justice Mulligan credit for making the best of a very bad situation, and it appears that the double-blind method of hiring will protect the integrity of the court and eliminate appearances of impropriety,’’ said David W. White Jr., a former president of the Massachusetts Bar Association who worked as a Superior Court law clerk in the mid-1980s.
Still, the arrangement, which requires clerks to recuse themselves from participating in cases involving their firms without identifying the conflict of interest, is “really going to test the willpower of the volunteer clerks,’’ White said."

Here is some background on the perenially troubled market for law clerks, and here is some (now dated) background on the market for new associates at large law firms, from Roth and Xing (1994).