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There is not enough humanity in IT

by on15 October 2018


Head of the Mozilla Foundation warns about a need for philosophiers and psychologists  

The biggest cheese in the Mozzarella Foundation - Mitchell Baker - is warning that IT companies need to diversify their hiring practices to include more people from backgrounds in philosophy and psychology if they want to tackle the problem of misinformation online.

He warned that: "hiring employees who mainly come from Stem -- science, technology, engineering and maths - will produce a new generation of technologists with the same blindspots as those who are currently in charge, a move that will 'come back to bite us.'"

Baker said that while Stem was a necessity, and educating more people in Stem topics is clearly critical, every student of today needs some higher level of literacy across the Stem bases.

"But one thing that's happened in 2018 is that we've looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallised for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behaviour, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life."

 

Last modified on 15 October 2018
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