Comprehensive Course Review Sheet: CIST 3110 IT Ethics (Modules 1–6)

What is ethics?

Moral principles that guide right and wrong conduct.

What is ethical behavior?

Actions considered good and right under a moral code.

What are ethical standards?

Specific expectations for ethical professional conduct.

What are ethical principles?

Frameworks of standards guiding ethical professional behavior.

What is the Golden Rule?

Do not do to others what you would consider harmful to yourself.

Is legal behavior always ethical?

No. Something can be legal but still ethically wrong.

What are personal values?

Broad beliefs about appropriate or inappropriate behavior.

What are terminal values?

Desired end states, such as freedom, security, or happiness.

What are instrumental values?

Preferred methods used to achieve desired outcomes.

What is an ethical dilemma?

A choice involving competing actions with important moral consequences.

What is a sociotechnical system?

A system combining technology, people, organizations, and social forces.

What are the four STS components?

Technology, people, organizations, and social forces.

Why does STS theory matter?

Outcomes come from interactions among technology and society, not technology alone.

What is distributed responsibility?

Ethical responsibility is shared across designers, organizations, data, and governance.

What does STS theory reject?

The idea that an algorithm alone is responsible for an outcome.

How can AI be a sociotechnical system?

Its impacts depend on code, data, users, organizations, and governance.

What is Value-Sensitive Design?

A framework that incorporates human values into technical design.

What values can VSD address?

Privacy, autonomy, fairness, trust, and other human values.

What does VSD imply about technology?

Technology is not neutral; design choices embed values.

What are VSD's three investigations?

Conceptual, empirical, and technical investigations.

What does the ACM Code of Ethics provide?

Professional standards for responsible computing practice.

Why does scale create ethical risk?

Small technical choices can affect millions of people.

What is moral distance?

Feeling detached from the real-world effects of one's technical work.

What happened in Facebook's Emotional Contagion experiment?

Facebook altered News Feeds for nearly 700,000 users to study emotions.

What was the major ethical issue with Facebook's experiment?

Users were not given explicit informed consent.

What did the Facebook case demonstrate?

Large platforms can create widespread ethical harm through design choices.

What was the university financial-aid algorithm designed to maximize?

Student retention.

Why was the financial-aid algorithm ethically controversial?

It disadvantaged applicants from certain zip codes.

What is Milgram's obedience experiment about?

It demonstrated how authority can influence people to follow harmful instructions.

Why is Milgram relevant to IT ethics?

Professionals may follow organizational authority despite harmful consequences.

What are the four major ethical frameworks?

Utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and justice theory.

What is utilitarianism?

Choose the action producing the greatest net good for the greatest number.

Who are major utilitarian philosophers?

Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

What is consequentialism?

Judging morality primarily by an action's outcomes.

What is the Greatest Happiness Principle?

Actions are right when they promote happiness and wrong when they produce pain.

What is impartiality in utilitarianism?

Everyone's utility should be considered equally.

What are Mill's higher pleasures?

Intellectual and moral pleasures considered superior to physical pleasures.

What is deontology?

An ethics framework based on duties, rules, and moral rights.

Who is associated with deontology?

Immanuel Kant.

What is a categorical duty?

A moral rule that should apply regardless of consequences.

What is Kant's universalization idea?

Act only according to rules that could be universalized.

What are moral rights?

Fundamental rights such as privacy, liberty, and fair treatment.

What is virtue ethics?

An approach focused on developing good moral character.

Who is associated with virtue ethics?

Aristotle.

What question does virtue ethics ask?

What kind of person or organization should I be?

What is eudaimonia?

Human flourishing achieved through living virtuously.

What is phronesis?

Practical wisdom used to make good decisions in complex situations.

How are virtues developed?

Through practice, repetition, and habituation.

What is justice theory?

An ethical framework focused on fairness and equitable treatment.

Who is strongly associated with justice theory?

John Rawls and Aristotle.

What is distributive justice?

Fair allocation of benefits, resources, and burdens.

What is procedural justice?

Fair, transparent, and unbiased decision-making processes.

