Recent years have seen increased awareness of the potential negative impacts of computing technologies, and yet these harms are often unforeseen when the technology is first deployed. The CCC Council formed a task force on Addressing the Unforeseen Deleterious Impacts of Technology (AUDIT) to investigate possible harmful consequences of computing technology, to what extent these outcomes could have been mitigated or avoided, and who should be responsible for negative impacts. The task force, composed of Nadya Bliss, Kevin Butler, David Danks, Ufuk Topcu, and Matthew Turk, brings together diverse expertise across cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, data science, philosophy/ethics, computer vision, and autonomous systems. The group also spoke with multiple external experts to augment their research experience on the topics.

The AUDIT Task Force has written two blog posts that will be released tomorrow and Thursday on (1) the importance of being responsible for negative consequences of technology that we should have foreseen, and (2) the need to be responsible by design in order to proactively address unforeseen harms of technology.

Please keep an eye out for these fascinating blog posts!