Digitalization/AI

Prof. Dr. Frank T. Piller (RWTH Aachen)

Johanna Toussaint (WHF)

Former employee
Vincent Rastfeld (SHK)

Information about the project
In the framework of the competence platform KI.NRW, the CST is developing a certificate for artificial intelligence together with the Fraunhofer  IAIS, the BSI, the University of Cologne, RWTH Aachen University,  DIN e.V. as well as numerous DAX-30 and other companies from different industries. The project is one of the KI.NRW flagships financed by the state ministry MWIDE.

The aim of the project is to develop procedures to examine generally accepted standards for AI systems and their verification, as well as to explore business models for an AI certification. To this end, we will write interlinked catalogs of requirements with technical, legal and ethical-philosophical criteria. Our research investigates the certification of ethical aspects. The theoretical basis for this is provided by a social ontology of AI, which is also being developed in the project. In accordance with the research interest of the CST, both the double autonomy of AI and the applied concept of intelligence constitute a special research focus.

In order to make this philosophical basis operationalizable in the certification's context, use cases of AI applications are  -  in close exchange with our partners from law - analyzed and categorized according to ethically relevant parameters. Ethical minimal requirements for a certification will be defined.

• Onlineworkshop (21.10.2022): ‚AI Fairness‘ (further informations)
• International Conference (22.-23. Juni 2023): ‘AI Human, Values and Meaningful Human Control’ (further information)
• Workshop (11.07.-12.07.2024): 'Leave no one behind. Who is affected by current AI development, governance, standardization and regulation processes?' 
• Workshop (18.12.2024): ' Catalog of General Ethical Requirements for AI Certification' (with Jocelyn Maclure und Markus Gabriel) 

• SoSe 2022 (Seminar): Recommender Systems. Legal and Ethical Issues
• SoSe 2022 (Seminar): Hans Jonas' "Prinzip Verantwortung"
• WiSe 2022/2023 (Seminar): Autonomie: zwischen Selbst- und Fremdbestimmung
• WiSe 2023/2024 (Seminar): Hannah Arendt "Vita activa"
• SoSe 2024 (Seminar): Werteorientierte KI-Ethik

• Sergio Genovesi/ Julia Mönig: Acknowledging Sustainability in the Framework of Ethical Certification for AI
• Genovesi, S., J. M. Mönig, "Acknowledging Sustainability in the Framework of Ethical Certification for AI", in Sustainability 2022, 14(7), 4157
• Genovesi, S., J. M. Mönig, A. Schmitz, et al. (2023). Standardizing fairness-evaluation procedures: interdisciplinary insights on machine learning algorithms in creditworthiness assessments for small personal loans. AI Ethics. 
• Genovesi, S. (2023). Digital Labor as a Structural Fairness Issue in Recommender Systems. In: Genovesi, S., Kaesling, K., Robbins, S. (eds) Recommender Systems: Legal and Ethical Issues. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 40. Springer, Cham. 
• Mönig, J.M. (2024). "Privatheit" in: Handbuch Digitale Ethik, hrsg. v. Grimm, Petra, Trost, Kai Erik and Zöllner, Oliver. 
• Mönig, J.M. "Das Recht des Kindes auf Achtung seiner Privatsphäre". In: Das Recht der Daten im Kontext der Digitalen Ethik, hrsg. v. Brink, Stefan, Grimm, Petra, Henning, Clarissa, Keber, Tobias and Zöllner, Oliver. 
• Corrêa, N. Kluge, et al. "Crossing the principle–practice gap in AI ethics with ethical problem-solving." AI and Ethics (2024): 1-18. 
• Corrêa, N. Kluge, Mönig, J.M. Catalog of General Ethical Requirements for AI Certification 

• Vortrag (17.06.2021): ‘Certifying Sustainable AI in the framework of the AI.NRW flagship project’ (Sustainable AI Conference)
• Vortrag (27.10.2021): ‚KI-Zertifizierung und KI-Verordnungsentwurf: die Rolle der Ethik" bei der Online-Tagung „Zertifizierung und der KI-Verordnungsentwurf der Europäischen Kommission – Chancen, Herausforderungen, Perspektiven‘

Charlotte Lüttschwager

Information about the project
The member of the project create a big data set of historical daily newspapers, which are then analyzed according to economic, social and cultural questions. At the same time, they are researching state space models to optimize OCR speed when processing big data sets. 

Prof. Dr. Adrian Hermann 

Projektmitarbeiter*innen 

Dr. Rafaela Eulberg (WMA)

Information about the project
Over the last 20 years, religious studies has developed the approach of “global religious history” by engaging with global history and post-colonial approaches to the history of religion. The starting point of the project is the conviction that newspapers and journals represent a decisive medium in the global history of religion in the 19th and early 20th centuries and act as media-structural scaffolding for the enduring establishment of 'religion' as a global category (cf. Hermann 2025). The project group will carry out basic research on this topic with a systematic focus on translation/language, materiality/mediality and history/narrative as well as on a reconstruction of the “distinctions of religion” (plurality, differentiation, purification, cf. Hermann 2015). It also aims to create a comprehensive database of digitized source material.

