In view of the dynamics of current developments in the automation of societal communication, we expect a large number of different jobs with a focus on ComAI to be created in science, business, administration, and civil society in the future. We therefore want to prepare our young researchers for careers within and outside academia.
In the first funding period, we are starting the research unit exclusively with research assistants who want to pursue a doctorate. Accordingly, we initially concentrate on the doctoral career stage. Our basic philosophy here is to combine intensive supervision and clear structures with sufficient freedom.
The doctoral researchers of the Research Unit will jointly form a thematic cluster in the structured doctoral program of the ZeMKI, which is open to all scientific collaborators at the locations involved in the Research Unit. The structured program is characterized, among other things, by supporting workshops for exposé preparation, method groups and topic clusters, structured monthly supervision meetings, and offers for mediation in cases of conflict. Particularly in the domain of computer-aided methods, the doctoral program is supported by the Data Science Center of the University of Bremen and the DataNord competence center in addition to its own expertise in the research projects. In accordance with international standards, there is a strict separation of supervision and assessment of the doctoral projects.
The existing institutional support structures for early career researchers such as BYRD (U Bremen), Hamburg Research Academy (HBI, planned), the Doctoral Academy Graz (U Graz), and the Center for Doctoral Studies (U Vienna) are available to the doctoral candidates of the research unit. To ensure mutual support between the participating locations, there will be a monthly jour-fixe organized by the coordination project where all doctoral researchers can exchange their experiences.
In addition, an annual ComAI Summer School is planned, for which external young scientists can also apply. This summer school has two objectives: First, it is about joint coaching for dissertation projects. Second, we want to give doctoral researchers the opportunity for early independence by allowing them to organize parts of the summer school themselves (e.g., selecting and inviting external experts).In the fourth year of funding, we are planning a series of information events on practical fields of automated communication as part of our summer school to give doctoral researchers the opportunity to switch to non-university practice after their qualification if they wish to do so.
PhD project of Marvin Waibel AI Companions are specifically designed to establish long-term relationships with their users and offer new possibilities for companionship. As we continuously integrate AI into our personal lives, AI companion apps are transforming how and with whom we form and maintain relationships. AI companions can therefore be seen as emerging indicators (…)
PhD project of Rahel Winter Who is talking is just as important as what they are saying – especially when the former impacts the latter. In public discussions of AI, held across both physical and digital spaces, this can take the form of a tech CEO, who is keen to attract new investors and thus (…)
PhD project of Moritz Wiechert In his dissertation, Moritz Wiechert examines the legal classification of AI-generated communication under communications law. The starting point is the question of how the traditional principles of communications law—particularly those concerning the interpretation and attribution of statements—can be applied to communicative acts produced not by human subjects, but by technical (…)
PhD project of Luisa Runge The automation of communication content reintroduces familiar challenges known from earlier platform debates—such as misinformation, copyright infringements, and discrimination—while simultaneously producing new ones. In the context of ComAI, responsibility structures become more complex because content is no longer generated solely by users but emerges from interactions between humans and machine (…)
PhD project of Carolin Müller Imaginations of transcendence have long been entangled within tech-savvy areas. For instance, ideas of transhumanism have influenced imaginations of how humanity might transcend boundaries of the human body with the help of technological advances. Communicative AI is no exception: it, too, is linked to transgressive experiences and imaginaries. It is (…)
PhD project of Phillip Engelhardt AI is a technology that is constantly re-emerging in terms of its areas of application and its transformational potential. Its meaning remains flexible and a large part of the discourse surrounding the future of AI is therefore focused on filling the still-underexploited semantic space with communicatively constructed meanings. In this (…)
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp
ZeMKI, Center for Media, Communication and Information Research
University of Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67620
Assistent Mrs. Schober: +49 421 218-67603
E-mail: andreas.hepp@uni-bremen.de
