Since 2022 we have included a course called Ethical Aspects in NLP in our Bachelor in Information Science.
The module aims to establish explicit connections between the practical skills students acquire in natural language processing and the potential impact of applying those skills,” explains Nissim. “Instead of treating ethical concerns as an afterthought, the goal is to expose students to new ideas put forward by the research community and encourage them to critically examine the rapidly evolving technologies entering the market. Ultimately, the course aims to be transformative, fostering critical thinking and awareness by allowing space for open questioning and challenging unstated assumptions inherent in technology design and use.”
As a final project, I have experimented with a few options to engage students with experts in the community, as well as target groups in society at large, such as high school students, the elderly, etc. so that they start to learn how to effectively communicate the impact of language technology on society.
Final Project 2022
Interview with experts in the field.
As a member of the ACL 2021 Ethics Reviewing Committee, and the ACL Ethics Committee (I served from 2022-2024), I had regular contact with my co-members, who are all researchers actively involved in the ethics discussion in our field. They were kind enough to lend themselves to be interviewed by my students as an end-of-course project. The interview questions were created, revised, deleted during the seven weeks of the course, which revolved around some core topics such as language specific features, bias, data, downstream applications, evaluation, etc. Before running the actual interview online with a total of 9 researchers across the world (from Argentina, Canada, France, Italy, Singapore, UAE, USA), the students rehearsed it in class with me, and prepared a whole script that enabled them to stay on track with their prepared questions, taking notes, and still make the most of the opportunity and leave some space for on-the-spot variations.
Example questions:
Many thanks to Tim Baldwin, Luciana Benotti, Sun Li Blodgett, Karën Fort, Dirk Hovy, Min-Yen Kan, Saif Mohammad, Xanda Schofield, and Yulia Tsvetkov for agreeing to have my students interview them!
Final Project 2023
Presentations in high schools to talk about the perks and perils of language technology.
https://www.rug.nl/let/studeren-bij-ons/ik/
Final Project 2024
Final Project 2025
- Presentation on Language Technology and Ethics at a high school in Turin (Liceo Scientifico)
- Creation of multi-content website with information (in and out)
- AI awareness for seniors: educate elderly against the dangers of AI-based scams, plus education towards a more rewarding use of AI