The IWE has partnered up with “Women in AI & Robotics”, to start a local community in Bonn. “Women in AI & Robotics” is a non-profit organization, aimed at fighting the gender gap in the fields of AI and robotics. The organization empowers women by offering them a network, workshops, a platform to share their own work, mentorship programs, and more. “Women in AI & Robotics” is a global network, with local communities in Germany and Canada. On November 9th 2023, the IWE launched the Bonn chapter of “Women in AI & Robotics”.
In this video you see a talk by Prof. Dr. Aimee van Wynsberghe.
🔸 ABOUT AIMEE 🔸
Aimee van Wynsberghe is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Applied Ethics of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bonn in Germany.
Aimee is director of the Institute for Science and Ethics and the Bonn Sustainable AI lab.
She is co-director of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics and a member of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI.
She is a founding editor for the international peer-reviewed journal AI & Ethics and member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Artificial Intelligence and Humanity.
She is author of the book “Healthcare Robots: Ethics, Design, and Implementation” and is regularly interviewed by media outlets.
In each of her roles, Aimee works to uncover the ethical risks associated with emerging robotics and AI. Aimee’s current research, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, brings attention to the sustainability of AI by studying the hidden environmental costs of developing and using AI.
➔ http://www.aimeevanwynsberghe.eu
➔ https://www.x.com/aimeevanrobot
➔ https://www.linkedin.com/in/aimee-van-wynsberghe-7289b6154
➔ aimee@uni-bonn.de
🔸 MORE ABOUT “WOMEN IN AI & ROBOTICS” 🔸
➔ https://www.womeninairobotics.de/
➔ https://www.youtube.com/@UCJsRu86NvAJPqPSwHmEXhtQ
➔ https://www.linkedin.com/company/womeninairobotics/
➔ https://x.com/wairobotics
➔ https://www.instagram.com/womeninairobotics/
🔸 MORE VIDEOS 🔸
– Introductions by Rosalie Waelen & Sheila Beladinejad
– Talk by Maren Bennewitz (“From Human-Robot Interaction to Sustainable AI”)
– Talk by Modestha Mensah (5 February 2024)
🔸 ABOUT THE IWE 🔸
➔ https://www.iwe.uni-bonn.de
➔ https://www.linkedin.com/company/institute-for-science-and-ethics/
➔ https://x.com/iwe_bonn
➔ https://instagram.com/iwe_bonn
➔ https://mastodon.social/@iwe_bonn
Our next speaker is Professor Amy weinburg um yes uh Amy is a humbled Professor for Applied ethics of AI here at the University of bond she’s also a director of The Institute for Science and ethics and the bond sustainable AI lab she’s a co-director of the foundation for
Responsible robot robotics a member of the European commission’s high level expert group on AI founding editor of the journal Ai and ethics member of the world economics Forum Global Futures Council on AI and humanity and writer of the book Healthcare Robotics and Amy’s current research brings attention to the
Sustainability of AI and that’s also going to be the topic of her talk yes so thank you um it is I’m really thrilled that this event is happening today Sheila and I started talking about this I think about a year ago yeah and so it’s taken some time to actually put
Everything together but it’s so exciting and I’m so inspired by what you’ve done here with women in Ai and Robotics and that we can play a small part in that so thank you Sheila for making that possible um also want to give a shout out to Rosalie so she just started in
October is that right yeah so she’s only been here for like six weeks and has already put together this event and so I think that’s [Applause] really yeah I think that’s really admirable and welcome to the team again so there are three things that I want to
Raise in my 10 minutes or I have an hour no there’s three things that I want to to do the first one is um to say a little bit about my background that I began in uh cell biology so not your typical training for an ethicist or a
Philosopher and while I was a cell biologist I was or while I was training to become a cell biologist I also worked at a robotics Institute and I was working with engineers um how do we train robots how do we train surgeons to use robots this kind of thing and um it
Was that experience that led me into asking questions about ethics how do we evaluate the technology um is it just about efficiency of the technology or is there something more about how it’s integrated into a practice yeah and so that’s when I pivoted and I shift to
Look at ethics and to look at how we can take ethics and use it to evaluate the technology but to stimulate new kinds of Innovations um so I say that because the the first message that I want to bring to the network or to the community is
That uh you know don’t be afraid to Pivot yeah don’t don’t be afraid to to take chances and to move Beyond even though I started in the technical domain and then shifted into ethics um yeah I think it’s important that that uh we make sure that young women older women
As well um young men as and older men as well that we are and non-binary allinclusive yeah that we yeah can grasp this idea that it is possible to to shift and to change our way of thinking so that’s the first point the second point is um the overall
Vision that I have for my research so um as said I’m an ethicist I do the ethics of Robotics and artificial intelligence and I’m not sure if many of you are familiar with the kind of uh reputation that ethicist have that we’re often considered the ones who come into the
Room and we say like no you can’t do this what are you doing H um and well yes that has been somewhat the case you know and we hear that ethics is going to stifle Innovation it’s going to just like stop everything amazing from happening what I’m trying to do with my
Research is to show that ethics can be something so different from that yeah and so much more than that that instead of having ethics as an afterthought after we’ve created the technology and we think ah what could go wrong now right instead of that way of of doing
Ethics that we have ethics included at the early stages of design and so we can incorporate ethics into how we even think about artificial intelligence and Robotics and then how we design them and how we Implement them so that’s the second message that I wanted to to bring
To the group that this this view of ethics is changing and I think that that’s a really a wonderful um yeah a wonderful event that that I see happening and I hope that I continue to see more of that in the years to come um
The third thing that I wanted to do oh I am watching the time I promise but the uh the third thing that I wanted to do is to just tell you a little bit about my research so I um have been in this field I think so I started in robotics
In about 20 years ago and then shifted into ethics maybe about 15 years ago and um I’ve watched this development this development of how ethics has changed in not being so much of an afterthought but being incorporated into design but I’ve also seen how um in the AI ethics debate