Project leader
Dr. Ying Huang
Prof. Dr. Maximilian Mayer

Nicolas Huppenbauer

Information about the project
The initiative addresses the interactions and implications of the idea of digital sovereignty on the one hand, and the increasing fragmentation of cyberspace and Internet governance on the other (further Information).

• International Conference (17.09-18.09.2021): Digital Fragmentations and Digital Sovereignty
  

  • Event flyer
  • The event is held in collaboration with CASSIS.

• WiSe 2021/22 (seminar): Digitale Fragmentierung und Digitale Souveränität
• WiSe 2021/22 (seminar): Datenmacht, digitale Dependenz und Cyber-Infrastrukturen in der neuen internationalen politischen Ökonomie

• Maximilian Mayer, “Autonomie und Polarisierung. Machttheoretische Perspektiven auf globale digitale Plattformen”, in: Hendrik W. Ohnesorge, ed. Macht und Machtverschiebung Schlüsselphänomene internationaler Politik – Festschrift für Xuewu Gu zum 65. Geburtstag. De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2022, 127–145.
• Ying Huang and Maximilian Mayer, “Digital Currencies, Monetary Sovereignty, and U.S.-China Power Competition”, Policy & Internet, Vol.14, Issue 2, 2022, pp.324-347.
• Ying Huang, Nicolas Huppenbauer and Maximilian Mayer, “Infrastructuring Cyberspace. Exploring China’s Imaginary and Practices of Selective Connectivity”, International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Vol.53, No.3, 2022, pp.413-439.
• Ying Huang, Cyberspace Fragmentation from the Perspective of Technology Trends), The Journal of International Studies),2022, 95-119.
• Nicolas Huppenbauer mit J.-F. Vögele, "Vulnerabilities Disclosure mit chinesischer Prägung: Nutzen und Gefahren", Inside IT, 01.02.2022.
• Ying Huang and Maximilian Mayer,“Power in the Age of Datafication: Exploring China’s Global Data Power”, Journal of Chinese Political Science, Vol.28, Issue 1, 2023, pp.25-49.
• Nicolas Huppenbauer, “Connectivity, centrality, and adaptation: The coproduction of political space in China’s standardization of autonomous driving technologies”, Global Media and China, 8(3), 2023, S. 414-430.

Call for Papers, edited volume ‘Digital Fragmentations and Digital Sovereignty’(Deadline: 28.04.2021)

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter
Prof. Dr. Kathrin Friedrich
PD Dr. Christoph Ernst

Staff
Fiona Torke (WHF)

Information about the project
The starting point of the planned Research Group is the reflection of the current understanding of 'digitalization' along a critical reexamination of the analog/digital distinction. For this purpose, historical-systematic and cross-cultural reappraisals of the concepts of analog and digital operations in paradigmatic fields of knowledge and practice are conducted. On the basis of the conceptual pair continuation/discretization we can arrive at an understanding of digitization processes that is historically grounded and sensitive to cultural differences. This culminates in a program of comparative digitization research which allows for a systematic and culturally specific assessment of contemporary discourses and practices of 'digitization' and their (dis)continuities to past digitization phases.

• Ernst, Christoph/Schröter, Jens/Warnke, Martin (2020): »Der Quantencomputer – Ein zukünftiger Gegenstand der Medienwissenschaft?«, in: MEDIENwissenschaft. Rezensionen 02 (Rubrik »Perspektiven«), S. 130-150.
• Schröter, Jens/Ernst, Christoph/Warnke, Martin (2021): »Quantum Computing and the Analog/Digital Distinction«, forthcoming in Grey Room (in print). Classical Digital Machines, New Analog Computers, or Future Post-Digital Media? Quantum Computing and the History of the Analog/Digital Distinction, Vortrag an der Univ. Luxemburg (Februar 2022)

Project leader
Dr. Charlotte Gauvry

Information about the project
A cycle of interdisciplinary conferences to study the philosophical, political and medical (neurological and psychiatric) effects of the use of AI systems on mental health.

• Announcement: Workshop 08.11.2021 & 13.12.2021
• Workshop (08.11.2021): The Politics of Digital Health
• Workshop (13.12.2021): Psychological effects of interactions between minds and AI
• Session KI-Postdocs (20.06.2022): ‘Virtual reality and induces symptoms of depersonalization and derealization’ (Dr. Niclas Brauns)
• Session KI-Postdocs (04.07.2022): ‘Multi-modal evaluation of epilepsy patients using computational methods’ (Dr. Theodor Rüber)

SoSe 2022 Seminar: Artificial intelligence and natural stupidity: Epistemological and ethical perspectives on comparative research

Project leader
Dr. Sergio Genovesi
Dr. Scott Robbins

former: Dr. Katharina Kaesling

Staff
Marie Bente John (SHK)
Luis Nussbauer (SHK)

Information about the project
The project attempts to define ethical and legal foundations for the development and regulation of so called Recommender Systems. Recommender Systems, e.g. Facebook News Feed Algorithm or Youtube Video Recommendation Algorithm, are software systems that quantify the interests of users for a given content in order to recommend precisely those items to the user that she is most likely to be interested in.

