machine learning

Events

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Tuesday, March 12th, 2024 | 14:00 p.m.

Predicting clinical response to treatment in inpatients with depression - BNITM seminar series "AI in Biology and Medicine".

BNITM, Bernhard-Nocht-Straße 74, 20359 Hamburg

bAIome Center for biomedical AI (UKE) and Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) will host the seminar series entitled “AI in biology and Medicine”. This series aims to capture a broad audience and promote cross institutional collaboration. Our expert speakers will give an overview and insight into particular AI/data science methods being developed in key areas of biology and medicine. We will have drinks and snacks following each seminar to facilitate exchange.

Fatemeh Hadaeghi,Institute of Computational Neuroscience, UKE

For further details and hybrid links, please go to the webpage AI in Biology & Medicine

 

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The series will be continued in the summer semester 2025

Presentation Series: Train your engineering network

via Zoom

The presentation series “Train your engineering network” (TYEN) on diverse topics of Machine Learning addresses all interested persons at TUHH, from MLE partners as well as from the Hamburg region in general and aims at promoting the exchange of information and knowledge between these persons as well as their networking in a relaxed atmosphere. Thereby, the machine learning activities within MLE, TUHH and in the wider environment shall be made more visible, cooperations shall be promoted and also interested students shall be given an insight.

Organisers:

The series will be continued in the summer semester 2025. If you are interested in presenting, please contact the organizers.
The lectures will be in English.

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Tuesday, January 27th, 2024 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. A Fallibilist Approach to AI Value Alignment

UHH, Main Building, ESA 1 Ost Raum O221
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have become central to numerous aspects of our lives, and are significantly reshaping them. These include our homes, our workplaces, industries in general, schools and academia, but also government, law enforcement and warfare. While AI technologies present many opportunities, they have also been shown to reinforce existing injustices, to threaten human rights, and to exacerbate the climate crisis. This begs the question: How can we collectively and meaningfully shape the digital society we live in, and who is to decide on the agenda? 
This lecture series invites viewpoints from different relevant disciplines to explore how we can preserve and advance human values through the development and use of AI technologies. Key questions include: How does AI impact our fundamental social, political, and economic structures? What does it mean to lead a meaningful life in the AI age? What design and regulatory decisions should we make to ensure digital transformations are fair and sustainable?  
To explore these and other related questions, this public lecture series invites distinguished international researchers to present and discuss their work. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.
 

Prof. Dr. Ibo van de Poel, Delft University of Technology, NL

Value alignment is important to ensure that AI systems remain aligned with human intentions, preferences, and values. It has been suggested that it can best be achieved by building AI systems that can track preferences or values in real-time. In my talk, I argue against this idea of real-time value alignment. First, I show that the value alignment problem is not unique to AI, but applies to any technology, thus opening up alternative strategies for attaining value alignment. Next, I argue that due to uncertainty about appropriate alignment goals, real-time value alignment may lead to harmful optimization and therefore will likely do more harm than good. Instead, it is better to base value alignment on a fallibilist epistemology, which assumes that complete certainty about the proper target of value alignment is and will remain impossible. Three alternative principles for AI value alignment are proposed: 1) adopt a fallibilist epistemology regarding the target of value alignment; 2) focus on preventing serious misalignments rather than aiming for perfect alignment; 3) retain AI systems under human control even if it comes at the cost of full value alignment.

