Write your awesome label here.

Traceability, Responsibility, and Ethics in the AI Era

Skills for 21st century content developers
  • Duration

    3 hours

  • Format

    Video, self-guided

  • Price

    €550
    excluding
    applicable taxes

    About this course

    Before any training starts, we ensure that the course is accessible to people with disabilities, or with a special need to be taken into consideration for learning. Please contact us by email at: training@firehead.net in order to find possible adjustments we can implement together to promote the success of your learning experience.

    Who is this course for?

    Anyone working in any job related to the creation, management, and distribution of technical content  who wants to future-proof their careers by being prepared to deal with new challenges presented by AI and other Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolution technologies. It applies to people at every stage of professional development, from new practitioners to seasoned veterans.

    What will you learn?

    Technical content requires information that is factual, trustworthy, and validated. But Covid-19 has shown us how validated knowledge of today can be obsolete tomorrow, as well as how unreliable rumor and even deliberate disinformation can spread virally through social media unchecked, despite our best efforts.

    In this course we’ll examine how the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where machines make decisions without human intervention, cause us to rethink our roles and responsibilities, and to acquire new “soft skills” that revolve around:

    • Traceability – where does our information come from, and can we be sure the source is reliable?
    • Responsibility – who is really accountable when there are errors? What if the error was made by a machine? What are the legal ramifications?
    • Ethics as applied to technical content development – our ethical position, combating fake news, protecting our users from harm.

    We’ll look at use cases, some drawn from real-life situations, that pose questions connected to these soft skills, and examine possible ways to answer them.

    When you successfully complete this course, you will:

    • Be able to identify questions of traceability, responsibility, and ethics, and differentiating between them.

    • Understand how artificial intelligence and other Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolution technologies affect not only what content we develop, but the ramifications of it for our users and in society.

    • Acquire strategies for dealing with the rapid evolution of information and the validation of rapidly changing information.


    What this course does not provide:

    • It does not provide a methodology for being ethical - no such methodology exists.

    • It can’t give you guidelines to decide that a given behaviour is ethical or not.

    • It will not answer all your questions about ethical or responsible behaviour - if anything, it might add to them!

    How will you learn?

    The course material is contained in a series of videos ranging in length from three to twelve minutes each. The videos present the fundamentals of the course, and ask many questions that don't have quick or easy answers. 

    The videos are supplemented with activities that you do on your own. These activities not only help you evaluate your own process inside the course - they provide practical exercises that you can take away and use in your own team or other working situation. When you have done them successfully, you will receive a certificate of completion for the course.
    Firehead 
    Write your awesome label here.

    Presented by

    Ray Gallon

    Expert in content development for humanist digital transformation
    Ray Gallon is president and co-founder of the Transformation Society, which develops strategies for humanist digital transformation and organizational learning, and researches the theory and practice of smart pedagogies. He has over 50 years’ experience as a communicator, most recently in the technical content industries, including major companies such as IBM, Alcatel, and General Electric Health Care. Earlier, Ray was an award-winning radio producer and journalist.

    Ray is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), and was co-founder and president of The Information 4.0 consortium, developing a humanist informational response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He is a frequent speaker and keynoter on communications topics at conferences and seminars around the world, has contributed to numerous books, journals, and magazines, and is the editor of The Language of Technical Communication (XML Press).

    Course Objectives

    You can expect to spend three to four hours completing all of the elements of this course, including videos, readings, quizzes and the final assessment.

    The course is entirely self-directed, so you can complete it at a time and pace that works best for you. If you leave the course and come back at a later time, your course progress will be saved so you can pick up where you left off.

    On successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
    • Evaluate information sources for credibility and reliability using established verification frameworks and methodologies
    • Analyse case studies of AI-driven content decisions to identify key accountability and liability considerations in technical documentation
    • Apply ethical decision-making frameworks to resolve dilemmas in technical content development, particularly concerning misinformation and user safety
    • Develop validation protocols for rapidly evolving technical information that ensure accuracy while maintaining timely delivery
    • Assess how emerging AI technologies impact technical communication workflows and recommend appropriate process adjustments

    What's in this course?

    •     videos
    •     content
    •     downloads
    •     activities
    •     self-assessments
    •     additional references
    Videos - short, engaging presentations from the course instructors that bring the topic to life (transcripts can be provided as an alternative learning format).

    Content - text and graphics that allow you to read and consider a variety of topics.

    Downloads - templates, guides, and additional resources for your reference that will deepen your understanding.

    Activities - real-world scenarios that provide you with an opportunity to apply what you’ve learned (scoresheets are provided so you can assess your own work upon completion).

    Assessments - self-grading quizzes that assess your learning through multiple choice, multiple response, and true/false questions.

    Additional references - references to related materials outside of the course to use to continue your learning.

    Course Prerequisites

    Normal text.

    Requirements

    To engage with the materials in this course you will need to have:
    • A strong internet connection for playing videos, downloading files, and accessing other course materials
    • An approved browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari...)
    • A PDF reader for accessing course resources
    • Office software for completing activities and downloading templates
    • Ability to open multiple file types: mp4, PDF, docx, xlsx

    What People Are Saying...

    "Recommended"

    I really recommend this course to everyone interested in technical communications and future-proofing their career.

    "Very Helpful"


    This course really helped me understand how to plan and prepare for the world of AI.

    "Brilliant Course"

    Ray is an expert in the field and his presentation of what considerations we will need to make for our content in the age of AI easy to understand.

    Results for 2025 Available Soon!

    Last updated: 17/10/2025