The prevalence of speech assistants taking orders, social bots influencing debates, and machines generating texts underscores the increasing sophistication of automated communication. Simultaneously, public discourse on these phenomena reflects the ongoing challenges associated with the automation of communication. It seems that the intricacies of today’s complex societies compel a reliance on automation to meet communication needs, while also generating additional issues for which automated communication appears to be the most plausible solution.
Research in nine projects plus coordination project
The “Communicative AI“ Research Unit, funded by the DFG and the FWF, is investigating in nine projects and one coordination project how societal communication changes when communicative AI becomes part of it. Top researchers from the fields of media and communication studies, informatics, sociology and law are involved. The research focuses on pioneer communities, the development of interfaces, the legal handling and governance of communicative AI, its role in journalism, in public (online) discourse, in everyday personal life through technological companions, in the health sector and in learning and teaching.
Ralf Bendrath (Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament) Datum: 19. November 2024 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Abstract Ralf Bendrath was involved in the negotiations on the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, the first law world-wide to regulate AI specifically. He will give an insight into how the negotiations went, what the most interesting and salient (…)
Prof. Dr. Claes de Vreese (Universiteit van Amsterdam) Date: 26. November 2024 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Abstract Democracies are based on exchange, debate and discussion about goals, approaches and solutions. What tasks need to be solved, what does the sovereign want? In parliamentary democracies, this decision-making takes place within the framework of elections. In mediatized (…)
Prof. Dr. Jeremy Knox (University of Oxford & University of Edinburgh) Date: 17. December 2024 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Abstract In a similar way to previous education technologies, recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) are typically discussed in terms of their ability to enhance learning or make the educational process more efficient. While this dominant (…)
Prof. Dr. Sonja Utz (Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien IWM & Eberhard Karls University Tübingen) Date: 14. January 2025 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Abstract Language-based agents such as chatbots, voice assistants, and more recently, large language models, have become common tools for information retrieval. Assessing the quality of the information provided by these agents is crucial. This (…)
Recently, a new working paper by ComAI-members Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp and Prof. Dr. Wiebke Loosen together with Prof. em. Dr. Uwe Hasebrink entitled “The Refiguration of Public Communication: A Relational and Process-oriented Perspective” was published. The publication addresses the concepts of “public sphere” and its “structural change” in communication and media research. It is (…)
How is social communication changing with the profound transformation of the digital media environment through communicative artificial intelligence? What consequences, risks, but also potentials are associated with the widespread use of this new technology in various social domains? The “Communicative AI” (ComAI) research group, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Austrian Science (…)
The Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI), together with the Hamburg Leibniz Institute for Media Research and the universities of Graz and Vienna, has successfully applied to the German Research Foundation for a research unit. The topic: “Communicative Artificial Intelligence.” Nine research projects plus a coordination project will investigate the question of how (…)
Prof. Dr. Christian Greiffenhagen (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China) Date: 25. June 2024 Time: 18:30 Address: Schnoor 27 Building: Bremer Presse-Club Room: Club 27 Abstract This paper studies customers entering automated self-service hotels in China and using a facial recognition kiosk for registration. Based on video-recordings of 674 cases of customers checking in, we show that, as is common (…)
Prof. Dr. Benedetta Brevini (NYU, USA & University of Sydney, Australia) Date: 18. June 2024 Time: 18:30 Address: Schnoor 27, Bremen Building: Bremer Presse-Club Room: Club 27 Abstract Despite the growing concern over the environmental harms of ICT systems (Ferreboeuf, 2019) Artificial Intelligence (AI) gets principally heralded as the key technology to solve contemporary challenges, including the Climate crisis, which (…)
Prof. Dr. Axel Bruns (Queensland University of Technology, Australia) Date: 30. April 2024 Time: 18:30 Address: Schnoor 27, Bremen Building: Bremer Presse-Club Room: Club 27 Abstract Comprehensive analyses of diverging patterns in the journalistic coverage of major controversial topics are often limited by the volume of content that such analyses can realistically process. In-depth research typically relies on the manual coding (…)
Prof. Dr. Petter Bae Brandtzaeg (University of Oslo, Norway) Date: 30. January 2024 Time: 18:00 Address: Enrique-Schmidt-Straße 7, Bremen Building: SFG Room: SFG 1040 Abstract In this talk, I will explore the transformative potential of communicative artificial intelligence (AI) on the foundations of free speech. While optimistic perspectives propose that AI will catalyze and equalize political participation, others express concern (…)
Dr. Arne Hintz (Cardiff University, UK) Date: 16. January 2024 Time: 18:00 Address: Enrique-Schmidt-Straße 5, Bremen Building: Cartesium Room: Rotunde Abstract The roll-out of data analytics, algorithmic decision-making and AI has severe implications for democratic participation and state-citizen relations. While data systems deployed in public services and for state interventions can have severe implications for people’s lives, those who are (…)
16. January 2024
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp
ZeMKI, Center for Media, Communication and Information Research
University of Bremen
Universität Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67620
Sekretariat (Ms. Schmidt): +49 421 218-67606
E-mail: andreas.hepp@uni-bremen.de