Institutions

  • UHH
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Tuesday, July 8th, 2025 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. About 'The Human' in Artificial Intelligence

Main Building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, East Wing, Room 221
This upcoming iteration of our "Taming the Machine" lecture series sheds light on the social background that AI technologies are embedded in.
For better or worse, the revolutionary potential of AI has reached public consciousness, with a growing recognition of the ways that AI might change how we live and work together. Indeed, the fabric of society is already changing in front of our very eyes, with powerful profiteers of AI rallying behind its supposed inevitability. The AI revolution is afoot and it seems as if there is nothing that we can do about it. However, Donald Trump’s emerging alliance with Silicon Valley’s “Magnificent Seven” provides a potent reason for pause and for sustained reflection on the path we are collectively treading.
To discuss how AI, like any other technology, is part of a societal process of struggle, negotiation, and cooperation, this lecture series brings together experts from philosophy, law, and cognitive science. How are technologies like AI grounded in social processes of knowledge production, design, and innovation? What is the environmental impact of AI systems and what ecological responsibilities fall to providers, politicians, and users? What is the human rights impact of AI technologies deployed in military and security contexts? And what, to speak with Nietzsche, renders AI ‘all too human’ after all?
Join us at our “Taming the Machine” lecture series this summer term to explore with our distinguished guests these and other related questions. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.
 
Prof. Dr. Jessica Heesen, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, D

Institutions

  • UHH
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Tuesday, December 09th, 2024 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. AI and the Future of Work

UHH, Main Building, ESA 1 Ost Raum O221
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have become central to numerous aspects of our lives, and are significantly reshaping them. These include our homes, our workplaces, industries in general, schools and academia, but also government, law enforcement and warfare. While AI technologies present many opportunities, they have also been shown to reinforce existing injustices, to threaten human rights, and to exacerbate the climate crisis. This begs the question: How can we collectively and meaningfully shape the digital society we live in, and who is to decide on the agenda? 
This lecture series invites viewpoints from different relevant disciplines to explore how we can preserve and advance human values through the development and use of AI technologies. Key questions include: How does AI impact our fundamental social, political, and economic structures? What does it mean to lead a meaningful life in the AI age? What design and regulatory decisions should we make to ensure digital transformations are fair and sustainable?  
To explore these and other related questions, this public lecture series invites distinguished international researchers to present and discuss their work. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.
 

Prof. Dr. Kate Vredenburgh, London School of Economics, GB

Current AI regulation in the EU and globally focus on trustworthiness and accountability, as seen in the AI Act and AI Liability instruments. Yet, they overlook a critical aspect: environmental sustainability. This talk addresses this gap by examining the ICT sector's significant environmental impact. AI technologies, particularly generative models like GPT-4, contribute substantially to global greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption.
The talk assesses how existing and proposed regulations, including EU environmental laws and the GDPR, can be adapted to prioritize sustainability. It advocates for a comprehensive approach to sustainable AI regulation, beyond mere transparency mechanisms for disclosing AI systems' environmental footprint, as proposed in the EU AI Act. The regulatory toolkit must include co-regulation, sustainability-by-design principles, data usage restrictions, and consumption limits, potentially integrating AI into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. This multidimensional strategy offers a blueprint that can be adapted to other high-emission technologies and infrastructures, such as block chain, the meta-verse, or data centers. Arguably, it is crucial for tackling the twin key transformations of our society: digitization and climate change mitigation.

Institutions

  • UHH
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Wednesday, November 19th, 2025 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. AI, Art and Authorship. Perspectives From Ethics and Aesthetics

Main Building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Flü­gelbau Ost, 2. OG, Raum O221
Prof. Dr. Catrin Misselhorn (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
 
The talk explores the question of whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) can truly create art, or if there is an essential “human factor” in art production. Against the background of AI’s growing capabilities, traditional concepts in art theory like authorship are reconsidered. It is argued that authorship is a necessary condition for art, while aesthetic responsibility is at least a necessary condition for authorship of artworks. Although AI can function as an aesthetic agent, it cannot bear aesthetic responsibility. Therefore, it can neither on its own nor in cooperation with humans be the author of artworks. However, AI is able to produce objects that are in their manifest properties indistinguishable from works of art, I will speak of “fake art.” It will be shown to what extent the massive occurrence of AI-generated fake art has a detrimental effect on art practice.

