Responsible Software Engineering and ‘Social Good’

Over the last decade, the software engineering community has emerged as one particularly fertile ground for both asking deep societal questions (“what is social good”?) and developing responsible software engineering practices in answer to such questions. In this talk, I will first, use examples drawn from my own research to illustrate the transformative force of opening up SE research and practice to wider constituencies, and in particular to the hard to reach and vulnerable communities; I will then highlight the key challenges and good practices being adopted by software industry and research to anticipate, mitigate, and reflect on the intended and unintended consequences of the technologies that we bring to life.