Tag Archive: Reports

CSTB Releases Report Fostering Responsible Computing Research: Foundations and Practices


The National Academies’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) released a new report, Fostering Responsible Computing Research: Foundations and Practices. The report outlines recommendations for the computing research community to ensure ethical and societal impacts are thought through and a part of the conversation from the start.

The National Academics’ CSTB was created to advise the nation on technical and public policy issues pertaining to computing. This includes social and economic implications, sustaining leadership in computing innovation, and using computing in desirable and beneficial ways. The board is comprised of leading experts in the field, one of which is CCC Council Member David Danks.

On May 2nd, the project’s Committee Chair, Barbara Grosz, discussed the key findings and recommendations from the report. You can see the webinar recording here. In Grosz’s talk, she stressed that the report and its recommendations carry no expectation that computer scientists and engineers become experts in areas of scholarship such as ethics, psychology, sociology etc.

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Computing Research and the Emerging Field of Data Science


Our ability to collect, manipulate, analyze, and act on vast amounts of data is having a profound impact on all aspects of society. This transformation has led to the emergence of data science as a new discipline. The explosive growth of interest in this area has been driven by research in social, natural, and physical sciences with access to data at an unprecedented scale and variety, by industry assembling huge amounts of operational and behavioral information to create new services and sources of revenue, and by government, social services and non-profits leveraging data for social good. This emerging discipline relies on a novel mix of mathematical and statistical modeling, computational thinking and methods, data representation and management, and domain expertise. While computing fields already provide many principles, tools and techniques to support data science applications and use cases, the computer science community also has the opportunity to contribute to the new research needed to further drive the development of the field. In addition, the community has the obligation to engage in developing guidelines for the responsible use of data science.