IZEW-UNC | University of Tübingen

Scientific Cooperation and Partnership IZEW - UNC

The project "Scientific Cooperation and Partnership IZEW - UNC" is a commitment of the IZEW staff to building and strengthening the scientific networks between the Universities of Tübingen and North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The project is part of the Strategic Partnership Tübingen - UNC, which is part of the International Affairs and Diversity Department at the University of Tübingen.

The aim of the networking and partnership is to foster transatlantic dialogue on the ethics of Data Sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Digitalization between the two research and development hubs. With the Cyber Valley in and around Tübingen and Stuttgart, the AI-Alliance in Baden-Württemberg and the Research Triangle between Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, the project connects two regions in Germany and the USA that are strong in business and science. The research and development of ethically sound AI applications, transnational platforms, and socio-technical conditions for their development is a concern of the IZEW and its partners at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Team

Project leads: Jana Hecktor and Lisa Koeritz

Workshop "Sociotechnical Consequences of AI"

The workshop "The Sociotechnical Consequences of AI: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Ethical, Organizational, Social, and Computational Dimensions" took place at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on September 13, 2024. It was organized by the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) together with the UNC School for Information and Library Science.

Topic

AI is increasingly permeating different areas of society and being integrated into daily work and leisure practices, organizational structures, and ways of thinking about the world. Some of the areas impacted by AI and relevant to contemporary discourses are information retrieval and knowledge production (business, science, journalism, librarianship and education), predictive and evaluative work (policing, climate science, health and prevention of disease, finance, insurance), as well as communication tasks (customer service, human resources/recruiting). Some of the pertinent topics related to AI include access and accessibility, social justice, interpersonal relationships, skills and competences, cognitive and behavioral changes, human-computer interaction and the division of labor between humans and machines. Discourse within these fields takes place along ethical, organizational, social and computational dimensions. These dimensions are deeply interrelated. Addressing these connections and intersections is essential for a comprehensive understanding of AI systems.
The following list depicts some of the fields and aspects which are of interest for the workshop and can serve as starting points for discussions, but can be complemented by further aspects.

Ethical ● Diversity and inclusion (queer LGBT, minority, indigenous, disability) ● Social justice ● Environmental justice ● Access and use of copyrighted material ● Labor exploitation	Organizational ● Employment ● Job (In)security ● Future of work // New work ● AI recruitment tools ● Human-AI collaboration
Social ● Care work ● Relationships (human, socio-technical) ● Assistive technologies and impact	Computational ● Mechanics ● Practices of training computational models ● Data quality ● Bias ● Cybersecurity

Workshop Program

You can download the program of the workshop here.

Call for Contributions

You can download the program of the workshop here.

The transatlantic team of organizers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Tübingen includes Prof. Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi, PD Dr. Jessica Heesen, Prof. Dr. Regina Ammicht Quinn, Jan-David Bühler, Jana Hecktor, Lisa Koeritz, Jimmy McKinnell, and Laura Schelenz.

Current Collaborations

International Workshop: “Sociotechnical Consequences of AI: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Ethical, Organizational, Social, and Computational Dimensions”

Planned to take place in fall 2024 at UNC, the goal of the workshop is to bolster exchange between experts at UNC and UT on the implications of Artificial Intelligence on societal, organizational, technical, and ethical contexts by building from different academic perspectives.

Policy Hackathon: “Hacking Accountability: The Regulation of Artificial Intelligence in American and European perspectives”

The aim of the two-day policy hackathon, likely to take place in early fall 2024 at UNC, is to assess the state of the art of AI regulatory efforts in a transatlantic comparative fashion while also identifying gaps in regulation and engaging stakeholders in charge of legislating accountability for fast-evolving contemporary AI.

Previous Collaborations

Joint Panel and Special Interest Group "Platform (In)Justice" at the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) with the participation of Dr. Nanditha Narayanamoorthy (UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life) and Heesoo Jang (UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media) as well as Dr. Simon Hirsbrunner (IZEW), Dr. Lou Brandner (IZEW) and Laura Schelenz (IZEW), October 14 - 18, 2023, Minneapolis, USA

“Panel Paper: Platform (In)Justice – A Call for a Global Research Agenda”: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3584931.3608439

“Special Interest Group on Platform (In)Justice in Minneapolis”: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3584931.3606953

Scientific exchange with Prof. Mohammad Jarrahi (UNC School of Information and Library Science), July 19, 2023, Tübingen, Germany

„Exchange on Human-AI Symbiosis, Algorithms, and Work“: Flyer

UNC Royster Global Conference, with the participation of Dr. Saeedeh Babaii (IZEW) and Laura Schelenz (IZEW), May 30 – June 2, 2023, Chapel Hill, USA

UNC-Tübingen Partnership Panel "Reconfiguring Justice and Equity: Content Governance Models for Platform Violence" at the Symposium "Social Justice and Technological Futures" with the participation of Prof. Shannon McGregor (UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media), Dr. Nanditha Narayanamoorthy (UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life), Heesoo Jang (UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media), May 2-3, 2023, Tübingen, Germany

„UNC at Symposium on Social Justice and Technological Futures”: https://uni-tuebingen.de/de/245305

Topic

Workshop Program

Call for Contributions

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