Main Session Speakers

Aligning the Digital Transformation With the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

All United Nations Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015. The Agenda contains the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ranging from ending poverty, improving health and education to combating climate change and preserving oceans and forests. Digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) are mentioned only briefly in connection with education in developing countries, gender equality, and the implementation of global partnerships.

From a broader perspective, we can see that digital technologies are transforming societies in various ways. The digital transformation enables individuals and organizations almost everywhere in the world to act differently. These enabling effects of ICTs bear potentials for long-term structural change, which in turn create opportunities and risks for virtually all SDGs. It is hard to imagine how the SDGs can be reached without deep changes enabled by digitalization. Besides its enabling effects, the digital transformation comes with its own footprint in terms of mineral resource depletion and carbon emissions.

From this view, it seems urgent to ask the question what would have to be done to systematically align the digital transformation with the SDGs, and what we – as active participants in the digital transformation – can contribute to a "sustainable digital transformation" in this sense. The talk will give an overview of arguments and postulate some principles of a sustainable digital transformation.

Short Bio

Lorenz Hilty is a Professor at the Department of Informatics at the University of Zurich with a research focus on the interaction between the digital transformation and sustainable development. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Hamburg in 1991. Before being appointed Professor at UZH in 2010, he was Head of the Technology and Society Lab at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, and Affiliated Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology KTH, Stockholm.

He initiated the international conference series "ICT for Sustainability" (ICT4S) in 2013 in Zurich. Among other functions, he is a member of the Steering Committee of the Foundation for Technology Assessment (TA-SWISS) of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, the Steering Committee of the Competence Center for Sustainable Finance at UZH, the University Council of the University of Constance, and the High-Level Advisory Group on Digitalisation and Sustainability of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

Fighting fire with fire: responsible AI through regulation or innovation?

Abstract

With the increasing power of AI systems comes an increased call from society for "responsible Artificial Intelligence": AI systems that are unbiased, explainable, and only used for ethical applications. Much of the debate around responsible AI centers on regulations: for which applications AI systems should be forbidden, and what legal requirements should be placed on AI systems. But is the best road to responsible AI systems really through more regulations? Or should we use the justified legal, social and ethical concerns as a driver for more innovation instead? And if so, what innovations will be required? The answers to these questions will have implications for what we teach in our AI curricula, how we direct our research, and who we should recruit in our departments.

Short Bio

Frank van Harmelen (PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1989) is professor of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning at the Computer Science Department of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He has made contributions to automated theorem proving, to knowledge engineering, and to the semantic web standards for linked open data that are now in world-wide use.

He currently heads the Hybrid Intelligence Center, a 10-years, 20m€ national research consortium investigating AI systems that collaborate with people instead of replacing them. He is a fellow of the European AI Society, a member of the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts, and a member of the Academia Europea.

Reading the road: the challenges and opportunities of responsible research and innovation in helping develop sustainable societies.

Abstract

Technology continually reshapes our world, in ways we’ve planned for...and, increasingly, in ways that we haven’t. From how our data is mined for profit, to the addictive influence of social media and the carbon impact of going online - there are often unintended consequences to such progress. But as the challenges presented by new and emergent technologies stack up, there is a growing understanding of the crucial importance of responsible research and innovation (RRI) - a shared caretaking which can positively shape our world.

Our work in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) demonstrates at first hand some of the challenges involved in creating a dialogue between innovators and societies. It also identifies opportunities for further research and the ongoing embedding of RRI concerns to develop more responsible technologies that reflect the needs of society. We will make recommendations for future work in policy, industry and research to ensure that societal considerations are brought into the dialogue alongside commercial motivations to create more sustainable societies.

Short Bio

Marina Jirotka is Professor of Human Centred Computing in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, and Governing Body Fellow of St Cross College. Her expertise involves co-producing user and community requirements and human computer interaction, particularly for collaborative systems. She has been at the forefront of recent work in Responsible Innovation (RI) in the UK and the European Union.

She leads an interdisciplinary research group investigating the responsible development of technologies that are more responsive to societal acceptability and desirability. She is an EPSRC Established Career Fellow - a five year investigation into Developing Responsible Robotics for the Digital Economy. She is Director of the newly established Responsible Technology Institute at Oxford and she is co-director of the Observatory for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT (ORBIT) which provides RI services and training to ICT researchers and practitioners. She is also currently PI on the EPSRC Digital Economy TIPS project Rebuilding and Enhancing Trust in Algorithms (ReEnTrust).

Interaction and Representation Challenges of Sustainability Related Information – The Quest for Usable Sustainability

Abstract

The IT security research community took decades to fully embrace the fact that technical solutions are of little use if the intended users are unable or unwilling to apply them. That is why Usable Security was only widely established as an academic field after a long delay. With respect to sustainability, there is also a danger of underestimating an important aspect that lies beyond the recognized central challenges, i.e., beyond developing sustainable solutions and implementing them politically and socially. The talk assumes that the aspect of human-centered information dissemination is such an underestimated area. Indeed, it is easy to see that the appropriate preparation and provision of relevant information and, in particular, human-centered presentation and interaction support are of paramount importance for the development and acceptance of sustainable solutions. Pretty much all stakeholders in sustainability are affected by this, because their contribution depends on versatile trustworthy information from a large number of sources. The list of stakeholders includes, among others:

• Those responsible for creating sustainable value chains (for food, products, energy, etc.) that lead from initial resources to final recycling or disposal, under highly complex interrelations and while optimizing multiple "footprints"
• Business people whose support for sustainable value chains depends on a wealth of aspects.
• Policymakers responsible for complex and often highly influential regulatory policies
• The end users and general public, who, while showing a growing interest in sustainability, are far too often overwhelmed by misleading or difficult-to-understand information.

The above calls for a new academic field that we shall coin as Usable Sustainability. The presentation will first substantiate the previous argumentation further. Afterwards, current research in the fields of usability and human computer interaction (HCI) will be highlighted whose furthering and tailoring towards Usable Sustainability seems promising. Some important research challenges in this potential discipline will also be elaborated. Special attention will be given to ongoing HCI efforts towards merging the "digital world" with the physical world and its (mobile) population. As mentioned, assessing the trustworthiness of information is also of particular importance in the context of sustainability. Therefore, a brief insight into approaches and challenges in this additional area will also be provided in conclusion.

Short Bio

Max Mühlhäuser is a full Professor at Technical University of Darmstadt and Head of Telecooperation Lab. He holds key positions in several large collaborative research centers and is leading the Doctoral School on Privacy and Trust for Mobile Users. He and his lab members conduct research on Human Computer Interaction, the Future Internet, Intelligent Systems, and on Cybersecurity&Privacy.

Prof. Mühlhäuser founded and managed industrial research centers, and worked as either professor or visiting professor at universities in Germany, the US, Canada, Australia, France, and Austria. He is a member of acatech, the German Academy of the Technical Sciences. He was and is active in numerous conference program committees, as organizer of several annual conferences, and as a member of editorial boards or a Guest Editor for journals such as ACM IMWUT, ACM ToIT, Pervasive Computing, ACM Multimedia, and Pervasive and Mobile Computing.