Institutions

  • UHH
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Wednesday, January 07th, 2025 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. AI, Explainability and Epistemic Dependence

Main Building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Flü­gelbau Ost, 2. OG, Raum O221
Prof. Dr. Jocelyn Maclure (McGill University, Canada)

About the lecture: tbd

About the speaker

Jocelyn Maclure is Full Professor of Philosophy and Jarislwosky Chair in Human Nature and Technology at McGill University. His current work addresses various topics in the philosophy of artificial intelligence and in social epistemology. In 2023, he was Mercator Visiting Professor for AI in the Human Context at the University of Bonn. His recent articles appeared in journals such as Minds & Machines, AI & Ethics, AI & Society and Digital Society. He was the president of the Quebec Ethics in Science and Technology Commission—and advisory body of the Quebec Government—from 2017 to 2024. Before turning his attention to the philosophy of AI, he published extensively in moral and political philosophy, including, with Charles Taylor, Secularism and Freedom of Conscience (Harvard University Press (2011). He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2023.

The talk explores the question of whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) can truly create art, or if there is an essential “human factor” in art production. Against the background of AI’s growing capabilities, traditional concepts in art theory like authorship are reconsidered. It is argued that authorship is a necessary condition for art, while aesthetic responsibility is at least a necessary condition for authorship of artworks. Although AI can function as an aesthetic agent, it cannot bear aesthetic responsibility. Therefore, it can neither on its own nor in cooperation with humans be the author of artworks. However, AI is able to produce objects that are in their manifest properties indistinguishable from works of art, I will speak of “fake art.” It will be shown to what extent the massive occurrence of AI-generated fake art has a detrimental effect on art practice.

Institutions

  • UHH
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Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. AI, Human Rights and the Surveillance State

Main Building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, East Wing, Room 221
This upcoming iteration of our "Taming the Machine" lecture series sheds light on the social background that AI technologies are embedded in.
For better or worse, the revolutionary potential of AI has reached public consciousness, with a growing recognition of the ways that AI might change how we live and work together. Indeed, the fabric of society is already changing in front of our very eyes, with powerful profiteers of AI rallying behind its supposed inevitability. The AI revolution is afoot and it seems as if there is nothing that we can do about it. However, Donald Trump’s emerging alliance with Silicon Valley’s “Magnificent Seven” provides a potent reason for pause and for sustained reflection on the path we are collectively treading.
To discuss how AI, like any other technology, is part of a societal process of struggle, negotiation, and cooperation, this lecture series brings together experts from philosophy, law, and cognitive science. How are technologies like AI grounded in social processes of knowledge production, design, and innovation? What is the environmental impact of AI systems and what ecological responsibilities fall to providers, politicians, and users? What is the human rights impact of AI technologies deployed in military and security contexts? And what, to speak with Nietzsche, renders AI ‘all too human’ after all?
Join us at our “Taming the Machine” lecture series this summer term to explore with our distinguished guests these and other related questions. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.
 
Dr. Daragh Murray, Queen Mary University London, UK

Institutions

  • UHH
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Wednesday, April 29th, 2026 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. Artificial Intelligence and Progress? A Pragmatist, Justice-Oriented Critique

Flü­gelbau Ost, 2. OG, Raum O 221 Ed­mund-Siemers-Allee 1, 20146 Ham­burg

Prof. Dr. Jan-Christoph Heilinger, Universität Witten/Herdecke, DE

AI in its many forms is often presented as a driver of “progress”: improving lives, accelerating solutions, and expanding human possibilities. This talk offers a critical framework for assessing such claims. Drawing on a pragmatist understanding of progress, it proposes that genuine progress consists in removing entrenched obstacles to human flourishing – especially where deprivation, exclusion, and domination persist.
Against this standard, I examine how and why AI’s most celebrated promises often misfire. First, the political economy of AI entails massive opportunity costs: While severe deprivation remains cheaply preventable, extraordinary resources are channelled into ever more powerful IT systems. Second, “sustainable AI” narratives often function as a reputational alibi rather than meeting defensible threshold standards of sustainability.
The critical conclusion is not anti-technology, but firmly pro-justice. It is imperative to resist any potential hypes, to ask critical questions, and to accept responsibility for just regulation and reform as a shared political task. Furthermore, genuine progress needs to begin by taking seriously those at the margins.

