Carnegie Mellon University

CMU has an institution-wide commitment going back many years to PIT-UN. Through educational programs and center scale activities (Center for Shared Prosperity, Metro 21, Block Center for Technology and Society to name but a few), we engage in research, development and deployment of PIT to help people and communities.

Ramayya Krishnan, Dean, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy

Educational Offerings

Developing a Community Education Toolkit for Public Social Service AI

We will work with our partners at the Pitt School of Social Work as well as local service providers (e.g., Bridge Outreach) to (1) conduct a series of helping train the next generation of multidisciplinary social workers. Method, Process and Timeline October 2023 – May 2024: Co-design a novel community education toolkit for social workers/providers: In collaboration with our community partners, we have begun to develop a series of “AI Lifecycle Comicboards” to explain the development lifecycle of a housing allocation algorithm to impacted communities

Principal Investigator

Hong Shen, Assistant Research Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute

Developing Community-Led and Equity-Focused Public Interest Technology Curriculum

Faculty from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and Institute for Software Research will develop a process for co-designing public interest technology (PIT) curriculum alongside community partners, such that materials and activities that address emergent technologies of concern to the public are mutually beneficial and trusted across institutional boundaries and organizations.

Centered on a set of People’s Guides to Technology, the principal investigators will work with community partners and students on a set of PIT courses at CMU to prepare explanations and exercises that support nontechnologists learning about technologies that affect their lives and to facilitate community dialogue. The project includes a community engagement strategy to allow other institutions to learn from and build on the pedagogy.

Sarah Fox, Assistant Professor in the Human Computer Interaction Institute

The Policy Innovation Lab: A starter kit and fellowship program for citizen-centered policy design courses and future Public Interest Technologists

The Policy Innovation Lab and fellowship program prepares master’s students to become public interest technologists by teaching them how to design and build government and non-profit services using human-centered design, agile methodology and delivery for high-impact. This project builds on last year’s success launching our fellowship program and open-access course materials, now available for download on CUNY’s PIT OER Commons site, and on pitcases.org run by Georgetown / Howard / Stanford. In Year two, we expand the program to nine fellows, seven of which will embed in government agencies and nonprofits during a summer fellowship.

Career Pipeline/Placement

The Policy Innovation Lab: A starter kit and fellowship program for citizen-centered policy design courses and and future Public Interest Technologists

A starter kit and fellowship program to teach public interest technology leaders using applied, tested digital service methods in order to address real government problems.

Principal Investigator

Christopher Goranson, Distinguished Service Professor

Educational Offerings

Bridging the “Ethical Gap’’ in CS Education by Teaching Socially Responsible Language Technologies 

Expand the course, Computational Ethics, which introduces students to real-world applications of language technologies (LT), and addresses the ethical implications and risks that LT tools can pose to include open-access educational materials such video lectures, lecture notes, and a textbook.

Principal Investigator

Yulia Tsvetkov, Assistant Professor, Language Technologies Institute, School of Computer Science