What is Rawls' Difference Principle?

Inequalities are acceptable only when they benefit the least advantaged.

What is the Veil of Ignorance?

Designing rules without knowing your own social position.

Why does the Veil of Ignorance promote fairness?

It encourages rules that protect people regardless of their social position.

How would utilitarianism judge the $200,000 bribe?

Reject it because long-term societal harm outweighs short-term profit.

How would deontology judge the bribe?

Reject it because bribery violates moral and legal duties.

How would virtue ethics judge the bribe?

Reject it because bribery shows dishonesty and poor character.

How would justice theory judge the bribe?

Reject it because it violates fair procurement procedures.

Why was the AI credit-scoring system ethically problematic?

It produced lower approvals for marginalized applicants with similar profiles.

How does utilitarianism evaluate biased credit scoring?

Aggregate social harm can outweigh the bank's increased profits.

How does deontology evaluate biased credit scoring?

People deserve fair individual evaluation rather than discriminatory proxies.

How does justice theory evaluate biased credit scoring?

It can violate distributive and procedural justice.

What is power asymmetry in computing?

Technology creators have more knowledge and control than affected users.

Why is scale ethically important?

Digital systems can distribute one harmful decision to millions instantly.

Why does moral distance matter?

Developers may not see the people harmed by their systems.

What is a software engineer's ethical responsibility?

Avoid deploying insecure, harmful, buggy, or intentionally addictive software.

What is a data scientist's ethical responsibility?

Avoid collecting or selling profiles without clear, valid consent.

What is a cybersecurity professional's ethical responsibility?

Protect systems defensively and avoid unauthorized access or malicious activity.

What is contextual integrity?

Privacy depends on whether information flows appropriately within its context.

Who developed contextual integrity?

Helen Nissenbaum.

What is the core idea of contextual integrity?

Privacy is appropriate information flow, not simply secrecy.

What are the four elements of information flow?

Sender, subject, receiver, and transmission principle.

What is the sender?

The person or organization sharing the information.

What is the subject?

The person the information is about.

What is the receiver?

The person or organization receiving the information.

What is the transmission principle?

The rules or conditions governing how information is transferred.

When does a privacy violation occur?

When information flows in ways that violate the context's norms.

What is the first stage of data loss of control?

Scraping: collecting data without direct permission or knowledge.

What is the second stage of data loss of control?

Aggregation: combining data from different sources.

What is the third stage of data loss of control?

Storage: retaining data beyond its original contextual purpose.

What is the fourth stage of data loss of control?

Inference: using AI to predict unstated information about people.

What is the fifth stage of data loss of control?

Re-identification: linking data to reveal an individual's identity.

What is data scraping?

Automated collection of information from websites or applications.

What is data aggregation?

Combining information from multiple sources to create profiles.

What is contextual purpose shift?

Using information for a purpose different from why it was collected.

What is algorithmic inference?

Using data to predict sensitive or unstated traits.

Why is re-identification a privacy concern?

Anonymous data can sometimes be linked back to specific people.

What are the three parts of the AI governance triad?

Transparency and explainability, plus accountability.

What is transparency in AI?

Openness about training data, design, and deployment context.

What is explainability in AI?

Providing human-understandable reasons for automated outputs.

What is accountability in AI?

Keeping people and organizations responsible for AI decisions and impacts.

Why is AI accountability necessary?

Humans and organizations remain responsible for automated systems.

What is the explainability vs. IP tension?

Explanations may reveal proprietary architectures or trade secrets.

What is the explainability vs. privacy tension?

Explanations may expose sensitive training or personal data.

How can explainability tensions be managed?

Explain decisions without exposing confidential data or proprietary code.

Why is technical explainability insufficient?

An explainable decision can still be unfair, unsafe, or unethical.

What should support technical explainability?

Audits, human oversight, governance, and institutional accountability.

What is a human-in-the-loop system?

A system where humans provide oversight of automated decisions.

What is an algorithmic audit?

A systematic evaluation of an algorithm's behavior, risks, and impacts.