Institutions
  • UHH
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Tuesday, July 15th, 2025 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. Creativity & AI

Main Building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, East Wing, Room 221
This upcoming iteration of our "Taming the Machine" lecture series sheds light on the social background that AI technologies are embedded in.
For better or worse, the revolutionary potential of AI has reached public consciousness, with a growing recognition of the ways that AI might change how we live and work together. Indeed, the fabric of society is already changing in front of our very eyes, with powerful profiteers of AI rallying behind its supposed inevitability. The AI revolution is afoot and it seems as if there is nothing that we can do about it. However, Donald Trump’s emerging alliance with Silicon Valley’s “Magnificent Seven” provides a potent reason for pause and for sustained reflection on the path we are collectively treading.
To discuss how AI, like any other technology, is part of a societal process of struggle, negotiation, and cooperation, this lecture series brings together experts from philosophy, law, and cognitive science. How are technologies like AI grounded in social processes of knowledge production, design, and innovation? What is the environmental impact of AI systems and what ecological responsibilities fall to providers, politicians, and users? What is the human rights impact of AI technologies deployed in military and security contexts? And what, to speak with Nietzsche, renders AI ‘all too human’ after all?
Join us at our “Taming the Machine” lecture series this summer term to explore with our distinguished guests these and other related questions. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.
 
Prof. Dr. Markus F. Peschl, Universität Wien, AT

Institutions

  • UHH
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Wednesday, May 27th, 2026 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. Cybernetic Authoritarianism: On Silicon Valley’s Technofascism

Flü­gelbau Ost, 2. OG, Raum O 221 Ed­mund-Siemers-Allee 1, 20146 Ham­burg

Prof. Dr. Anna-Verena Nosthoff, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, DE

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a structuring force in contemporary life. From scientific research and public administration to everyday communication and self-understanding, AI systems shape how we act, decide, and relate to one another. Yet their rapid diffusion raises urgent philosophical and political questions: What kind of progress does AI promise and for whom? How do algorithmic systems transform responsibility, agency, and justice? Who is likely to suffer from the watchful eye of AI systems? Can democratic societies meaningfully govern technologies that increasingly govern them?

This semester of Taming the Machines explores these questions from interdisciplinary perspectives in philosophy, political theory, and science and technology studies. We invite you to reflect with us on AI as a site of power and normativity, and examine its role in economic and political ordering, surveillance and security, knowledge production, and the formation of subjectivity. And also to considers more intimate dimensions, such has how interactions with such systems might reshape self-knowledge, dialogue, creativity, and even solitude.

Institutions
  • UHH
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Tuesday, June 04th, 2024 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. Ethics in the Age of Generative AI

UHH, Main Building, West Wing, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Room 221

Taming the Machines — Horizons of Artificial Intelligence. The Ethics in Information Technology Public Lecture Series

This summer‘s „Taming the Machine“ lecture series sheds light on the ethical, political, legal, and societal dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
This lecture series brings together perspectives from ethics, politics, law, geography, and media studies to assess the potential for preserving and developing human values in the design, dissemination, and application of AI technologies. How does AI challenge our most fundamental social, political, and economic institutions? How can we bolster (or even improve) them in times of technological disruption? What regulations are needed to render AI environments fairer and more transparent? What needs to be done to make them more sustainable? In what sense could (and even should) we hold AI accountable?
To explore these and other related questions, this public lecture series invites distinguished international researchers to present and discuss their work. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.

