Stiftung Mercator awards €3.8M grant to the Universities of Bonn and Cambridge to ensure the creation of ethical AI.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming society as algorithms increasingly impact access to jobs and insurance, justice, medical treatments, as well as our daily interactions with friends and family. As these technologies improve, we are starting to see unintended social consequences: algorithms that promote everything from racial bias in healthcare to the misinformation eroding faith in democracies. To ensure the creation of ethical Artificial Intelligence that supports core human values, the German philanthropic foundation, Stiftung Mercator, has awarded a €3.8M grant to a collaboration between the University of Bonn and Cambridge University.
Desirable Digitalisation project
Led by Professor Markus Gabriel from the Institute for Philosophy at Bonn and Dr Stephen Cave from the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge, the project, ‘Desirable Digitalisation: Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures’, places ethical principles at the heart of AI development. The new research project comes as the European Commission negotiates its Artificial Intelligence Act, which has ambitions to ensure AI becomes more ‘trustworthy’ and ‘human-centric’.
The Act will require AI systems to be assessed for their impact on fundamental rights and values. The researchers on the Desirable Digitalisation project will collaboratively investigate the many questions that arise from these plans, such as: What exactly does a ‘human-centric’ approach to AI look like? How can we meaningfully assess whether and how AI systems violate fundamental rights and values? And how can we foster awareness of discriminatory practices and how to stop them to create ethical AI?
The socio-technological nature of ethical Artificial Intelligence
Carla Hustedt, director of Stiftung Mercator’s Centre for Digital Society, explained: “The socio-technological nature of AI systems requires us to break out of silos in multiple ways: We need interdisciplinary, international research as well as the cooperation between scientific actors with actors from business and civil society. The project seeks to do exactly that.”
The Desirable Digitalisation project is divided into two parts. In the first part, researchers will investigate intercultural perspectives on AI and fundamental rights and values. “In order to understand the potential effects of algorithms on human dignity, we need to look beyond the code and draw on lessons from history and political science,” Dr Cave explained.
This part of the project will ask questions from two perspectives: anthropological (How will our idea of ‘the human’ influence and be influenced by digital technology?) and intersectional (How do the structural injustices of the past influence today’s technology and its influence on fundamental rights and values?).
The Cambridge and Bonn teams will work not only with colleagues across Europe, but also with teams in Asia and Africa. “Irrespective of our specific cultural world-views, these new technologies challenge our idea of ourselves as human beings,” commented Professor Gabriel. The project therefore investigates foundational and anthropological questions concerning the human in the digital age.
Designing ethical AI for just and sustainable futures
In the second part of the project, ‘Designing AI for Just and Sustainable Futures’, researchers from both universities will work with the AI industry to develop design and education principles that put sustainability and justice at the heart of technological progress.
“Sustainability in all its dimensions – social, ecological, economic and technological – is a vital value in designing AI. Only by taking it into account can these technologies improve our lives and our world,” concluded Professor Aimee van Wynsberghe, Humboldt Professor at the University of Bonn, who will lead the Bonn team in the second part of the project.
The five-year project will commence in April 2022, with the first of its biannual conferences taking place in early 2023. The core team of seventeen researchers at Cambridge and Bonn, as well as visiting professors, will work closely with a wide range of national and international partners.
