DC 2017

Program/Speakers Location Registration RatesHotels & Transportation OptionsPartners & Contributors Contact Us Register Now! Advancing technology for the benefit of humanity is the IEEE tagline. In order for technology to benefit humanity, it is essential to address ethical concerns and societal implications. The IEEE TechEthics Conference serves as the IEEE TechEthics program's flagship event, featuring luminaries in technology, philosophy, ethics, policy development and more. In addition to keynotes by Rodney Brooks and Danielle Bassett, the program for this highly interactive event will include multimedia showings by Heather Knight and a series of panels addressing significant and provocative questions related to artificial intelligence, autonomous transportation, neuroscience, and ethics education. The program will provide ample opportunity for audience engagement, via extended Q&A sessions, regular refreshment breaks, an extended lunch, and a post-program networking hour (with light hors d'oeuvres). Be part of the conversation! Join us as we explore the ethical and societal implications of technology. Register Now! This event is part of the IEEE TechEthics Conversations Series, which provides a platform for addressing ethical and societal implications across a variety of technology areas. The series is comprised of a year-round calendar of virtual and in-person sessions. For more information on this and other aspects of the IEEE TechEthics program, please subscribe to our community . The conference will run from 8AM-5:30PM (registration will open at 6:30AM). There will also be a networking hour immediately following the event from 5:30PM-7PM. A detailed program will be posted soon. Rethink RoboticsChairman and CTO AI outsiders have trouble estimating AI progress because of a general tendency to overestimate technologies in the short term, a non-transparent understanding of how the technology works, applying human models that relate performance and competence that are not valid for AI, and having to dig deep to truly understand the suitcase words used by researchers. AI researchers have trouble estimating AI progress due to fragility of technological progress when it meets the impedance of human change and adoption, and because they get misled by imagining the future in the same way that Hollywood script writers do. There will be tremendous uptake of AI and robotics over the next few decades, but perhaps most of that will be more mundane than many imagine. A mathematics undergraduate in his native Australia, Rodney received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford in 1981. After post-docs at Carnegie Mellon and MIT he joined the Computer Science faculty at Stanford in 1983, and from 1984 to 2010, he was on the MIT faculty, where he was the Panasonic Professor of Robotics. He was also Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab from 1997 to 2003 and the founding Director of the Institute’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and served in that role until 2007. In 1990, he co-founded iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT), where he served variously as CTO, Chairman and board member until 2011. In 2008 he founded Rethink Robotics where is he Chairman and CTO. Rodney has been honored by election to the National Academy of Engineering, and has been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of Computing Machinery, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. University of PennsylvaniaEduardo D. Glandt Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor, Department of Bioengineering website When a human brain is plagued by disease or injury, clinicians and engineers work together to devise interventions -- such as brain stimulation by exogenous or implantable devices -- aimed at mitigating symptoms and restoring healthy function. Yet, historically these efforts have been hampered by the fact that while the interventions are targeted to a single brain area, they have an unexpected and puzzling impact on other brain areas distant from the target region. Recent groundbreaking work at the intersection of neuroscience, control theory, and network science, offers a theoretical framework in which to understand and predict these distant effects, and to define personalized interventions to push the brain from its current state to a desired final state. In this talk, I will review these recent developments, outline their promise for enhancing cognition and for treating disorders of mental health, discuss their current limitations, and highlight relevant ethical considerations. Danielle S. Bassett is the Eduardo D. Glandt Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She is most well-known for her work blending neural and systems engineering to identify fundamental mechanisms of cognition and disease in human brain networks. She received a B.S. in physics from the Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge, UK. Following a postdoctoral position at UC Santa Barbara, she was a Junior Research Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. In 2012, she was named American Psychological Association's `Rising Star' and given an Alumni Achievement Award from the Schreyer Honors College at Pennsylvania State University for extraordinary achievement under the age of 35. In 2014, she was named an Alfred P Sloan Research Fellow and received the MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant. In 2015, she received the IEEE EMBS Early Academic Achievement Award, and was named an ONR Young Investigator. In 2016, she received an NSF CAREER award and was named one of Popular Science’s Brilliant 10. She is the founding director of the Penn Network Visualization Program, a combined undergraduate art internship and K-12 outreach program bridging network science and the visual arts. Her work -- which has resulted in 132 published articles -- has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Army Research Office, the Army Research Laboratory, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. A series of short films curated by Heather will be incorporated throughout the program, followed