Speakers

Geraldine Fitzpatrick

Responsibility in Modern Society: from Policy to Practice

What interesting times we are living in. As computer scientists, we are at the centre of addressing some of modern society’s biggest challenges. Technological advances are fundamentally changing all aspects of our society. CS work is now much more than just code and algorithms and proofs (if it ever was), as recognised by the growing importance of initiatives such as responsible research and innovation, human-centred AI, ethics in AI, digital humanism and so on. But to what extent are we outsourcing our own responsibility to these initiatives? Responsibility matters at all levels, from policies, guidelines and conceptual discussions, right down to the practical matters of what we do, who we work with, and how we work together. This short provocation will open up discussion about what these matters of practice might entail and how we can equip ourselves to do better. Responsibility in modern society depends on us.

Geraldine Fitzpatrick was a Professor of Technology Design and Assessment and led the Human-Computer-Interaction Group at TU Wien Informatics until October 2023. She is an award-winning researcher, teacher, and leader with international experience in academia, industry and healthcare. Drawing on her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Queensland and her hands-on experience as a UX practitioner and nurse/midwife, her research focuses on socio-technical and people-centred perspectives of computing. Recognitions for Gerladine Fitzpatricks’ work include ACM Distinguished Scientist, IFIP Fellow, SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award, IFIP TC-13 Pioneer Award, TU Wien Best Teacher Award, and ACM Distinguished Speaker. She also holds an MSc in Applied Positive/Coaching Psychology (UEL), and her current work is focussed on developing future leaders and crafting more collegial sustainable research cultures. She also hosts the Changing Academic Life podcast series.

Verena Fuchsberger

Participation in Digital Fabrication: Inequalities, Barriers, and Paths Forward

Making, that is, the hobbyist creation of physical things by means of digital fabrication tools, comes with different narratives of democratization - facilitating the acquisition of technological skills, contributions to innovation, and participation in society. However, those benefits are often limited to particular socio-demographics, as making communities and spaces are rarely characterized by diversity. In this talk, I will provide a brief overview of different barriers to making, and suggest different ways forward.

Verena Fuchsberger is an Associate Professor at the HCI division at the University of Salzburg. She has been focusing on the intersections of the physical and the digital world across different cases, such as the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren or the socio-materiality of makerspaces. Inspired by New Materialist theories, she is particularly interested in diversity and sustainability in and through digital technologies.

Jana Lasser

Better Algorithms for a Resilient Democracy

Social media has become a central venue for social discourse. However, its recommendation algorithms ensure that highly emotional and polarizing content receives disproportionate attention — with potentially serious consequences for society, such as the increased spread of extreme viewpoints and the extreme concentration of influence. In my talk, I will discuss how recommendation algorithms for social media can be designed to promote civil discourse rather than undermine it—an endeavor guided by the recently enacted Digital Services Act.

Jana Lasser is a Professor for Data Analysis at University of Graz where she leads the research group of Complex Social & Computational Systems at the interdisciplinary center IDea_Lab. She researches emergent phenomena in complex social systems, employing methods from machine learning, data science, natural language processing and computational and statistical modelling to understand how humans behave in socio-technical environments. Her current research interests include the the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media platforms, the application of LLMs to extract structured knowledge from text data, and the impact of social media recommendation algorithms on societal outcomes.

Mena Leemhuis

Neurosymbolic AI: Towards Interpretable and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence

The current AI landscape is rapidly changing, particularly due to new approaches such as Large Language Models. These are gaining influence not only in research, but also in society. At the same time, the widespread adoption of such models has increased awareness of the limitations of current AI systems: not only the performance of a system but also its interpretability and trustworthiness needs to be taken into account. Additionally, the immense energy and data needs of many AI approaches are increasingly recognized as problematic. Therefore, established symbolic approaches are gaining importance again as trustworthy, interpretable and less data-hungry solution strategies. In this context, neurosymbolic AI has emerged as a promising approach, combining the abilities of subsymbolic and symbolic approaches and getting the best out of both worlds. This paves the way for a new generation of AI systems that combine neural performance with symbolic guarantees.

Mena Leemhuis is a postdoctoral tenure track researcher at the Institute for Symbolic AI at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz. She is a key researcher at the FWF-Cluster of Excellence Bilateral AI. Her research focuses on neurosymbolic AI, particularly on the injection of background knowledge information into learning approaches geometrically.

Johanna Ullrich

Critical Infrastructures in Transition - Lessons from the Internet and the Power Grid

Critical infrastructures such as the Internet and the power grid form the backbone of modern society, serving people’s needs for energy, transport, and information, and dependence has only grown in recent decades. Both infrastructures are undergoing transformative changes, reshaping their design, operation, and security. The Internet is transitioning from IPv4 to the successor protocol IPv6 to overcome address scarcity, while the power grid is adapting to the integration of decentralized renewable energy sources and the increasing demand for electrification. While necessary to meet future demands, these transitions introduce new complexities and vulnerabilities that require a deeper understanding. Gaining insight into these infrastructure’s status quo is challenging, albeit for different reasons. This talk explores empirical methods for shedding light on these critical infrastructures and assesses their security and resilience based on the collected data. This talk aims to foster a broader understanding of the critical role of the discussed infrastructures. It will provide a comprehensive overview of the opportunities and risks associated with these transitions, emphasizing the need for proactive strategies to ensure their resilience and security.

Johanna Ullrich is a Professor of Security at the Interdisciplinary Transformation University (ITU) in Linz, Austria. Based on her interdisciplinary background, she works on security at the intersection of information technology and classical engineering. Her research has guided Internet standardization at the Internet Engineering Task Force, improved widely used operating systems to better protect users’ privacy, introduced a previously unknown attack against the power grid, and shaped the understanding of critical infrastructures in crises. Johanna earned her PhD with the highest distinction (promotio sub auspiciis praesidentis, awarded by the Austrian President) at the Vienna University of Technology (Technische Universität Wien). In collaboration with industry, she founded the independent research group on Network and Critical Infrastructure Security at SBA Research, a Competence Center for Excellent Technologies (COMET) on information security, and the Austrian Internet Measurement Hub, a platform for large-scale Internet measurements. Before joining IT:U, she was a Professor of Communication Technologies at the University of Vienna.

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