At the Yale Digital Ethics Center (DEC), we research the governance, ethical, legal, and social implications (GELSI) of digital innovation and technologies and their human, societal, and environmental impact. Through our work, we seek to design a better information society: critical, equitable, just, open, pluralistic, sustainable, and tolerant. We aim to identify and enhance the benefits of digital innovation and technologies while mitigating their risks and shortcomings.
As part of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Center acts as a multidisciplinary hub, drawing from fields such as AI, anthropology, biomedical ethics, computer science, cybersecurity, economics, epistemology, ethics, ethnography, information theory, Internet studies, law, management studies, multimedia studies, philosophy, political science, sociology, and statistics and data science.
We welcome collaboration with students and faculty from Yale’s graduate and professional schools. Our work builds on Yale’s unique depth, breadth, and reach of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Strengths in other areas of the university provide an essential and valuable complement to our work.
The Center is also outward-facing, supporting discussions with other academic and research institutions, businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies. We promote public conversations that build an understanding of digital technologies’ many challenges and implications. Visitors and speakers include academics, researchers, civil servants, policy and lawmakers, members of the technology industry, and experts in culture and mass media. The Center brings together a diverse community of stakeholders who think innovatively and move ideas forward. The Center ensures diversity in its membership, promotes the inclusion of views, and arrives at consensus through open, constructive exchanges of ideas and balanced debate.
We believe in collaboration. We trust in human intelligence. We have faith in goodwill. Through our work, we seek to develop ethical solutions, inform public opinion, and influence emerging policy initiatives in the digital sphere.