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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Nassim JafariNaimiNassim Parvin, associate professor of digital media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, discussed her impressions of the play DATA by Matthew Libby performed at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, the danger of predictive algorithms taking away human agency, and the need for storytelling to illuminate more human-technology relationships in the article "To be Human is to Change" published by the Alliance Theatre on May 12.
An excerpt:
ALLIANCE: YOU WORK WITH SOME OF THE NATION’S MOST TALENTED STUDENTS AT GEORGIA TECH. WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE YOUR STUDENTS FACE IN THE TRANSITION FROM WORK IN ACADEMIA TO WORK AS EMPLOYEES IN TECH COMPANIES?
Nassim Parvin Our students want to make a positive change, but they are often ill-equipped to deal with ethical issues because they see ethics as their personal moral responsibility. They think that as long as they are committed to doing the right thing they will be able to do it. And that doing the right thing is obvious. Whereas when they go out in the world, they can't always make all the decisions. And even when they can, it's not always clear what problem that they are trying to address and how they might address it. I often go back to the failure of our educational institutions when we teach subject matter expertise to students but fail to accompany it with ways of thinking about ethical issues.
