New technologies like AI open up a lot of chances but also bear many risks. Couldn’t we just learn how to deal with this from science-fiction films having already played through the major issues of AI? Unfortunately not. Rather than give advice, science-fiction distracts from the currently relevant ethical and legal challenges of AI and…

While all eyes are on Western industrial nations, Nigerian human rights lawyer Olumide Babalola is concerned about AI regulation in Africa. He fears that some countries will adopt the repressive legislation of their neighbouring states without developing their own attitude towards artificial intelligence. But a common vision for Africa’s digital future is missing. When I…

There hardly exists a buzzword today that fires everybody‘s imagination in the tech world like “artificial intelligence” (AI). But not only giants like Google, Facebook, Baidu or Alibaba are trying to overbid each other with new applications – also states around the globe have proclaimed to partake in a global AI race. Germany was rather…

What if the entire progress of society depends on the future energy system? At least that’s how visionaries like Jeremy Rifkin argue. The list of challenges posed by the energy system transformation is extensive – first and foremost globally agreed climate targets with the urgency of minimizing CO2 emissions. Policymakers and business leaders in particular…

Shifts in our communication infrastructures have reshaped the very possibilities of social order driven by markets and commercial exploitation. Some people even regard this as a new form of capitalism. Focused on data extraction rather than the production of new goods, “surveillance capitalism” generates intense concentrations of power over extraction and threatens core values such…

People are increasingly being warned about the dangers to one’s physical and emotional well-being of always being online. In this post, Sally Wyatt reflects critically on the metaphors of ‘use’ and ‘addiction’ applied to digital technology, but first examines some of the paradoxes associated with applying machine metaphors to the human condition. ‘Imagine you are…

Recruited from the street, content moderators sit in front of screens for hours, filtering violence and hatred from our timelines. They are exploited, mostly left alone with the psychological consequences and hardly anyone knows about it. This is why Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck, in their documentary film “The Cleaners”, seize on the current debate…

Scientific policy advice is also becoming increasingly important in Germany. What is important here? Rebecca Winkels talked to Christian Kobsda, associate researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, about this. At the “Impact School: Science Transfer in the 21st Century” he spoke with young researchers about the topic. Herr Kobsda, wieso…

Fake News affecting polls – a possibility feared for the Brazilian Presidential Elections this year. As Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux has claimed the election results could even be annulled. But how can courts measure the impact of fake news? Clara Iglesias Keller, visiting researcher at HIIG, deals with this question. According to Supreme Court Justice Luiz…

Big Brother is watching you. And not only that – new methods of evaluating and manipulating behavior are starting to threaten our freedom. In her new book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power”, Harvard economist Shoshana Zuboff takes a critical look at the new…