The Georgetown University Technology and Society Initiative, which supports the intersection of government, ethics and technology, received a $10.5 million gift from a graduate and her husband.

The donation will allocate $5 million to the establishment of a technology, ethics and society chair in the College, $5 million to an endowed scholarship fund in the College to provide financial aid and support student research, and $500,000 to support Georgetown’s Ethics Lab to create undergraduate courses focused on technology, ethics and society (TES). 

The gift will provide opportunities for students who wish to study computer science (CS) and TES, according to Mark Maloof, a professor in Georgetown’s computer science department.

“I am most excited about how the gift will impact undergraduate education at Georgetown,” Maloof wrote to The Hoya. “We are in the process of launching a new CS major that integrates CS with applied ethics and policy. The gift will endow a chair in the College who will be a prominent scholar in technology, ethics, and society (TES). The recipient will offer undergraduate courses for this new major.”

The donation will help to expand courses offered at the Ethics Lab, according to Maloof.

“The Ethics Lab will also use funds from the gift to create undergraduate courses on tech, ethics, and society, which also will support the new major and two additional undergraduate programs, a minor in TES and a TES concentration for CS majors,” Maloof wrote.

Due to the gift the Ethics Lab will be able to offer new pilot courses and integrate ethics and computer science courses together, according to Margaret Little, philosophy professor and director of the Ethics Lab.

“With the support of this gift, Ethics Lab has been able to serve as a design platform — mounting pilot courses, bringing together faculty and students in design sessions, and developing new models for integrating ethics into computer science courses — for the new suite of undergraduate programs in Tech, Ethics, & Society that will launch this fall,” Little wrote in an email to The Hoya.

Applicants for the courses that are yet to be created were encouraged to apply to three new tenure positions in early 2022: two endowed professorships and one assistant professor appointment. Each would have a research appointment position in the Center for Digital Ethics, a graduate research unit launched in late 2021 that fosters collaboration between humanities and data science researchers.

The lab is excited to be recruiting for the new chair position, according to Little.

“We are actively recruiting now for the new Chair and Director in Tech, Ethics, & Society,” Little wrote in an email to The Hoya. “The candidates are extraordinary, drawn to Georgetown’s vision.” 

Maloof said that the most significant integration related to technology and society in past classes was in his course titled “Artificial Intelligence,” which he taught in the fall of 2019.

“With funding from the Mozilla Foundation, I worked with a team from the Ethics lab to develop three in-class activities designed to help students understand the ethical implications of AI technologies,” Maloof wrote. “In one exercise students designed a hypothetical system that used machine learning to make admissions decisions at Georgetown. They thought critically about how such a system might exhibit bias in its decisions.” 

The Mozilla Foundation is a nonprofit that works to keep the internet a public resource accessible to everyone.  

The donation will help to support students, faculty, and curriculum related to the technology and science initiative student, faculty and curriculum needs, according to Maloof.

“The most notable impact that I see is how the gift supports Georgetown’s efforts to strengthen our prominence in technology, ethics, and society on multiple fronts,” Maloof wrote. “Certainly, financial aid, faculty hiring, and curriculum development are important as individual initiatives, but I was most gratified to see that the gift will support all three.”