Prof. Dr. Louise Amoore, Durham University, Durham, UK

Institutions

  • UHH
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Tuesday, July 09th, 2024 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. Frontier AI Regulation: from Trustworthiness to Sustainability

UHH, Main Building, West Wing, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Room 221

Taming the Machines — Horizons of Artificial Intelligence. The Ethics in Information Technology Public Lecture Series

This summer‘s „Taming the Machine“ lecture series sheds light on the ethical, political, legal, and societal dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
This lecture series brings together perspectives from ethics, politics, law, geography, and media studies to assess the potential for preserving and developing human values in the design, dissemination, and application of AI technologies. How does AI challenge our most fundamental social, political, and economic institutions? How can we bolster (or even improve) them in times of technological disruption? What regulations are needed to render AI environments fairer and more transparent? What needs to be done to make them more sustainable? In what sense could (and even should) we hold AI accountable?
To explore these and other related questions, this public lecture series invites distinguished international researchers to present and discuss their work. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.

Prof. Dr. Philipp Hacker, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), D
 
Current AI regulation in the EU and globally focus on trustworthiness and accountability, as seen in the AI Act and AI Liability instruments. Yet, they overlook a critical aspect: environmental sustainability. This talk addresses this gap by examining the ICT sector's significant environmental impact. AI technologies, particularly generative models like GPT-4, contribute substantially to global greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption.
The talk assesses how existing and proposed regulations, including EU environmental laws and the GDPR, can be adapted to prioritize sustainability. It advocates for a comprehensive approach to sustainable AI regulation, beyond mere transparency mechanisms for disclosing AI systems' environmental footprint, as proposed in the EU AI Act. The regulatory toolkit must include co-regulation, sustainability-by-design principles, data usage restrictions, and consumption limits, potentially integrating AI into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. This multidimensional strategy offers a blueprint that can be adapted to other high-emission technologies and infrastructures, such as block chain, the meta-verse, or data centers. Arguably, it is crucial for tackling the twin key transformations of our society: digitization and climate change mitigation.

Institutions

  • UHH
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Tuesday, December 02th, 2024 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. Frontier AI Regulation: from Trustworthiness to Sustainability

UHH, Main Building, ESA 1 Ost Raum O221
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have become central to numerous aspects of our lives, and are significantly reshaping them. These include our homes, our workplaces, industries in general, schools and academia, but also government, law enforcement and warfare. While AI technologies present many opportunities, they have also been shown to reinforce existing injustices, to threaten human rights, and to exacerbate the climate crisis. This begs the question: How can we collectively and meaningfully shape the digital society we live in, and who is to decide on the agenda? 
This lecture series invites viewpoints from different relevant disciplines to explore how we can preserve and advance human values through the development and use of AI technologies. Key questions include: How does AI impact our fundamental social, political, and economic structures? What does it mean to lead a meaningful life in the AI age? What design and regulatory decisions should we make to ensure digital transformations are fair and sustainable?  
To explore these and other related questions, this public lecture series invites distinguished international researchers to present and discuss their work. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.
 

Prof. Dr. Philipp Hacker, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), DE

Current AI regulation in the EU and globally focus on trustworthiness and accountability, as seen in the AI Act and AI Liability instruments. Yet, they overlook a critical aspect: environmental sustainability. This talk addresses this gap by examining the ICT sector's significant environmental impact. AI technologies, particularly generative models like GPT-4, contribute substantially to global greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption.
The talk assesses how existing and proposed regulations, including EU environmental laws and the GDPR, can be adapted to prioritize sustainability. It advocates for a comprehensive approach to sustainable AI regulation, beyond mere transparency mechanisms for disclosing AI systems' environmental footprint, as proposed in the EU AI Act. The regulatory toolkit must include co-regulation, sustainability-by-design principles, data usage restrictions, and consumption limits, potentially integrating AI into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. This multidimensional strategy offers a blueprint that can be adapted to other high-emission technologies and infrastructures, such as block chain, the meta-verse, or data centers. Arguably, it is crucial for tackling the twin key transformations of our society: digitization and climate change mitigation.