by a talk on various aspects of the social and ethical implications of robotics, AI and related technologies, as highlighted in the films. Oregon State UniversityAssistant Professor, Computer Science and Robotics website Dr. Heather Knight is an assistant professor in Computer Science and Robotics at Oregon State University. There, her CHARISMA research group uses methods from Entertainment to bootstrap the development of Social Robots. Her research interests include minimal social robots, robot ethics, charismatic machines, and multi-robot/multi-human social interaction. She also runs Marilyn Monrobot, a robot theater company with comedy performances and an annual Robot Film Festival. Past honors include robot comedy on TED.com, a robot flower garden installation at the Smithsonian/Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, and a British Video Music Award for OK GO's "This Too Shall Pass" music video, featuring a two-floor Rube Goldberg Machine. She was named to AdWeek's top 100 creatives in 2017, and Forbes List's 30 under 30 in Science in 2011. Her academic background includes a postdoc at Stanford University exploring minimal robots and autonomous car interfaces, a PhD in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University exploring Expressive Motion for Low Degree of Freedom Robots, and M.S. and B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she developed a sensate skin for a robot teddy bear at the MIT Media Lab. Additional past work includes: robotics and instrumentation at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and sensor design at Aldebaran Robotics. Virginia TechAssistant Professor, Center for Public Administration and Policy Sara R Jordan is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech. Her research touches on issues of ethics in public policy, particularly areas of high technology policy and research policy. Her previous work appears in Accountability in Research, Public Performance and Management Review, and Administration & Society. She is currently working on issues surrounding ethical participation in e-government and public policy responses to high-technology innovations, such as autonomous vehicles and integrated biospecimen repositories. White House OSTPFormer Policy Advisor Terah Lyons is a former Policy Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and a Mozilla Foundation Technology Policy Fellow. Terah most recently led a policy portfolio in the Obama Administration focused on machine intelligence, including AI, robotics, and intelligent transportation systems. In her work at OSTP, she helped establish and direct the White House Future of Artificial Intelligence Initiative, oversaw robotics policy and regulatory matters, led the Administration’s work from the White House on civil and commercial unmanned aircraft systems/drone integration into the U.S. airspace system, and advised on Federal automated vehicles policy. She also advised on issues related to diversity and inclusion in the technology industry and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Prior to her work at the White House, Terah was a Fellow with the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences based in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a graduate of Harvard University, where she currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Alumni Association. IEEEManaging Director, Technical Activities Moderator Mary Ward-Callan is the Staff Executive at the IEEE responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the IEEE Technical Communities within the IEEE and of the Conferences Line of Operations. The 47 Technical Societies and Councils, and numerous emerging technical communities collectively deliver more than 1800 conferences, 192 periodicals, countless technical training seminars, and certificate programs. Mary has been responsible for the programming and visibility of new technology areas within the IEEE, such as Internet of Things, Software Defined Networks, Rebooting Computing, 5G, and Big Data. Mary led the Award winning IEEE Humanitarian Technology Challenge; a project that used solid engineering techniques to provide solutions to pressing world problems such as lighting Haiti/Africa/Nicaragua, providing data communications to healthcare facilities in Peru, and providing RFID patient identification in India. Prior to joining the IEEE, Mary was an Executive Director in the telecommunications industry, employed by Telcordia, Bellcore, and Bell Labs. Mary’s career included significant contributions in local loop design, network simulation, network operations and management, sub-network control, and product testing and product certification. Mary led the network operations activities for several technologies such as SONET, ATM, DLC, VPN and SMDS. She has extensive experience in business management, process re-engineering, requirements management, quality, and project management. Mary is a Certified Association Executive, holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Mathematics from Vassar College (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa), and a Master of Science degree (MSEE) in Electrical Engineering and Computing from Princeton University. She completed the Executive Development Program at Bellcore as well as numerous other key management courses Mary is the recipient of the 2017 IEEE Eric Herz Award and the 2013 NAPW VIP Woman of the Year award. She is currently a member of the Vaughn College Board of Trustees. Mary is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of ASAE. She is married with three children and lives in New Jersey, USA. Duke UniversityDirector, Humans and Autonomy Laboratory Professor Mary (Missy) Cummings is the director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University. She received her B.S. in Mathematics from the US Naval Academy in 1988, her M.S. in Space Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994, and her Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2004. A naval officer and military pilot from 1988-1999, she was one of the U.S. Navy's first female fighter pilots. She is currently a Professor