AI teammates are a new variation of artificial intelligence designed to supplement employees in the workplace, boosting productivity while reducing burnout. Their integration into society underscores the urgent need for clear frameworks and regulations to ensure their ethical and responsible use.
View More The End of Break Room Banter: AI Teammates Reshape Workplace Culture
Colossal is a company committed to de-extinction. Its main mission is to bring back the woolly mammoth. This mission may help conserve critically endangered Asian elephants and mitigate the impacts of global warming. However, it also raises ethical concerns regarding the livelihood of wildlife that currently reside in the mammoth’s habitat.
View More De-extinction: Does the End Justify the Means?
The recent room-temperature superconductor LK-99 controversy highlighted significant challenges within scientific communication and raised critical questions about the role of engineering in societal advancement. LK-99’s rapid rise and fall from scientific prominence reflects a need for essential virtues of engineering practice. This article analyzes the engineer’s societal role and establishes a framework to emphasize the importance of three virtues – joy, compassion, and rigor. These virtues are crucial for fostering responsible innovation and advancing human well-being through technology.
View More A Dreamer, A Destroyer of Worlds
Engineering requires a certain dedication to protect the communities being served. This dedication is fostered by ethical engineers. The USC Viterbi School of Engineering aspires to cultivate such engineers. To ensure they live up to ethical obligations, Viterbi should look to establish its students with the values of integrity, altruism, and courage. Engineers with integrity exhibit perseverance in the face of failure and hold themselves accountable for the honest delivery of research findings. Through altruism, engineers are able to dedicate themselves to the people and environments their choices will impact. Lastly, courageous engineers push aside selfish desires, address uncomfortable truths, and have an unwavering commitment to represent those who cannot have a say in decisions. Together, these traits equip engineers with the characteristics needed to create a better future.
View More USC Viterbi School Prepares Virtuous Leaders in Engineering
In an ever-evolving technological landscape, defining the ideal engineer is complex. The role of an engineer is not merely to innovate, for their responsibilities go beyond their field of study. Certain attributes form the foundation of a proficient engineer. These virtues, integrity, authenticity, and open-mindedness, can guide an engineer in developing their moral compass, which is an essential asset in practice. As servants to society, engineers should resist the temptation to exploit new technologies and remain true to themselves, exemplifying respectful attributes in the workplace. The future of engineering remains obscure due to the rapid pace of technological development. In such moments, it is crucial to remember why the role of an engineer is invaluable in the first place: to make the world a better place.
View More Open, Upright, and True, Despite Temptation
Engineers must embody a unique blend of traits that empower them to address the complex challenges in their field. The cultivation of curiosity, discernment, and a collaborative spirit equips engineers with specific skills necessary to contribute innovative solutions to the world. Curiosity pushes them to lend their expertise and time to discovery. Discernment allows engineers to select design characteristics and objectively evaluate flaws to ensure that their creations align with their ethical responsibilities. A collaborative spirit helps engineers expand their perspectives, supplement gaps in their knowledge, optimize design results, and ensure the best possible outcome for a project. These traits, along with the necessary ethical background, must be integrated into engineering curriculums to shape a sustainable future for generations to come.
View More The Building Blocks of an Ethical Engineer: Curiosity, Discernment, and Collaborative Spirit
Engineers are tasked with improving everyday life with our technologies. This is a tremendous responsibility. Our work touches the lives of almost all individuals. To fulfill this responsibility, we must imbue certain virtues into our character to ensure our creations are virtuous. Thus, to be a virtuous engineer one must possess the traits of patience, humility, and curiosity.
View More The Virtues of Engineering
A slurry of executive orders has led to a massive purging of public health information from the CDC and other federal websites. Thankfully, data-hoarding Redditors have come to the rescue by posting any information they had managed to salvage from these websites. As engineers, if we have the skill set we should follow suit and help with any effort to make this important data accessible to those who need it.
View More CDC Censorship: Engineers to the Rescue of Public Health Data
VAR technology was adapted to make calls made by referees more accurate. For better or worse it has changed the way soccer is played. The 2024 Euros have been riddled with examples of how VAR is hurting soccer.
View More Is VAR Ruining Football?
Tragedy struck on the night of March 26 when the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore came tumbling down. The collapse occurred after a large container ship, the Dali, collided with the bridge. However, the collapse was far from the most heartbreaking news of the event; Six men who had been working on the bridge when it fell lost their lives. The six men, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, Miguel Luna, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, Carlos Hernandez, Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, and Jose Mynor Lopez, were all migrant workers from Central America. As we remember and honor their lives, their deaths highlight the lack of care in the construction industry when it comes to protecting Latino migrant workers.
View More Fighting for our Latino Migrant Workers after Baltimore’s Bridge Collapse