Diversity, Ethics and Privacy

The pervasive digitalisation of society generates a range of issues with respect to diversity, ethics and privacy that need careful examination if we are to harvest the societal benefits that digitalisation may generate and to minimise its harms. The unprecedented scale reach and complexity of the impact of digital technologies create urgency for both researchers and industry stakeholders to ensure that they are acting responsibly.

The DIREC partners aim at increasing the diversity of research groups and developing ways to educate both practicing and future computer scientists in ethical and moral reasoning. This will help them to acknowledge and interrogate the decisions they make in their efforts to develop new technologies or to apply existing solutions to new contexts.

The objectives are:

To increase the theoretical, empirical, and technological knowledge within
the area of diversity and ethics in computing, with particular emphasis on contemporary issues of gender, privacy, security and AI.

To develop effective methods for identifying potential genderrelated and ethical pitfalls and for developing roadmaps that can result in better, more diverse, ethical and trustworthy technologies and processes. Denmark is positioned to become a leader in this area as well as to produce a workforce that is capable of addressing these issues together with a high level of technical competency.

In addition to the already addressed synergies within the thematic areas of AI, data management and (cyber)security, the theme of diversity, ethics and privacy has synergies within and needs to be addressed in the other vertical themes as well. For instance, questions of how to respect diversity, ethics and privacy are naturally raised in the design of technologies for humancomputer interactions (HCI) and its subfield of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW).

In the following video our workstream manager Carsten Schürmann briefly explains the importance of working with trust.

Carsten Schürmann, professor at ITU and DIREC Workstream manager

projects

Bridge project

Verified Voting Protocols and Blockchains

There is constant interest for Internet Voting by election commissions around the world. At the same time, there is a need for online voting in blockchain governance. However, building an internet voting system is not easy: The design of new cryptographic protocols is error-prone, and public trust in the elected body is easily threatened. This project aims to improve the security and quality of the internet voting system and influence regulation on minimum quality requirements for blockchains.

Bridge project

REWORK – The future of hybrid work

Remote and hybrid work will certainly be part of most work practices, but what should these future work practices look like? Should we merely attempt to fix what we already have or can we be bolder and speculate a different kind of workplace future? Together with companies, this project seeks a vision of the future that integrates hybrid work experiences with grace and decency.