In recent years, data-driven tools such as artificial intelligence have become embedded in our daily lives. But do they shape the human condition for the better?
UC Berkeley’s Data 104 course, or Human Contexts and Ethics of Data, is examining that question. It’s taught by the History Department and the Data Science program, and it analyzes the historical conditions in which such tools were developed and deployed, while also exploring how data science shapes society and the ethical implications that arise from its influence.
UC Berkeley History Chair Cathryn Carson has been a participant in shaping the data science major from the start. She explained that the development of UC Berkeley’s data science curriculum has been fundamentally interdisciplinary, combining the humanities and social sciences with statistics and computing. When the undergraduate data science major was being designed, she said, integrating ethics into the field was a priority.
“It’s been a crucial goal for many of us to have modes of thought from the humanities and social sciences represented in Berkeley’s data science curriculum,” said Carson. “When we were all designing the undergraduate data science major, we knew that human contexts and ethics would be integral to it. It was understood that a course focused on those themes would be required.”
Since its inception in 2018, Data 104 has evolved with each instructor’s unique perspectives. However, at its core, the course centers around issues of representation and justice in data-enabled technologies, contemporary labor concerns, shifting definitions of privacy and the relationship between data and democracy.
“We want students to understand how data and technology creates the social and political worlds that we inhabit – and are, as we say, co-produced with them,” said UC Berkeley History Lecturer Ari Edmundson, one of the lecturers for the course. “This course is ultimately about getting students to think in broader and more capacious ways about the interplay of technological, social and moral order. We want students to think about ethics and what it means to be ethical.”
While the course is structured around the history of science, technology and society, it also examines how the history of math and logic have come to shape the world and our understanding of it. Massimo Mazzotti, a UC Berkeley history professor and the current Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science, presents math and technology as dimensions of world-ordering processes.
“The history of math and logic is about how we order nature and society through formal structures. You don’t create social and natural order without math and logic,” said Mazzotti. “What I try to bring to the class is the understanding of how that formal knowledge continuously shapes our everyday lives in many ways.”
From ethics to math and logic, the course explores a variety of subjects in data science. However, a question often directed at the professors is: Why is this a history course? According to Carson, this is because history is a powerful tool for navigating the present and future – it’s not just about the past.
“History is a good solvent for dissolving the notion that the present is the way it is because it must be that way,” said Carson. “It’s also good in helping students see the dynamics that are working in the present. That gives them the space to understand that they have the opportunity to actually change the course of things.”
Beyond its historical and ethical framing, another unique aspect of the course is its highly collaborative nature. Each new iteration of the class is presented differently. This is largely because of the weekly conversations among instructors about how to refine and improve the material.
“We have ongoing conversations, not just from the top down, about how we can guide students, create space for them to critically engage with the material and develop their own conclusions,” said UC Berkeley History Lecturer Daniel Roddy “We’re constantly thinking about whether certain subjects are relevant to our course material and to students.”
Ultimately, the instructors hope that through the study of history and ethics, students will come to understand data science as a powerful force that can shape the human condition for the better.
“The primary focus of many students in their education at Berkeley is their technical skill set. That’s incredibly important,” said Roddy. “However, as students go through this course and are introduced to critical lenses through the materials that we’re teaching, our hope is that they’ll realize that there are other dimensions to who they are as data scientists.”
By applying the critical frameworks employed in Data 104, the instructors hope that students will be better equipped to identify ethical issues in their future work and shape the use of data science in ways that lead to better societal outcomes.
