UCAI ’22: Workshop on User-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Darmstadt, Germany, 4th September 2022
Keynote
The Challenge of Being Humanely Digital
by Erich Prem (eutema GmbH and University of Vienna, Austria)
Most of us have frowned at the strange effects of digital technology; about how we use it, how it works or doesn’t, and maybe about what it does to us. Digital humanism is based on this thoughtfulness; it is a constructive-critical, intellectual and political movement that questions the digital and aims to shape it. Proponents of digital humanism debate issues from online surveillance to digitally-enabled network monopolies, from freedom of speech to digital sovereignty and geopolitics. The Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism was a call to deliberate these topics and to act on current and future developments. It frames the design of the digital as a quest for enlightenment and humanism. This talk provides an overview of digital humanism, its aims and current developments.
About the Speaker
Erich Prem is a computer scientist, AI expert, and philosopher. For more than two decades he worked in international research and innovation strategy and RTDI policy. He received his Dr. phil. (epistemology) from the University of Vienna and his Dr. tech. (computer science, AI) from TU Vienna. Erich is also a certified managerial economist who received his MBA in General Management from Donau University. His research interests include artificial intelligence, embodied AI, research politics, innovation research, AI ethics, and epistemology. Currently he works on ethical and epistemological questions of AI. Erich was a researcher at the Austrian Research Institute of AI (OFAI) and a guest researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AI lab. He teaches Digital Humanism (www.digitalhumanism.at) at TU Vienna and Data Ethics at the University of Vienna. Erich also has a consultancy company for strategic RTDI management, eutema (www.eutema.com).