Institutions

  • UHH
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Tuesday, May 14th, 2024 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. God, Golem, and Gadget Worshippers: Meaning of Life in the Digital Age

UHH, Main Building, West Wing, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Room 221

Taming the Machines — Horizons of Artificial Intelligence. The Ethics in Information Technology Public Lecture Series

This summer‘s „Taming the Machine“ lecture series sheds light on the ethical, political, legal, and societal dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
This lecture series brings together perspectives from ethics, politics, law, geography, and media studies to assess the potential for preserving and developing human values in the design, dissemination, and application of AI technologies. How does AI challenge our most fundamental social, political, and economic institutions? How can we bolster (or even improve) them in times of technological disruption? What regulations are needed to render AI environments fairer and more transparent? What needs to be done to make them more sustainable? In what sense could (and even should) we hold AI accountable?
To explore these and other related questions, this public lecture series invites distinguished international researchers to present and discuss their work. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.

Prof. Dr. Mathias Risse, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Institutions

  • UHH
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Tuesday, June 11th, 2024 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. Growing Up in the Midst of the AI Goldrush: from Data Scares to Data Scars

UHH, Main Building, West Wing, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Room 221

Taming the Machines — Horizons of Artificial Intelligence. The Ethics in Information Technology Public Lecture Series

This summer‘s „Taming the Machine“ lecture series sheds light on the ethical, political, legal, and societal dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
This lecture series brings together perspectives from ethics, politics, law, geography, and media studies to assess the potential for preserving and developing human values in the design, dissemination, and application of AI technologies. How does AI challenge our most fundamental social, political, and economic institutions? How can we bolster (or even improve) them in times of technological disruption? What regulations are needed to render AI environments fairer and more transparent? What needs to be done to make them more sustainable? In what sense could (and even should) we hold AI accountable?
To explore these and other related questions, this public lecture series invites distinguished international researchers to present and discuss their work. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.

 Prof. Dr. Andra Siibak, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estland

Present day children’s futures are decided by algorithms predicting their probability of success at school, their suitability for a job position, their likely recidivism or mental health problems. Advances in predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) systems, behavioral-, and biometrics technologies, have started to be aggressively used for monitoring, aggregating, and analyzing children’s data. Such dataveillance happening both in homes, schools, and peer networks has a profound impact not only on children’s preferences, social relations, life chances, rights and privacy but also the "future of human agency - and ultimately, of society and culture" (Mascheroni & Siibak 2021: 169).

Building upon the findings of my different empirical case studies, I will showcase how the popular digital parenting practices and the growing datafication happening in the education sector, could create not only hypothetical data scares but also lead to real data scars in the lives of the young.

Institutions

  • UHH
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Tuesday, April 30th, 2024 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. How Should We Talk about AI Ethics?

UHH, Main Building, West Wing, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Room 221

Taming the Machines — Horizons of Artificial Intelligence. The Ethics in Information Technology Public Lecture Series

This summer‘s „Taming the Machine“ lecture series sheds light on the ethical, political, legal, and societal dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
This lecture series brings together perspectives from ethics, politics, law, geography, and media studies to assess the potential for preserving and developing human values in the design, dissemination, and application of AI technologies. How does AI challenge our most fundamental social, political, and economic institutions? How can we bolster (or even improve) them in times of technological disruption? What regulations are needed to render AI environments fairer and more transparent? What needs to be done to make them more sustainable? In what sense could (and even should) we hold AI accountable?
To explore these and other related questions, this public lecture series invites distinguished international researchers to present and discuss their work. To get the latest updates and details how to attend the lectures, please visit http://uhh.de/inf-eit.

Vincent C. Müller is AvH Professor for Philosophy and Ethics of AI and Director of the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg

It is now frequently observed that there is no proper scope and no proper method in the discipline of AI-ethics. This has become an issue in the development towards maturity of the discipline, e.g. canonical problems, positions, arguments … secure steps forward. We propose a minimal, yet universal view of the field (again Müller 2020). Given this proposal, we will know the scope and the method, and we can appreciate the wide set of contributions.

