You just finished your grocery shopping online, checking new matches on Tinder. After all, you already got two dates next week. So, tonight you can chill and find out the next addition Netflix’ algorithm has in store for you.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have deeply transformed our daily routine. Whether personal or professional, our daily gestures highly depend on the function of automated smart devices meant to make our lives easier.
However, we are slowly starting to see the implications of this mutual relationship with intelligent machines. And new questions start to arise. What does this mean for individuals, citizens, and society as a whole? What can we expect in the future, or can we even imagine it? And how can we use the potential of AI without missing the risks?
This Erasmus Initiative aims for innovative and interdisciplinary research and education in AI that places people and society centre stage. Together with key stakeholders we set the expectations for implementations of AI benefiting society. Through setting the expectations we seek to engage the public with the rapidly evolving integration of AI in society.
We focus on four key domains of our society, tackling cross-cutting hot topics such as urban AI, AI street art, sustainability, equal opportunities, diversity and inclusion.
AI in arts and culture
The use of Artificial Intelligence in creative and artistic practices opens new perspectives on the possible interactions of culture, technology, and science. The leading question in this programme line focuses on the exploration of design and art practices to create new opportunities for individuals, organisations, and systems to unlock their full potential with Artificial Intelligence.
We consider AI in arts and culture as an object of study as well as a living lab to foster creativity, engagement, and sympathy – all necessary to set the expectations for AI to benefit people and society:
AI in communication and change
The use of Artificial Intelligence in media and communication encloses an immense potential for social and behavioural change. The leading question for this line is to find strategies to benefit the use of digital media technology and popular communication to suggest healthy behiavour and social dynamics.
We investigate how ‘cognitive communication’ can contribute to a healthy, fulfilling, and sustainable lifestyle and living environment. We consider AI as an object of study, as well as a tool for innovative research, education, and societal impact.
AI in healthcare policy and management
Artificial Intelligence promises the transition to a sustainable, empowered, and inclusive health system. This line investigates this transition of healthcare with AI from a societal perspective, promoting reflective research rather than an instrumental approach.
On the meso-level we reflect on what development of integrated public health that can provide personalised prevention entails. On the micro-level we reflect on how healthcare professionals develop new skills and new roles.
AI in work and labour
AI-based solutions are deeply changing work practices and relationships. From data-driven decision making and services to automated workplaces, this line asks how these technologies can enhance current work structures with a human-centred approach.
Our research and teaching will investigate new ways of organizing and new work practices that can enhance the safety and well-being of all employees. As such, this programme line aims to contribute to an inclusive future of work.
Team
PhD candidates
Adriaan Odendaal Adriaan looks at the impact creative practice can have in opening discussions around AI that can lead to more inclusive design practices. He is also co-founder of the research and design studio internet teapot, a collaboration that focuses on speculative and critical design projects and stems from the belief that design can be used in a socially transformative way. As a researcher and practitioner Adriaan’s work revolves around public algorithmic literacy and digital culture. He has co-led a number of participatory design and game design projects related to public algorithmic literacy, most recently the Algorithms of Late-Capitalism board game co-design workshop series supported by The New New Fellowship, as well as a series of tech zine co-creation workshops held at events such as the Mozilla Festival and Ars Electronica Festival.
Costanza Tagliaferri
Costanza focuses on generative art and creative coding practices. Exploring how AI systems escape command-control logic more often than we think, her research looks at AI in arts and cultures to visualise the impact of these automated systems on our beliefs and behaviours. In her free time, Costanza gets lost discovering new places and eating local food, while trying to cuddle any street cat in the city.
Eliana Bergamin Eliana has a background in the philosophy of technology, and she is working on the Health and Policy Management line of the project. Her research topic focuses on how the introduction of AI technology in healthcare is mediating human moral development. She is mainly interested in the impact this has on moral emotions such as empathy, sympathy, and compassion. Outside of work, she makes her international friends discover the wonders of Italian food, she likes to experiment with different makeup looks, and she’s currently on a mission to master the Dutch language!
Justien Dingelstad
She's interested in how AI impacts the work-life of public sector employees, such as healthcare professionals. She wants to study AI in action at the workplace, using methods such as livingLabs. Outside of her own workplace she spends a lot of time with her friends, goes to the swimming pool or the gym and listens to podcasts.
Tessa Boumans
Tessa works in the field of AI and labour. She researches the impact of AI on decent work in global value chains (SDG8), focusing especially on opportunities and risks with regard to the social arena of sustainability. Her MSc thesis was on the digitalisaton of the garment value chain, which will – together with yet to be defined value chains - continue to be one of the targeted sectors in her upcoming work. In her free time, she loves to cook (& eat), paint, and swim. She is always open to getting in touch about any of the beforementioned topics!
Postdoctoral research fellows
David Block
His research focuses on applying systems thinking, agent-based modeling and AI to understand the spread of health behaviors in online social networks among youth and identify effective (network) interventions that promote healthy behaviors.
Francisca Grommé
Francisca is the assistant professor of the Master's course 'Organisational Dynamics in the Digital Society.' She is currently conducting research on platform work and recruitment technologies, where she explores how workers take up or contest AI to improve their circumstances (e.g. wellbeing, career, status or income). Overall, she is interested in how AI changes what counts as ‘good knowledge’ in everyday work practices and how these changes (power) relations between professions. For AIPact, she will be exploring this in the health sector. In her free time, she draws, paints, photographs and goes on the occasional hike, run or swim.
Jannes ten Berge As a researcher he aims to promote a more proactive stance of society towards AI by centralizing the questions; what do we want the impact of AI on society to be? And how can individuals, organizations, and institutions shape the impact of AI? Furthermore, he will be working as a lecturer in the Organisational Dynamics in the Digital Society master program. In his spare time, he likes to run, read, and rock the guitar.
Clartijee
Bojan
Student Research Assistant
Brian Wagner
Brian is currently completing his second MSc Programme (Organisational Dynamics in the Digital Society - ODDS) at ESSB and is working on the AiPact Initiative as a Student Research Assistant. His current thesis research examines Algorithmic Management, its organisational adoption and the extent to which traditional managerial tasks can be either automated or augmented through AI technologies. For AiPact, Brian will assist both in administrative tasks and in research areas, such as in the Ghost Work project led by Prof. Dr. Claartje ter Hoeven and Dr. Ward van Zoonen.
