Celebrating the Success of IEEE Ethics Week 2026

By on September 22nd, 2026 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blog Posts, Ethics, Human Impacts, IEEE Ethics Week, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

As IEEE’s inaugural Ethics Week 2026 comes to a close, we celebrate a week that demonstrated our shared ethical values across the full spectrum of our organization. Together, we successfully highlighted ethics-related initiatives in every area, spanning technical societies, councils, and geographic units to standards, publications, and educational programs. Through dynamic seminars, interviews, roundtables, and local events, participants brought curiosity, deep insight, and a shared commitment to navigating today’s most complex technological questions.

To conclude the week, 2026 IEEE President-Elect Jill Gostin shared her closing reflections, which you can watch on our homepage at ethicsweek.ieee.org.

This year, our work centered on five areas of focus:
  1. Ethics of Technology: We examined how innovation can serve people responsibly, from artificial intelligence to data privacy and beyond.
  2. Research Ethics: We reaffirmed the importance of integrity, transparency, and respect for participants in the pursuit of knowledge.
  3. Professional Ethics: We reflected on the standards of conduct, accountability, and trust that define our work and our relationships.
  4. Ethics in Education: We explored how to foster honesty, fairness, and moral reasoning in the classroom and in the students we teach.
  5. Ethics in Public Policy: We considered how decisions made on behalf of communities can balance competing interests while upholding justice and the common good.
Each of these areas sparked thoughtful dialogue and scholarship, and each reminded us that ethics is not a single week on the calendar but a daily practice built through the choices we make together.
Our Gratitude
Thank you to everyone who made this week a success. To those who led seminars and facilitated roundtables, thank you for creating space for meaningful, sometimes challenging conversation. To our interviewers and interviewees, thank you for sharing your experience and perspective so openly. To the authors of this year’s ethics research papers, thank you for advancing our understanding and giving us new ideas to consider. To our planning committee and volunteers, thank you for the preparation that made a smooth virtual experience possible. And to every participant who joined online, asked difficult questions, and listened with an open mind, your engagement is what gave this week its meaning.
Looking Forward

As Ethics Week 2026 comes to a close, let’s carry its lessons forward and continue building a culture of integrity, accountability, and respect in everything we do. We encourage you to keep the momentum going by hosting your own ethics events throughout the year—and when sharing event notices, be sure to tag them with #Ethics and #EthicsWeek.

If you missed any programming during our focused 12–20 September activity window, you can still view the welcome messages, recordings, and featured resources at ethicsweek.ieee.org. These tools remain available year-round to support your initiatives, and additional ethics-related events will continue to take place across the globe.

Ethics Week 2026 was hosted by the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology, with generous funding support from the IEEE Innovation Committee and active participation from over 110 partner organizations. As we look ahead to 2027, we plan to engage the broader scientific community and the public. Contact us at ethicsweek@ieee.org to get involved!

With sincere appreciation,
Tom Creely, Ph.D.
Chair, IEEE Ethics Week 2026 Steering Committee
Vice President for Ethics and Social Responsibility, IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT)