What if robots take over the world?

11.05.2023 Our lives are already impacted by technological development. Artificial intelligence is on everybody’s lips. But what will the future really look like? And how can we use technologies in such a way that they serve people – and not the other way around? These are precisely the questions that Bern University of Applied Sciences is exploring in its strategic thematic field Humane Digital Transformation.

Funny pictures created online with artificial intelligence, student research projects written by machines, or robots taking over the world: artificial intelligence (AI) is currently on everybody’s lips, and with it the possibilities and limits of technological development.

From funny toys to nightmarish scenarios with a Hollywood twist, AI is a vast debate. But few address the specific question of how we can shape development today in order to use technologies sustainably and to continue focussing in the future on people and their needs.

As part of the strategic thematic field Humane Digital Transformation (HDT), Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH) is precisely addressing these issues:

  • How must collaboration between people and technologies be designed so that a responsible use of AI is possible?
  • What ethical and moral principles need to be considered in AI training?
  • Where does AI acquire knowledge what stereotypes must be taken into account so that potential AI decisions are not discriminatory or harmful to society?

AI expert Prof. Dr Mascha Kurpicz-Briki comments on central issues of technological development in Bern University of Applied Sciences’s online science magazine Societybyte and shows the paths taken by BFH in the field of humane digital transformation.

Portrait Dr. Mascha Kurpicz

Prof. Dr Mascha Kurpicz-Briki teaches Data Engineering at the Institute for Data Applications and Security IDAS of Bern University of Applied Sciences. She is also deputy head of the Applied Machine Intelligence Research Group. Her research focuses among other things on fairness and the digitalisation of social and societal challenges.

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