CPS 273: Teaching & Learning Machine Ethics
Databases
The following databases are used most often by students studying Economics. Use them to search for high-quality research related to your topic. Business Source Complete is a great starting point for Economics-focused research.
- Business Source Complete This link opens in a new windowWorld's definitive scholarly business database, providing the leading collection of bibliographic and full text content. As part of the comprehensive coverage offered by this database, indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included. In addition to the searchable cited references provided for more than 1,300 journals, Business Source Complete contains detailed author profiles for the 40,000 most-cited authors in the database. Covers marketing, management, accounting, finance and economics. Updated daily.
- EconLit (Economics Literature) This link opens in a new windowComprehensive, international, partially annotated bibliography of economics literature. Indexes over 300 journals as well as books, dissertations, working papers, and collective volumes. Covers 1969 to the present.
- Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new windowIndexes articles from English-language magazines and academic journals in a wide range of interdisciplinary fields. Covers 1907 to 1984.
- JStor This link opens in a new windowA collection of full-text articles from over 3000 scholarly journals, many dating from the nineteenth-century to the last 4 or 5 years. A growing number of titles are available through the current issues, as part of their "Current Scholarship Program". Select Advanced Search to strategically search amongst 45 disciplines. Choose PDF from within JStor to properly view and print articles. For convenience, JStor is now searchable on Facebook.
- Mergent Archives This link opens in a new windowA collection of digitized Moody's corporate manuals, dating from 1909.
- Mergent Online This link opens in a new windowMergent is a suite of information resources that enables in-depth business and financial research. Included is information on U. S. and international companies (public and private), industries, investment reports, government filings, economic time series, and country profiles. To be discontinued June 30, 2025. See Mergent Market Atlas.
- NBER Working Paper Series This link opens in a new windowProvides results of NBER research available to other economists in preliminary form to encourage discussion and suggestions for revision before publication.
- Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) This link opens in a new windowNexis Uni features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.
- Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new windowIndexes over 300 English-language periodicals covering anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, social work, sociology, and related fields. Covers 1983 to the present.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowClarivate Analytics' premier citation databases in the sciences (physical, life and social) and arts & humanities. Search for articles that cite a known author or work or by standard search queries. Covers 1864 to the present.
- IDEAS: Economic and Financial ResearchIDEAS is the largest bibliographic database dedicated to Economics and available freely on the Internet. Based on RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), it indexes over 2,700,000 items of research, including over 2,500,000 that can be downloaded in full text.
Areas of Interest and Ethical Concerns
- AI/ML
- Robotics
- Resources (e.g., minerals, water, electricity)
- Human Labor (e.g., replacement of human labor, hidden laborers)
- Fairness/Bias
- Accessibility
- Rising Inequality
Topic Description
There are multiple topics that this project could consider:
- Data Capitalism and Inequality: Can we actualize ‘machine ethics’ in an unequal society? In other words, is it the AI/ML or the prevailing socio-political and economic order which is at the root cause of these problems which we are associating with AI/ML.
- Technological Advancements: How is AI/ML qualitatively different as compared to previous technological advancements which also led to socio-economic disruptions in economy/society?
- Inclusivity and Decentralization: Can AI be used to create a relatively more robust and inclusive economy, perhaps through decentralization?
- Impact on labor: New technology has always disrupted social relations but in the age of AI how working people are being affected in terms of job losses is a major political and economic concern. AI and Machine Learning related industries tend to replace workers with machines and give rise to unemployment.
Course Description
In this class, We will study inequality as a multidimensional phenomenon from a pluralistic political economy perspective. The course will focus on critically analyzing the political and economic factors that have led to rising inequality in the United States and globally over the past three to four decades. We will explore how different schools of economic thought understand and rationalize the relationship between inequality and economic development. Specifically, we will draw from Institutional, neoclassical, Marxian, and Feminist frameworks to understand, assess, and deconstruct the complexities of socio-economic inequality. We will also analyze potential policy measures that may help reduce inequality and promote social justice.