For today’s homework, you will watch a video by a data scientist opining about ethical responsibilities, then fill out a Google form to answer a few questions making sure you watched it.

To be clear, I actually expect you to watch or listen to the full video. The purpose of the assignment is not to fill out a Google form; rather, the purpose is for you to think deeply about what these people have to say.

It’s okay to listen to audio only, or to listen at 1.5x speed or whatever, but you are expected to listen to the whole thing. It’s also okay (great even!) if you disagree with some of what the speaker says; in fact that critical thought process is the whole purpose of this assignment.

Pick a video based on your alpha

• If your alpha is less than 283599, then watch this video of a talk by Katharine Jarmul.

  She is a data scientist and Python expert who has written two famous books, one on Data Wrangling, and a later one on privacy engineering in Python.

  This talk is from a Python conference in 2017, long before her actual work on privacy engineering. As an expert on the “how” of data science in Python, she’s taking a step back and asking about “what” we do any “why” we do it.

• If your alpha is 283600 or more, then watch this video of an interview with Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar.

  Palantir is a major U.S. government contractor that (among other things) makes massive amounts of data easily searchable/actionable/usable by the military, law enforcement, etc.

  Sankar is the Chief Technology Officer at Palantir, so he’s involved at a hands-on level with the technology itself, and he also has interesting personal motivations for the work which you will hear about.

Fill out Google Form

There are a couple short questions to check that you watched the whole thing. Please answer them by filling out this Google form.