2025 – Erhardt Graeff

Using Civic Professionalism to Frame Ethical and Social Responsibility in Engineering

28 May 2025Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

Graeff, E. 2025. Using Civic Professionalism to Frame Ethical and Social Responsibility in Engineering. In: Didier, C., Béranger, A., Bouzin, A., Paris, H., Supiot, J., eds. Engineering and Value Change. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-83549-0_3

Link

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-83549-0_3

Abstract

Most common approaches to ethical and social responsibility in engineering are insufficient to addressing the growing need to ensure engineers and technologists serve the common good. In particular, professional codes of ethics, grand challenges and social entrepreneurship, and corporate adoption of self-policed ethical principles are often toothless in shaping individual and corporate behavior and tend to reinscribe irresponsible technocratic ideologies at the heart of engineering culture. Erin Cech argues there is a “culture of disengagement” in engineering that depoliticizes engineering, separates and differentially values technical and social aspects of engineering work, and embraces the problematic values and worldview of meritocracy. Looking beyond STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and STEM education to civic education and democratic theory, I argue civic professionalism, based on the work of Harry Boyte and Albert Dzur, offers a framing of professional identity and practice to engineers which articulates a positive ethics of virtue and resists technocratic forms of professionalism. It proactively engages in the broader sociopolitical questions connected to engineering work and embraces a democratic epistemology and way of working. Educating engineers to become civic professionals will require cultivating reflexivity and civic skills and virtues, and the creation of experiential learning opportunities that engage authentically with sociopolitical complexity.

Generative AI Devalues the Virtue of Humility; Awareness of Our Human Limitations Inspires Us to Be More Open and Tolerant, to Seek Out Others, to Be More Well-Rounded

2 April 2025Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

Graeff, E. 2025. “Generative AI Devalues the Virtue of Humility; Awareness of Our Human Limitations Inspires Us to Be More Open and Tolerant, to Seek Out Others, to Be More Well-Rounded.” In Anderson, J., & Rainie, L. Expert Views on the Impact of AI on the Essence of Being Human. Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center. https://imaginingthedigitalfuture.org/reports-and-publications/being-human-in-2035/being-human-in-2035-new-ways-of-doing-thinking-and-being/.

Essay

I am worried about humility, and epistemic humility in particular. Most people struggle with awareness of what they know and what they don’t know.

Moreover, it can be challenging to value knowledge you don’t have, such as: others’ lived experiences; wisdom from unfamiliar cultures, faiths, and traditions; or fields you have never meaningfully studied. Generative AI technologies allow us to use knowledge that is beyond us without helping us appreciate what we know or don’t know. In fact, it devalues the virtue of humility.

Humility ensures that we value the creation of new knowledge, that we are awed when other people do things we cannot or did not think to do, and that we take the time to embrace curiosity and deep listening. Generative AI gives us the illusion that we need not be limited by our own experiences and education, that we can simply access all other collective knowledge the AI have been trained on (which is not actually all knowledge).

Awareness of our limitations enables us to be more open and tolerant, to seek out and collaborate with people from different backgrounds, and to want to be more well-rounded humans. If we design our generative AI interfaces to obscure our lack of knowledge and ability, I fear we will diminish a key aspect of our humanity and our civic capacity.

A Call for Civic-minded Technologists

25 March 2025Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

Graeff, E. 2025. “A Call for Civic-minded Technologists.” Presented at the SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, Mar 25.

Presentation

Abstract

Engineering’s “culture of disengagement” (Cech 2014) casts a long shadow on society. The anemic civic philosophy, preached by lauded tech heroes, pretends politics and power don’t apply to technology, that we can reduce most problems to technical challenges, and that meritocracy is justice. There are bright spots—individual, civic-minded technologists; the Tech Workers Coalition; the Public Interest Technology University Network, and the Tech Stewardship Program. But they are insufficient. To address the challenges of our contemporary society, democracy, and sociotechnical systems, we need to understand technology’s civic landscape, reframe the technical expert’s role in democracy, and cultivate engineers to be civic professionals.

The Good-Enough Life book review

15 March 2025Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

The Good-Enough Life by Avram Alpert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Greatness is a problem. As author Avram Alpert tells it, you can trace a lot of what is wrong in Western society to its obsession with greatness. We quickly discern hierarchies, trying to name the best idea, best technology, best group, best person. This cultural hang-up is a toxic ingredient in our individualism and relative misery, our poison politics, and our abuse of the planet. We desperately need some humility and willingness to embrace good-enough approaches to our lives, careers, and policies, so we can all flourish to some degree and have a chance at returning some balance to the Earth.

