Sustainable AI conference 2021

AI for Sustainability and the Sustainability of AI.

Description

AI can be an important tool for sustainable development. There is an almost overwhelming number of recent publications showing the various ways in which AI can be used for the sustainable development goals. However, these uses may come with a cost – a cost that is yet to be thoroughly assessed, evaluated and balanced. This cost can concern the environment – like carbon emissions generated while training and tuning AI models – or people more directly – like power asymmetries between those that do and do not have access to the technology – or, of course and ultimately, both at once. For this reason, Prof. Dr. van Wynsberghe from the University of Bonn, supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Institute for Science and Ethics, is launching the world’s first conference on the topic of Sustainable AI.

The aim of this Sustainable AI conference is to get researchers talking about the environmental, social and economic costs of designing, developing, and using AI. The discussion will be directed at exploring: the normative grounding of the value of sustainability; the strength of the concept of sustainability; how to measure environmental costs of AI; understanding the intergenerational impacts of AI; and, informing public policy guidelines for the green, proportionate and sustainable development and use of AI.

The conference will be interdisciplinary and welcomes contributions from computer sciences, philosophy, (applied) AI ethics, social sciences, law and policy, and others. There will be a variety of events including but not limited to: presentations by thought leaders in this space, a trailer for and an associated call for interaction with an art installation by Thijs Biersteker on the topic of Sustainable AI, and a panel organized by the World Economic Forum Global Council for AI and Humanity on the topic of intergenerational issues.

The conference will be held virtually on June 15-17, 2021.
Presenters are kindly requested to join these sessions to build an ongoing dialogue.

See here for the agenda: Download PDF
For a collection of all abstracts please click here.

Ana Catarina de Alencar, Unisociesc/Anima (Brazil)
“AI and human rights: how algorithms may affect gender equality for future generations?” (Abstract)
Gordon S. Blair, School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, UK
“An Introduction to the PARIS-DE Project: Design Principles and Responsible Innovation for a Sustainable Digital Economy” (Abstract)
Mark Coeckelbergh, Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Austria
“Green Leviathan” (Abstract)
Matthew Dennis, Eindhoven University of Technology,
Lily Frank, Eindhoven University of Technology
“Incremental Solutions to Ecological Challenges: Repurposing Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability” (Abstract)
Roel Dobbe, Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology
“Exploring Restrictions for AI Systems Energy Accounting” (Abstract)
Jan Gogoll, Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation,
Niina Zuber, Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation,
Severin Kacianka, Technical University of Munich
“Sustainable Software: Embedding Ethics into the Software Development Process” (Abstract)
Abhishek Gupta, Montreal AI Ethics Institute
“How do we get to more sustainable AI systems? An analysis and roadmap for the community”
Shivam Gupta, University of Bonn
“Digitainability framework: Mindful application of Digitization and Artificial Intelligence (D&AI) for Sustainability” (Abstract)
Marcelo G. Gutierrez B., SUSTEX.io,
Leonardo Espinosa-Leal, Department of Business Management and Analytics, Arcada University of Applied Sciences
“Natural Language Processing Methods for Scoring Sustainability Reports: A Study of Nordic Listed Companies” (Abstract)
Louise Hickman, Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and the Ada Lovelace Institute’s JUST-AI Network on Data and AI Ethics
"Deep Sustainabilities: Access, repair, and intergenerational justice Affiliation: London School of Economics and Ada Lovelace institute"
Lynn Kaack, Energy and Technology Policy Group, ETH Zürich, Climate Change AI
Raphaela Kotsch, University of Zurich/Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Climate Change AI
“Opportunities, considerations, and policy levers to align AI with climate change goals”
Iakovina Kindylidi, Vieira de Almeida,
Tiago Sérgio Cabral, Vieira de Almeida
“Sustainability of AI: The case of provision of information to consumers” (Abstract)
Helena Kotthaus, TU Dortmund University
“Enabling Sustainable AI for the End-User through Energy-Aware and Trustworthy Care Label Certification” (Abstract)
Lottie Lane, University of Groningen
“Sustaining Human Rights: The Role and Responsibilities of Businesses Developing AI” (Abstract)
Federica Lucivero, Senior Researcher in Ethics and Data, Ethox and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, University of Oxford
“The environmental sustainability of digital, data and AI driven technologies: delineating a responsibility gap” (Abstract)
Francesca Mazzi, Postdoctoral researcher, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Ph.D. candidate, Queen Mary University of London, Maastricht University
“The Oxford Initiative on AI for SDGs – Mapping and learning from AI for SDGs projects: what’s next?” (Abstract)
Alex Moltzau, NORA – The Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Research Consortium,
Ricardo Chavarriaga, CLAIRE – Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligece Research in Europe,
Vincent Mai, Quebec Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Carl-Maria Mörch, AI Institute for the Common Good, Brussels
“Mapping Ethics and Sustainability in AI: Analysis of the publicly available information on the websites of Nature’s top 100 AI research organizations” (Abstract)
Julia Maria Mönig, University of Bonn,
Sergio Genovesi, University of Bonn
“Certifying Sustainable AI in the framework of the AI.NRW flagship project” (Abstract)
Carl Mörch, Free University of Brussels,
Hans de Canck, Free University of Brussels
“A FARI Contribution: From AI to Robotics, How to Investigate the Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals?” (Abstract)
Friederike Rohde, Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), Researcher and PhD candidate at TU Berlin
Marcus Voß, TU Berlin, Distributed Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (DAI-Labor), Head of Application Center “Smart Energy Systems”
“Towards a comprehensive assessment framework for the implementation of sustainable AI systems” (Abstract)
Gabrielle Samuel, King’s College London, University of Southampton
“The sustainability of biobanking: a need for environmental considerations” (Abstract)
Roy Schwartz, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
“Green AI” (Abstract)
Henrik Skaug Sætra, Østfold University College
“A framework for evaluating AI sustainability” (Abstract)
Clea Strydom, University of Johannesburg
“The Sustainability of Weapon Systems with Autonomous Functions” (Abstract)
Daniela Tulone, Founder ecoSurge Innovation
“Trade-offs for designing effective SDGs-driven AI applications” (Abstract)
Pak-Hang Wong, Responsible AI & Data Specialist, H&M Group
“AI, Sustainability, and the Need to Disrupt” (Abstract)