in the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering, the Duke Institute of Brain Sciences, and the Duke Computer Science Department. She is a fellow for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and is the co-chair for the World Economic Forum’s Council on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Her research interests include human supervisory control, human-unmanned vehicle interaction, human-autonomous system collaboration, human-robot interaction, human-systems engineering, and the ethical and social impact of technology. IEEE SpectrumSenior Editor Moderator Philip E. Ross became a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum in June 2006. His interests include transportation, energy storage, artificial intelligence, natural-language processing, and the economic aspects of technology. He has reported on solar towers in Spain, cloud seeding in Nevada, telescopes atop a mountain in the Canaries, and robotic cars in California and Germany. He blogs mainly for Cars That Think, which won a 2015 Neal Award. Earlier in his career he worked for Red Herring, Forbes, Scientific American, and The New York Times. He has a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and another, in journalism, from the University of Michigan. Intensive efforts to re-create human cognition will transform the way people work, learn, and play. This panel will explore the relationship between brain research and artificial intelligence advancements, including the social and ethical implications of building machines that think like humans. Carnegie Mellon UniversityL.L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, and Head of the Department of Philosophy Dr. David Danks is the L.L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy and Psychology and the head of the department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. His research largely falls at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and machine learning, using ideas and frameworks from each to inform the others. His primary research in recent years has been in computational cognitive science: developing fully-specified computational models to describe, predict, and most importantly, explain human behavior. His other major research project, partly supported by an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, has focused on the human impacts when autonomy is introduced into a technological system. In particular, he has examined the relations of trust and identity as they are affected by technologies such as self-driving vehicles, autonomous weapons systems, and autonomous cyber-systems. Wilson CenterDirector of Biology Collectives, Science and Technology Innovation Program Eleonore Pauwels is a writer and international science policy expert, who specializes in the governance of emerging and converging technologies. At the Wilson Center, she is the Director of Biology Collectives, within the Science and Technology Innovation Program. Her research focuses on the convergence of transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence, genome-editing, digital bio-engineering and automation technologies. She analyzes the promises and perils that will likely arise with the development of the Internet of Living Things and future networks of intelligent and connected bio-labs. Her work also fosters the democratization of disruptive health technologies, including AI and genomics, and the inclusion of patients and citizens through participatory health design (her Citizen Health Innovators Project). Eleonore regularly testifies before U.S. and European authorities including the U.S. Department of State, NAS, NIH, NCI, FDA, the National Intelligence Council, the European Commission and the UN. But she is also well-versed in communicating complex and novel scientific developments for lay audiences (her TEDxCERN on CRISPR) and her writing has been featured in media outlets such as Nature, The New York Times, The Guardian, Scientific American, Le Monde, Slate and The Miami Herald. This panel explores the opportunities and challenges regarding educating ethical engineers in the 21st century, given the rapid advance and growing complexity of technology. Panelists will discuss: the need to prepare future professionals for the fact that much of unethical behavior is due to being so completely absorbed by a particular engineering problem that, as Richard Feynman put it, “you stop thinking”; the need to contextualize engineering ethics through exposing engineering students to concepts and methods drawn from science and technology studies; and bringing ethics into engineering design labs by introducing concepts such as privacy by design. North Carolina State UniversityAssociate Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and Society, and Visiting Scholar, Genetic Engineering and Society Center Moderator Joseph R. Herkert, D.Sc., is Associate Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and Society and a Visiting Scholar in the Genetic Engineering and Society Center, North Carolina State University. He was formerly Lincoln Associate Professor of Ethics and Technology in the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, Arizona State University (retired May 2015). Herkert has been teaching engineering ethics and science, technology & society courses for thirty years. He is editor of Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Engineering: Selected Readings (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2000) and co-editor of The Growing Gap between Emerging Technologies and Legal-Ethical Oversight: The Pacing Problem (Springer, 2011), and has published numerous articles on engineering ethics and societal implications of technology in engineering, law, social science, and applied ethics journals. Herkert previously served as Editor of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine and an Associate Editor of Engineering Studies. He has been a leader in many professional organizations including the Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the National Institute for Engineering Ethics, and the Engineering Ethics and Liberal