E08 - PLENARY: Responsible Research Practices in Computing

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Over the past few years, there have been calls from academia, industry, government, and civil society for researchers in computing to grapple with the societal impacts of their work. These calls go beyond the long-standing requirement to attend to the welfare of the human subjects involved in research studies; rather, these recent calls ask researchers to reflect on and attempt to address the potential negative impacts of their research findings on society more broadly. These calls have been especially common and particularly forceful when it comes to research on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, with a number of leading conferences and publication venues introducing requirements or recommendations that authors include a statement in their submissions about the possible downstream harms posed by their work. While there is growing agreement that researchers, and industry researchers in particular, should do more to attend to the dangers posed by the release of their work, it is still unclear how this should be done effectively. This session, which brings together a number of key actors who have been deeply involved in this debate over the past few years, will take stock of recent efforts, identify key challenges, and develop ideas for a path forward.