Emerging technologies raise fundamental questions about human flourishing—questions that cannot be answered by engineering alone. Who decides which problems technology solves? How do we prevent bias in AI? When should efficiency yield to dignity? These are humanistic questions. A&S ensures that advancements serve the greater good by cultivating in its students the technical sophistication and ethical wisdom necessary for responsible innovation.

• Innovative Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Programs integrating practical training and reflection—computer science with philosophy of technology, data science with justice studies, digital humanities uniting computational methods with interpretive practices. 3+3 programs with the College of Law on ethical technology law, partnerships with Whitman School of Management on technology entrepreneurship.
• Tech Innovation with Humanistic Grounding: Tech Shark Tank where students compete for funding, with proposals addressing not only feasibility but social impact, and questions of access and equity. Entrepreneurship education that not only asks, “Can we build it?” but “Should we? For whom?”
• Research Across the Technology-Humanities Divide: Teams bringing together quantum physicists with philosophers, AI researchers with creative writers and ethicists, bio-inspired robotics faculty with disability studies scholars. An example includes Seeds of Story Project (NSF-funded collaboration between education and writing & rhetoric faculty with Salt City Harvest Farm) exploring how digital storytelling and community science work together.
• Global Technology Experiences: Study abroad programs exposing students to different cultural approaches to technology—how other societies navigate privacy and surveillance, how Indigenous communities integrate traditional knowledge with new tools, how non-Western contexts reveal assumptions built into universal technologies.

Impact: Technologists who ask ethical questions, entrepreneurs who consider social impact and innovators who recognize technology as a cultural product. A&S demonstrating that the most responsible innovation simultaneously asks the questions “how?” and “why?”