Aimee van Wynsberghe

Aimee van Wynsberghe is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Applied Ethics of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bonn in Germany. She is launching and organizing the Sustainable AI Conference.
Please find Aimee van Wynsberghe‘s bio here.

Marius Bartmann

Dr. Marius Bartmann is a Research Associate at the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences (DRZE). He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Bonn (summa cum laude). His current research focuses on the ethics of climate change.
Please find Marius Bartmann’s bio here.

Jamila Nachid

Jamila Nachid is a research student at the Institute for Science and Ethics at the University of Bonn in Germany. She is co-organizing the Sustainable AI Conference.
Please find Jamila Nachid’s bio here.

Moderator:
Yolanda Rother

Yolanda Rother is a conference curator, community activator, speaker and moderator, and has worked internationally to tackle issues on open government, diversity, urban development and decolonization. She is the Co-Founder of “The Impact Company”, a diversity inclusion business and leads Europe projects at Stiftung Zukunft Berlin. She’s based in Berlin.

Jochen Flasbarth

State Secretary at the Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

Matthias Spielkamp

Matthias Spielkamp is co-founder and executive director of AlgorithmWatch (Theodor Heuss Medal 2018, Grimme Online Nominee 2019). He testified before committees of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the German Bundestag and other institutions on automation and AI and is a member of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI). [more]

Aimee van Wynsberghe

Thinking Beyond Today - Intergenerational Justice, Sustainability & AI

Organized by the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on AI for Humanity

Recent publications include an almost overwhelming number of reports showing the various ways in which AI can be used for public good. However, the impacts of the development and applications of these AI systems in the public-sphere are not limited to the present day; their effects will span generations, just as systems encoded into our social fabric in past generations still influence our lives today.

In many cases the true consequences of the design and use of AI are yet to be thoroughly assessed, evaluated and balanced. These impacts can concern the environment (e.g. carbon emissions generated while training and tuning AI models) or people more directly (e.g. power asymmetries between those that do and do not have access to the technology), or, of course and ultimately, both at once. Many of these costs are intra-generational and also span across current generations as well as generations yet to come. The purpose of this panel is to explore the nature, significance, and depth of intergenerational challenges related to AI, and grapple with how we might tackle those issues.

