Tübingen as a Model City for Public Engagement

In recent years, a spe­cial situ­ation has aris­en in Tübin­gen with regard to the research and dis­cus­sion of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Togeth­er with the Fed­er­al State of Baden-Württem­berg, the Uni­ver­sity of Stut­tgart, and the Max-Plank-Cor­por­a­tion, the Uni­ver­sity of Tübin­gen has inves­ted heav­ily in AI research and has attrac­ted research sup­port from part­ners in the industry. While the city admin­is­tra­tion and coun­cil wel­come these invest­ments and the cooper­a­tion named Cyber Val­ley, and the research cooper­a­tion has made a name for itself in the sci­entif­ic com­munity world­wide dur­ing the last five years, there is also back­lash from the cit­izens who, for example, oppose the increased cooper­a­tion between uni­ver­sity and industry. One of the oppon­ents’ argu­ments is that the influ­ence of inter­na­tion­al cor­por­a­tions on the Cyber Val­ley has ser­i­ous con­sequences for the free­dom of research.

In this polar­ized cli­mate with a increased pub­lic interest in AI research, there emerges a "field of exper­i­ment­a­tion" to research and eval­u­ate the rhet­or­ic­al con­di­tions of sci­entif­ic com­mu­nic­a­tion in an area of con­flict with sci­ence, polit­ics, and soci­ety. The loc­al com­mu­nic­a­tion efforts of the RHET AI Cen­ter are inten­ded not only to provide a frame­work for the debate about the pos­sib­il­it­ies and risks of the applic­a­tion of AI tech­no­lo­gies, but also to strengthen pub­lic know­ledge about the pro­cesses and pro­ced­ures of AI research. In this way, the RHET AI Cen­ter wants to con­trib­ute to the last­ing evol­u­tion of sci­entif­ic edu­ca­tion and crit­ic­al judge­ment com­pet­ence of the region­al population.

You will find the events and formats of the Cyber Val­ley Pub­lic Engage­ments here.