Collaborative Research Center on Perspicuous Computing receives another double-digit million amount in funding

Professor Holger Hermanns, Speaker of the transregional Collaborative Research Center "Foundations of Perspicuous Software Systems“. Photo: Oliver Dietze

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Modern software systems already control critical infrastructures, factories, self-driving cars and smart homes. The problem is that many of these systems have become so complex that no expert can understand if, how and why they work. Scientists at Saarland University, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security and Dresden University of Technology are jointly researching mechanisms to make the behavior of complex software systems comprehensible to everyone. The German Research Foundation has now extended this large-scale project by four years and is funding it again with around 13 million euros.

The above-mentioned examples show: Complex software systems have long been part of our everyday lives. And as long as they work, they make our lives easier. Be it by keeping power plants running or taking care of such ordinary things as vacuuming. Problems arise when the systems malfunction, for example when an autonomously driving vehicle hits a pedestrian. At that point, at the latest, it must be possible to fully trace why the error occurred, how it can be remedied and, at best, prevented in the future, and who can be held liable.

„Experts often use the image of a ‘black box’ to describe modern software systems, as in a closed container that cannot be looked into. This is partly because the content is the intellectual property of the manufacturer of the software. Inside the box, wonderous things happen that usually lead to the desired result,” says Holger Hermanns, professor of computer science at Saarland University, explaining the current situation. In the now extended transregional Collaborative Research Center “Foundations of Perspicuous Software Systems,” Hermanns is working with colleagues from Saarbrücken and Dresden in 14 subprojects to develop methods for opening this “black box,” understanding what goes on inside it and explaining these processes in an understandable way – or better yet, enabling the software to explain its behavior itself in a comprehensible way. One of the results already achieved is an app that allows drivers to look inside the software of their cars and thus, for example, view the exhaust emission values of diesel vehicles in real time.

At first glance, trying to understand why a software system behaves in a certain way appears to be a purely technical “nerd problem”. However, this point of view is far too short-sighted, warns Professor Holger Hermanns: “We are dealing with issues of very fundamental, societal importance. The level of digitization worldwide is increasing every day, and our lives are more and more determined by information technology. This development will continue, just think of the ‘smart cities’ of the future, in which networked cars independently regulate traffic, or in which AIs determine who fills which job, who has to pay which health insurance premium, or who gets a loan and who doesn’t,” says Professor Holger Hermanns.

Whether such a world is desirable at all is a question in itself. “But it is certainly not desirable if one is at the mercy of the decisions of these systems because one cannot understand how they came about and thus cannot intervene in the event of wrong decisions,” says Hermanns. Digital empowerment can only come from understanding the systems: “Which systems do you want to use, and which ones do you not want to use? Is it morally acceptable to use a certain system? Are the decisions of the system so comprehensible that it is clear who is liable in the event of malfunctions? Only by fully understanding complex software systems can there be digitally empowered citizens in the future,” says Saarbrücken computer science professor Hermanns.

The importance of the topic and the results achieved so far have now been appreciated by the decision of the German Research Foundation. It is once again funding the transregional Collaborative Research Center with around 13 million euros. Of this, around eight million euros will go to the Saarland, while five million euros will go to Dresden. Almost 25 million euros will be invested over the entire project period. The spokesperson for the collaborative research center is Holger Hermanns, professor of computer science at Saarland University. Professor Raimund Dachselt from the TU Dresden is co-speaker of the project.

From Saarland University, in addition to Holger Hermanns, the professors Vera Demberg, Anna Maria Feit and Isabel Valera, Sven Apel, Jörg Hoffmann and Antonio Krüger as well as the psychologist Dr. Markus Langer are involved. PhD computer scientist Anne-Kathrin Schmuck and professors Rupak Majumdar and Joel Ouaknine from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, as well as Professor Maria Christakis from the Vienna University of Technology are also contributing. Saarland University Professor Bernd Finkbeiner is in the cooperation for the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. Dresden University of Technology is represented by professors Franz Baader, Christel Baier, Raimund Dachselt, Christof Fetzer, Stefan Gumhold, Markus Krötzsch and Anne Lauber-Rönsberg, as well as researcher Stefan Borgwardt, PhD.

 

Further information:
www.perspicuous-computing.science

https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/389792660?language=en 

 

Scientific Contacts:

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Hermanns (Spokesperson)
Chair of Dependable Systems and Software
Saarland Informatics Campus
Saarland University
Tel.: +49 681 302-5630
E-Mail: hermanns@cs.uni-saarland.de

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Raimund Dachselt (Co-Speaker)
Chair of Multimedia Technology
Dresden University of Technology
Telefon:+49 (0)351 463 38507
E-Mail: raimund.dachselt@​tu-dresden.de

 

Background Saarland Informatics Campus:
900 scientists (including 400 PhD students) and about 2100 students from more than 80 nations make the Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC) one of the leading locations for computer science in Germany and Europe. Four world-renowned research institutes, namely the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, the Center for Bioinformatics as well as Saarland University with three departments and 24 degree programs cover the entire spectrum of computer science.

 

Editor:
Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Saarland Informatics Campus
Phone: +49 681 302-70741
E-Mail: pzapf@mmci.uni-saarland.de

 

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