Institutions

  • UHH
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Wednesday, October 22th, 2025 | 14:15 - 15:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. How to Achieve Digital Sovereignty in Europe?

Main Building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, East Wing, Room 221

Prof. Dr. José van Dijck (Utrecht University, NL)

The growing dominance of two global platform ecosystems has left European countries to rely on American and Chinese digitale infrastructures. This dependency is not just affecting markets and labor relations, but is also transforming social practices, and affecting democracies. While two large ecosystems fight for information control in the global online world, the European perspective on digital infrastructures is focused on regulation rather than on building alternatives. With emerging technologies such as generative AI (ChatGPT, Bard) and geopolitical changes, the infrastructural perspective becomes more poignant. How can Europe achieve sovereignty in the digital world?

This lecture takes up two questions. First, what public values are fundamental to Europe’s platform societies? Values such as privacy, security, transparency, equality, public trust, and (institutional, professional) autonomy are important principles upon which the design of platform architectures should be based. Second, what are the responsibilities of companies, governments, and citizens in building an alternative, sustainable platform ecosystem based on those public values?

Institutions

  • UHH
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Wednesday, January 14th, 2025 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. Implicit Knowledge in Human-Machine Relationships. A Philosophical Investigation

Main Building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Flü­gelbau Ost, 2. OG, Raum O221
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Gramelsberger (RWTH Aachen)
 
Following Mark Weiser’s vision from 1991 that the digital of the 21st century weaves itself “into the fabric of everyday life” until it is “indistinguishable from it,” we are today facing an evolution of the digital toward its naturalization. In this context, the miniaturization of technology plays an important role, but even more so the increasingly natural access to the digital, which brings the digital closer to emotions, affects and intuitions. The term “naturalization” ambiguously refers on the one hand to the digital as a technology that becomes (second) nature, and on the other hand to the naturalization (citizenship) of us in the digital sphere. The lecture analyses from a philosophical perspective the increasing acceptance of digital technology as an affective infrastructure and the phenomenological consequences for us. In particular, the concept of implicit knowledge (Michael Polanyi) plays an increasingly important role in this naturalization process. However, naturalization does not answer the question of whether machines or we as individuals will be tamed. Looking at current developments, it seems more likely that we will be the ones who will have to adapt to the rationality of machines.

Institutions

  • UHH
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Wednesday, July 1st, 2026 | 18:15 - 19:45 p.m.

Public Lecture Series: Taming the Machines. Machinic Normativity

Flü­gelbau Ost, 2. OG, Raum O 221 Ed­mund-Siemers-Allee 1, 20146 Ham­burg

Prof. Dr. Henning Schmidgen, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, DE

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a structuring force in contemporary life. From scientific research and public administration to everyday communication and self-understanding, AI systems shape how we act, decide, and relate to one another. Yet their rapid diffusion raises urgent philosophical and political questions: What kind of progress does AI promise and for whom? How do algorithmic systems transform responsibility, agency, and justice? Who is likely to suffer from the watchful eye of AI systems? Can democratic societies meaningfully govern technologies that increasingly govern them?

This semester of Taming the Machines explores these questions from interdisciplinary perspectives in philosophy, political theory, and science and technology studies. We invite you to reflect with us on AI as a site of power and normativity, and examine its role in economic and political ordering, surveillance and security, knowledge production, and the formation of subjectivity. And also to considers more intimate dimensions, such has how interactions with such systems might reshape self-knowledge, dialogue, creativity, and even solitude.

Institutions
  • UHH

Universität Hamburg
Adeline Scharfenberg
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Universität Hamburg
Adeline Scharfenberg
Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein. 

Universität Hamburg
Adeline Scharfenberg
Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein.