How do you build a technology company that succeeds and does good in the world? This course teaches frameworks and helps students develop the judgment to analyze and navigate the ethical challenges facing today's technology industry - from AI and privacy to content moderation, crypto policy, gambling and prediction markets, national security, and labor. The course is built around the people who actually make these calls. Sessions draw on the experience of senior practitioners - executives, policy leads, and legal experts from across the industry - who bring the texture and complexity of real organizational decision-making into the classroom. Their sessions are both conversations and lectures, and students are expected to come prepared to engage. Between guest sessions, the class works through current events and case studies together, weighing competing interests across legal, social, and moral dimensions. There are no easy answers, and the course does not pretend otherwise. What it does offer is a rigorous way of thinking through hard problems using a series of frameworks - and practice applying them under pressure. By the end of the course, students take a complex ethical issue and make the case for a clear position - in writing, in front of an audience, and under pushback from a senior leadership team. The course is graded on participation, reading reflections, a midterm paper, and a final group presentation.
3 units · Letter or Credit/No Credit
How do you build a technology company that succeeds and does good in the world? This course teaches frameworks and helps students develop the judgment to analyze and navigate the ethical challenges facing today's technology industry - from AI and privacy to content moderation, crypto policy, gambling and prediction markets, national security, and labor. The course is built around the people who actually make these calls. Sessions draw on the experience of senior practitioners - executives, policy leads, and legal experts from across the industry - who bring the texture and complexity of real organizational decision-making into the classroom. Their sessions are both conversations and lectures, and students are expected to come prepared to engage. Between guest sessions, the class works through current events and case studies together, weighing competing interests across legal, social, and moral dimensions. There are no easy answers, and the course does not pretend otherwise. What it does offer is a rigorous way of thinking through hard problems using a series of frameworks - and practice applying them under pressure. By the end of the course, students take a complex ethical issue and make the case for a clear position - in writing, in front of an audience, and under pushback from a senior leadership team. The course is graded on participation, reading reflections, a midterm paper, and a final group presentation.
Offered in Autumn 2026 at Stanford University.