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.
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
Universität Hamburg
Adeline Scharfenberg