Presentation Schedule
Worthwhile Design: Ethics-Driven Approaches to Development and AI (107152)
Session Chair: Benjamin Huffman
Sunday, 10 May 2026 10:45
Session: Session 1
Room: Room G404 (4F)
Presentation Type: Workshop Presentation
Through my decades of experience working in, and for, governments and intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank, I have come to realize that development interventions often fall short of their intended goals; producing unintended social, economic, or ethical issues described, and supported, in the literature as maldevelopment.
To overcome this, my research lab at the University of Maryland is developing a toolkit that employs ethical reasoning in the design and decision-making processes. We do this through our Development Ethics Toolkit that is guided by key values such as well-being, inequality, human rights, and environmental sustainability as identified by Jay Drydyk in the Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics.
In this interactive workshop participants become actors in a development project based on a real-world example of maldevelopment. Using a guided discussion, this case invites participants to examine ethical challenges related to power, participation, equity, accountability, and long-term impact. The workshop then introduces participants to the toolkit, highlighting project management tools, case studies, and an AI enabled Development Ethics Canvas, as well as an AI dashboard that provides an ethical assessment of over 100 of the most popular AI applications for education and sustainable development.
Instead of treating ethics as an afterthought, or the “department of no” as our research in collaboration with the National Science Foundation has uncovered, this workshop demonstrates how ethical reasoning can function as a practical design tool. Participants will leave with concrete approaches, and resources, for integrating development ethics into research, policy, and practice.
Authors:
Benjamin Huffman, University of Maryland, United States
About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Benjamin D. Huffman is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Maryland, USA
Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/benhuffman/
See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule
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