• Symposium (09./10.12.2021): ‘Recommender Systems. Legal and Ethical Issues’ (together with the CST)

• SoSe 2022 (seminar): Recommender Systems. Legal and Ethical Issues

• Sergio Genovesi, Katharina Kaesling, Scott Robbins (Hrsg.), Recommender Systems: Legal and Ethical Issues, Springer 2023.

Call for Abstracts: Interdisciplinary Conference ‘Recommender Systems. Legal end Ethical Issues (Deadline: 15.07.2021)

Project leader
Prof. Dr. Markus Gabriel
Jan Voosholz
Prof. Dr. Huw Price (Cambridge, Dist. Em. Prof. Universität Bonn)
Dr. Stephen Cave (Cambridge)
Kanta Dihal (Cambridge)

Apolline Taillandier

Information about the project
The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn currently employ various postdocs, who spend half of their time in Bonn and the other half in Cambridge, and who are working on joint research projects. The focus here lies mainly on programmes such as 'Kinds of Intelligence' (researching the concept of intelligence from a multidisciplinary perspective) and 'Philosophy and Ethics of AI' (connecting ethics of AI with meta-etchics, ontology and philosophy of science).

• Announcement: AI Research Group
• SoSe 2021: AI Research Group (together with the CST)
• WiSe 2021/22: AI Research Group (together with the CST)
• SoSe 2022: AI Research Group (together with the CST)
• Workshop (23.06.-24.06.2023): ‚The Global Politics of Artificial Intelligence: Historical, Comparative, and Critical Perspectives’ (Academy of International Affairs NRW, Bonn, Org. A. Taillandier)

• WiSe 2021/22 (Seminar): Mindreading and Mindshaping
• WiSe 2021/22 (Seminar): Writing the history of political thought
• SoSe 2022 (Seminar): Artificial intelligence and natural stupidity: Epistemological and ethical perspectives on comparative research
• WiSe 2022/23 (Seminar): Feminist political theories
• Wise 2022/23 (Seminar): International politics and technology

• Uwe Peters, Explainable AI Lacks Regulative Reasons: Why AI and Human Decision-making are not Equally Opaque. AI Ethics 3, 963–974, 2023.
• Uwe Peters, Algorithmic Political Bias Can Reduce Political Polarization. Philosophy and Technology  35 (3), 1-7, 2022.
• Uwe Peters, Alexander Krauss, Oliver Braganza, Generalization Bias in Science. Cognitive Science 46(9), 1-26, 2022.
• Uwe Peters, "Algorithmic Political Bias in Artificial Intelligence Systems". Philosophy and Technology 35(25), 2022.
• Uwe Peters, "Extended Implicit Bias: When the Metaphysics and Ethics of Implicit Bias Collide". Erkenntnis 88, 3457–3478, 2023.
• Uwe Peters, "Reclaiming Control: Extended Mindreading and the Tracking of Digital Footprints". Social Epistemology 36(3), 267-282, 2022.
• Apolline Taillandier, Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, Thomasz Hollanek, Hirofumi Katsuno, Yang Liu, Daniel White, "The Meanings of AI." In Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal (eds.), Imagining AI: How the World Sees Intelligent Machines (Oxford University Press, 2023), 16-36.
• Apolline Taillandier:"AI in a Different Voice: Rethinking Computers, Learning and Gender Difference at MIT in the 1980s," In Jude Browne, Stephen Cave, Eleanor Drage, and Kerry McInerney (eds.), Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data, and Intelligent Machines (Oxford University Press, 2023)
• ‘Cosmos-politanism: Transhumanist Visions of World Order from the First World War to the Digital Age’ (with Duncan Bell). Perspectives on Politics, Online First View, 1–18. 
• ‘Singular Creatures: Robots, Rights, and the Politics of Posthumanism. By Mark Kingwell. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2022.’ International Affairs 100, no. 4 (2024): 1781–83. 

• Blogbeitrag von Uwe Peters: ‘Extended confirmation bias: When the mind leaks into algorithms.’ Open for Debate Blog, Cardiff University, invited contribution, June 2022.
• Blogbeitrag von Uwe Peters: ‘Von Grübelei zum gesellschaftlichen Nutzen’, FirstGen Philosopers Blog (FU Berlin), invited contribution, August 2022.
• Newsletterbeitrag von Uwe Peters: ‘Generalization bias: An overlooked cause of overgeneralizations in psychology.’ The Brunswik Society Newsletter, invited contribution, November 2022.
• Interview (Uwe Peters) with ‘Psychologie Heute’ on generalization bias (in German), invited contribution, December 2022.