Prof. Dr. Aimee van Wynsberghe focuses on the ethics of artificial intelligence and has held a Humboldt Professorship at the University of Bonn since 2021. She is Director of the Institut für Wissenschaft und Ethik (Institute for Science and Ethics) and heads the Sustainable AI Lab, which is a space for excellent researchers from different fields to work, collaborate, and brainstorm about the environmental, social, and economic costs of designing, developing, and using AI across society. The questions to be explored span multiple disciplines and levels of analysis, for example: the normative rationale for the value of sustainability; the strength of the concept of sustainability; how to measure the environmental costs of AI and understanding the intergenerational impacts of AI.
In addition, the researchers inform public policy guidelines to develop green, proportionate, and sustainable uses of AI. “Backed by a strong team of researchers and also artists and knowledge partners, we are working to strengthen Germany as an excellence hub for research and awareness projects dedicated to the sustainability of AI,” says Aimee van Wynsberghe, who is also a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Areas “Individuals and Societies“ and “Sustainable Futures” at the University of Bonn.
The other newly admitted full members of the Academy of Sciences and Literature are the chemist and Nobel laureate Benjamin List, the physicist Andreas Dreizler, the classical philologist Sabine Föllinger, the Egyptologist Angelika Lohwasser, and the Iranist Ludwig Paul.
About the academy
The Academy of Sciences and Literature is a nationally oriented association of personalities from the fields of science, literature and music. It serves to nurture the sciences, literature and music and thus contributes to the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage. The Academy is a place of dialogue, at the centre of which is interdisciplinary exchange.