SemSys at the Digital Humanism conference
During 26-28 June, SemSys representatives attended the first Digital Humanism conference hosted in the wonderful venues of Vienna’s Museums’ Quarter. The program included enlightening and thought-provoking talks, panels and workshops on a variety of topics such as the chances and dangers AI and social media present to democracy and innovation, as well as discussing accountability in AI and how digital humanism should be at the forefront of shaping our digital future.
The first keynote speaker, Professor Lawrence Lessig from Harvard University spoke about the impact that AI and social media have had on current political climates. Over the three days, other notable speakers like Professor Moshe Vardi from Rice University and Professor Dame Wendy Hall from the University of Southampton added their valuable insight into current and next challenges of the ever-evolving digital world.
Importantly for the WU delegation, the conference served as a setting to bring together – for the first time – the first cohort of the WWTF funded Doctoral College on Digital Humanism! PhD students funded by DigHum projects (as our very own Felicia and Hanna) and by the doctoral college had the chance to meet each other, the school coordinators as well as to get to know the Digital Humanism community.
A further highlight was the presentation of the WWTF funded project “Citizen-centered democratic innovation: Understanding citizen preferences for participatory budgeting algorithms” by our colleague Jan Maly – who put aside his busy schedule as a very active father to join the conference for this short session.
Finally, in a panel about “Teaching Digital Humanism”, Marta shared some of the open challenges of this topic in the context of the WWTF Doctoral College. In particular, one question is determining how to best equip up-and-coming researchers with a toolbox for digital humanism. The newly created Doctoral College is a collaboration between three of Vienna’s top universities. As such, a strong focus lies on interdisciplinary work, which always comes with its own unique obstacles.