Education/Engineering and Society (LEES) Divisions of the American Society for Engineering Education. In 2005 Herkert received the Sterling Olmsted Award, the highest honor bestowed by LEES, for “making significant contributions in the teaching and administering of liberal education in engineering education.” Herkert is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Senior Member of IEEE, and served a three-year term on the IEEE Ethics and Member Conduct Committee. He currently serves on the IEEE Ad Hoc Committee on IEEE Ethics Programs and the Advisory Group of the Center for Engineering Ethics and Society of the National Academy of Engineering. Herkert received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University and his doctorate in Engineering & Policy from Washington University in St. Louis. Georgia Institute of TechnologyAssociate Professor, School of Public Policy, Director of the Philosophy Program, and Co-Director, Center for Ethics and Technology Dr. Michael Hoffmann is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy, Director of the Philosophy Program, and Co-Director of the Center for Ethics and Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the development of software tools and educational approaches to foster students’ ability to cope with wicked problems in small teams. Wicked problems can be framed in a number of different ways, depending on varying interests, world-views, values, or differences regarding the scale on which people think the problem should be addressed. Decisions on wicked problems often lead to confusion when people do not understand that others look at the same problem from a completely different point of view, or to serious conflicts. Designers of new technologies often face wicked problems without even knowing it. Michael developed the collaborative argument mapping tool "AGORA-net " and is currently working on the Reflect! platform which focuses on consensus building on wicked problems and in intractable conflicts. His projects are supported, among others, by grants from the U.S. Department of Education and NSF’s "Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies" program. University of VirginiaAnne Shirley Carter Olsson Professor of Applied Ethics, Emeritus Deborah G. Johnson recently retired as the Anne Shirley Carter Olsson Professor of Applied Ethics in the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Program in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. Best known for her work on computer ethics and engineering ethics, Johnson’s research examines the ethical, social, and policy implications of technology, especially information technology. Johnson is the author/editor of seven books including most recently, Surveillance and Transparency as Sociotechnical Accountability: A House of Mirrors co-authored with Priscilla Regan (Routledge, 2014). She is currently working on Engineering Ethics: Contemporary Debates for Yale University Press. In addition to her books, Johnson has published over 100 papers in a wide variety of journals and edited volumes. In recognition of her contributions, Johnson received the Joseph Weizenbaum Award for life-long contributions to information and computer ethics from the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology in 2015. She received the John Barwise prize from the American Philosophical Association in 2004; the Sterling Olmsted Award from the Liberal Education Division of the American Society for Engineering Education in 2001; and the Making a Difference Award from the ACM Special Interest Group on Computers and Society in 2000. UC BerkeleyAssociate Professor, School of Information, and Faculty Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology website Deirdre K. Mulligan is an Associate Professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, a faculty Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, and an affiliated faculty on the new Hewlett funded Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. Mulligan’s research explores legal and technical means of protecting values such as privacy, freedom of expression, and fairness in emerging technical systems. Her book, Privacy on the Ground: Driving Corporate Behavior in the United States and Europe, a study of privacy practices in large corporations in five countries, conducted with UC Berkeley Law Prof. Kenneth Bamberger was published by MIT Press. She is a member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Information Science and Technology advisory board; a member of the National Academy of Science Forum on Cyber Resilience; a Commissioner on the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission; and a board member of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Partnership on AI. top “We call it the building for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council, but in reality it should be the nation's home of science in America, and will be looked upon by our fellow citizens and the world at large as the place where the creative mind will be able to do much to bring about a better existence for the future people of the world.” – NAS President Charles D. Walcott, 1922 top top There are many great hotel options near the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Building. While we suggest the Foggy Bottom area, there are additional hotel options in Downtown DC and other surrounding areas that are near metro stations and bus stops which make the NAS Building easily accessible. The map provides an overview of hotels in the area. Looking for a hotel room? We have limited space at the Washington Marriott at Metro Center (less than 2 miles from the NAS Building). Contact Shana Pepin at s.pepin@ieee.org to book your room at our discount rate while availability lasts! Driving and metro directions to the NAS Building can be found here . top The 2017 IEEE TechEthics Conference is funded in part by a grant from:     Content and Promotional Partners include: The “Bridge” logo is used with permission of the National Academy of Sciences/National Academy of Engineering.   top     Questions? Looking for more information? Email us at techethics@ieee.org top