Click here to view the report.

Moderator:
Safiya Noble

Associate Professor
Dept. of Information Studies and Dept. of African American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Co-Director, UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2)
Co-Director, Minderoo Initiative on Technology & Power

Larissa Bolte

Research student at the Institute for Science and Ethics
University of Bonn, Germany

Sara Cole Stratton

Founder of Māori Lab, a service that brings indigenous thinking and values into companies and organisations to do 2 things; demonstrate how our inclusive, sustainable, collective well-being perspective is the mindset needed for a thriving future for all of us, and, in doing so, begin to open the door for other unheard world views to help mitigate the harm of bias in AI. I am also a Māori advisor to MIND LAB, a private tertiary institution in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Gry Hasselbalch

Co-founder DataEhics.eu, principal investigator of the Data Pollution and Power Initiative by the Bonn University's Institute for Science and Ethic's Sustainable AI Lab.

Lorena Jaume-Palasí

Lorena is founder of the initiative The Ethical Tech Society. Her research focuses on the ethics of digitalization and automation and, in this context, on questions of legal philosophy. She was appointed 2017 by the Government of Spain in the Council of Eminent Persons on Artificial Intelligence and reappointed 2020 to the Government’s National Advisory Board on Artificial Intelligence. [more]

Aimee van Wynsberghe has been working in ICT and robotics since 2004. She began her career as part of a research team working with surgical robots in Canada at CSTAR (Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advance Robotics). She is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Applied Ethics of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bonn in Germany. Aimee is co-founder and co-director of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics and on the board of the Institute for Accountability in a Digital Age. She is a 2018 L'Oreal Unesco 'For Women in Science' laureate. Aimee also serves as a member of the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on AI and is a founding board member of the Netherlands AI Alliance. She is a founding editor for the international peer-reviewed journal AI & Ethics (Springer Nature) and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Futures Council on Artificial Intelligence and Humanity. Aimee has been named one of the Netherlands top 400 influential women under 38 by VIVA and was named one of the 25 ‘women in robotics you need to know about’. She is author of the book Healthcare Robots: Ethics, Design, and Implementation and has been awarded an NWO personal research grant to study how we can responsibly design service robots. She has been interviewed by BBC, Quartz, Financial Times, and other International news media on the topic of ethics and robots, and is often invited to speak at International conferences and summits.

Larissa Bolte is currently a master’s student of philosophy at the University of Bonn and a student assistant at the Institute for Science and Ethics. Larissa graduated from the University of Bonn with a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy and psychology in 2019 having completed the Honors Program in 2019 as well. Larissa has worked at the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences for more than 1,5 years as a research assistant. She has also been working as a tutor for both moral philosophy and logic at the University of Bonn and co-organizes the “InterChair Kolloquium”, a well-established and student-run colloquium at the university’s philosophy department.

Jamila Nachid is a bachelor’s student of German Studies and Philosophy [educ.] at the University of Bonn and has studied at the University of St Andrews as well. Along with being a tutor for ethics at the university’s philosophy department, she is presently working as a student research assistant at the Institute for Science and Ethics (IWE). Jamila has also been a student research assistant at the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences (DRZE) for 2,5 years. Focussing on topics like bioethics, human rights and the SDGs, she has previously completed courses and workshops offered by Amnesty International, HarvardX and the University of Bonn. Together with Aimee and Larissa, she is a guest editor of the special issue that is associated with the Sustainable AI Conference (Journal Sustainability). For the second year in a row, Jamila is granted the Deutschlandstipendium which is a national and merit-based scholarship.

We are very pleased to announce the collaboration between the Institute for Science and Ethics and the international Journal Sustainability. Interested researchers are invited to submit a paper for our edited volume on the topic of: “Towards the Sustainability of AI. Multi-Disciplinary Approaches To Investigate the Hidden Costs of AI”. The deadline for submission is February 28, 2022.*

* Please note that you will not have to pay the article processing charge indicated on the website. This will be covered by our Institute.