I found The Good-Enough Life to be an original and compelling argument deserving of our attention in this moment. It sits nicely alongside (and cites) other recent critiques that identify meritocracy as a key cause of our contemporary problems. Pulling not just from philosophy, but from history, sociology, psychology, and literature to make his argument, Alpert offers a very readable book, as far as philosophy goes.

I am particularly drawn to his argument that we lost the value of humility. Here Alpert looks to Aristotelian virtue ethics as a guide, since each virtue is defined as a mean—a balance between vices. Too much unearned confidence is vicious, as is humility that abandons any agency. We want to find just enough humility to take action on what we know, but be mindful of what we don’t know or can’t do alone. Alpert cautions us here against fully embracing Aristotle’s approach, since his classical definition of virtue is meant to differentiate great men. Magnanimous (great-souled) men, exuding virtue, were better than other men and should be idolized. Its a fine thing to strive for virtue, but we mustn’t abandon dignity for all. Once again, humans seem only to eager to find reasons to treat someone as lesser and to believe they deserve their lesser status.

Its hard to imagine a good-enough policy solution from this book. Alpert is careful not to say we must throw off capitalism and embrace socialism. Closely reading both Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek, Alpert lays out pros and cons illustrated by history (and overconfidence) where each economic system has fallen undemocratically flat. I agree that what we need to do is aim for more democracy. Greatness chips away at egalitarianism, at equal rights. We need approaches that return us to more equal circumstances. That’s what good-enoughness offers us in Alpert’s view. Its what the social contract is meant to ensure; we each give up some of our greatness to ensure no one is poor and unprotected.

The book lacks the call to action that similar books might have in specific policy recommendations or ways to reorient your personal behavior and mindset. But I suppose when your main argument is about eschewing greatness and embracing more humility, your prescriptions should be modest.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and recommend it.

View all my reviews

Civic Virtue among Engineers

28 February 202528 February 2025Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

Graeff, E. 2025. “Civic Virtue among Engineers.” Virtues & Vocations, Spring 2025. https://socialconcerns.nd.edu/virtues/magazine-home-spring-2025/civic-virtue-among-engineers/.

Link

https://socialconcerns.nd.edu/virtues/magazine-home-spring-2025/civic-virtue-among-engineers/.

Introduction

My undergraduates at Olin College of Engineering want to make a positive impact. They see engineering as a career path to building a better world. Their initial theories of change are often naive. But I want them to hold onto the hope of positive impact through four years of equations, prototypes, and internships, and feel like they can live their values wherever their careers take them.

A Culture of Disengagement

The fields of engineering and computing have been experiencing a rightful reckoning with the negative impacts of emerging technologies. Their traditional models of personal, professional, and corporate ethics have long been lacking. Now citizens and their governments are realizing their inadequacy.

New research, curriculum, and ethics codes have emerged in response to the global focus on technology ethics. I’ve participated in countless conferences and meetings with scholars, educators, and practitioners trying to figure out how higher education can cultivate the necessary critical mindsets and ethical skills of technologists. I’ve introduced many of the novel ideas, frameworks, and approaches into the design, computer science, and social science courses I teach.

I’m reaching some students, but not all, and not always in the ways I hope to. Student reactions seem to fall into a few, rough categories: (1) Woah! Engineers have done some really bad things. I don’t want to be an engineer anymore. (2) Ethics and responsibility seem important, but it doesn’t seem relevant to the kind of engineering I want to do. (3) You can’t anticipate how people will misuse technology. This is just the cost of innovation and progress. (4) Building technology in an ethical way sounds like exactly what I want to do. But I’m not seeing job postings for “Ethical Engineer.” Can I get a job doing this?

Sadly, most reactions are not in the minor success that is Category 4. Most are in the spectrum of failure represented by Categories 1–3. In these failure modes, critical examination of how technology is created and its impacts on the world erodes responsibility and the hope of positive impact and elicits defensiveness.

Four years isn’t much time, and the mentorship my colleagues and I offer is only a sliver of the learning experiences students will have during their undergraduate education. I want to make the most of it. I want to increase the likelihood that I cultivate their fragile hope and equip them with sophisticated theories of change.