In particular but also in the in the robotics space there’s a focus on issues like privacy you know how is the data collected so the robots that we that we saw if they’re interacting with people are they doing facial recognition right like what kind of data are they collecting about individuals so there’s
Privacy issues there’s also um issues in terms of uh well-being and deception if we use robots to help take care of elderly people and and especially someone with dementia um is is it deceiving is it deception to not tell them that it’s a robot right they might
Believe that this is actually a baby that they’re holding or they might believe that it’s an an animal and this could be very beneficial for them don’t get me wrong right there’s a lot of benefits to animal therapy in terms of calming the patients in terms of maintaining sort of like stable
Physiological status but then the ethical question is is is it okay that we’re sort of tricking them into thinking that it’s a real entity a real thing so there’s a a variety of ethical issues related to um robotics related to artificial intelligence again how do we collect the data to train these systems
How are we training them who is labeling these systems and if we’re talking about machine learning if we understand the rules that have been generated by the model and we create this black box I don’t know if you’re familiar with the black box idea but is
That okay right that we don’t know who is responsible if there’s negative consequences we don’t know who is accountable when something goes wrong so these are all very important ethical issues but what I also learned or started to think about in the last three years is the environmental justice
Issues and so with artificial intelligence you know you hear about the cloud everything happens on the cloud yeah like the the cloud yeah where is it we we have this feeling that there’s no physical infrastructure to this technology but there is like a massive physical infrastructure we have data
Centers we have these servers we need water to cool the servers when we train the algorithms we need energy for this carbon emissions are a result of this energy the minerals that go into the the basic physical infrastructure the electronic w B right these are all incredibly important issues that we
Haven’t been paying attention to and so my research is now focused on raising awareness studying like uncovering these issues I think what’s also important and and you know speaks to sort of what what Sheila was talking about you know with all of the obstacles it’s great that you
At least saw the man and the woman because there’s so many hidden demographics and now we’re talking about the obstacles that women face but for so many years the women didn’t have much of a voice we didn’t know the obstacles that they were facing so what I’m trying
To bring attention to is the obstacles that we should be paying attention to when it comes to environmental justice and how the making and the using of artificial intelligence is exacerbating this vicious cycle that we’re in where we exploit people we exploit the planet
And um so at the lab then uh am I okay yeah I have another minute so at the lab just because I want to pay tribute to so yes this is my research space and I talk about um sustainable artificial intelligence not just you know what Marin said that Ai and Robotics can
Contribute to sustainability it’s not just that yeah I see sustainable AI is this umbrella term and you have yes how can Ai and Robotics contribute to sustainable development goals but what is the sustainability of AI what are all of these negative Environmental consequences that we’re talking about
And you have to have these you have to study these two and dare I say it we can’t even talk about Ai and Robotics as being sustainable until these two come together yeah until we look at yes let’s use it for sustainable ends but it has
To be in in in and of itself sustainable so then at the lab there are researchers who are looking at uh Ai and healthare and what it means to say you know so we’re creating algorithms or models that will be used in the uni Clinic here in
Bon yeah and it will enhance efficiency beneficial for the surgeons beneficial for the patients but is that enough yeah can we say that this is good AI or AI for sustainability if there are all of these environmental consequences with the hidden demographics that we’re not paying attention to that we’re not
Listening to that we don’t even see can we still say that it’s good AI or AI for good um we have another researcher who’s looking into to the very concept of sustainability right I was critiqued at the beginning when I uh pitched the idea of sustainable AI that I was just
Putting together two buzzwords and you know what is this thing does it make any sense and so we’re also looking into what does sustainability mean and what should it mean in the AI context so again this idea of the two branches it’s not just about using AI for sustainable
Ends it’s about looking at how sustainable this technology is and can we change that and bring them together and we have um new researchers who are coming in to do um Ai and Indigenous populations this is another hidden demographic so much knowledge coming from indigenous populations about
Stewardship of the planet how we should be taking care of the planet what we should be paying attention to and these voices again are not heard so I’m super pleased that we have a PhD student who’s going to come in with that research focus and there’s so many Urban AI we’re
Looking at sustain stainable AI in cities I’m looking at my lab manager Charlotte in case she wants to ping me for anything else um we have researchers from the University of Ghana modest is going to be speaking after me to tell about her exciting research we have another
Research DOI who’s here who’s looking at the future of mining so in Ghana gold and now it’s lithium that’s just been discovered and the mining practices yeah it’s not good to to say the least right and so I think it’s wonderful that we have researchers who
Are looking at what could the future of a sustainable mind look like in in a country like Ghana and I know that I’m forgetting uh the the hidden labor costs right also researchers looking at um what kind of Labor goes into the creation of artificial intelligence so
The labeling of the pixels on the images and and things like that again hidden labor and who is doing it often it’s refugees in refugee camps or it’s prisoners in prisons cuz it’s free and that’s cheap and that’s how we have our cheap yeah AI which is unfortunate so
That was a bit of a downer of a talk I realized at the end but um also to um to Echo what Marin says I find the these areas incredibly exciting there’s so much research to do and I’m so happy again that the iwe is partnering with
Women in Ai and Robotics and I’m excited to see what the future holds for us yeah thank you [Applause] thank you so much Amy um and well our lineup of speakers today uh really shows that there’s many different ways in which you can be involved in Ai and
Robotics and you can come from different very different um well career paths ending up working in this field