CSE 599: COMPUTING FOR SOCIAL GOOD

Time: MW 1:30-2:50pm

Instructor: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
TA: Esther Jang <infrared@cs.washington.edu>

As the role of technology has grown, from mainframes to laptops to mobile phones and pervasive AI, so has the desire to leverage these advances for the good of society. This class will explore the broad, ongoing themes around Computing for Social Good, inclusive of advances in HCI, computer networks, artificial intelligence, and sustainability. We will read about national- and global-scale challenges and more specific subproblems, and relevant technology projects. While we will examine some conventional engineering ethics topics, our aim is much broader: we will start with fundamental social and ecological challenges and then consider what role, if any, technology should play in responding to them. One of our aims will be to differentiate between nice-sounding-but-ineffective tech-for-good solutions and those that have a chance for real impact. As a result, we will take a systems perspective — to trace root causes and find the right place(s) to make lasting change.

While a working knowledge of critical technology theory is important to doing good work, this is a class for builders and designers. All students will complete a project and end up with an artifact; potentially a tool (designed and/or built) for solving a real-world problem that they bring to the class or a fictional narrative elucidating the potentials and dangers of new ongoing advances.

This is a graduate-level computer science class but particularly motivated and experienced students (including undergrads) from other disciplines can reach out if you’d like to participate.