SIC Scientist appointed to Enquête-Commission of the federal state parliament of the Saarland

Kevin Baum Photo: © Universität des Saarlandes/ Oliver Dietze

Kevin Baum, researcher for Computer- and Machine-Ethics at Saarland University, has been appointed as an expert in the Enquête-Commission “Digitalisierung im Saarland – Bestandsaufnahme, Chancen und Maßnahmen” in February 2020. The commission, which started its work in February 2019, determines the effects, opportunities and risks brought about by technological innovation in the Saarland and thus provides the basis for a concept of how to deal with said changes.

Both economic and social impacts of the digital revolution in the areas of mobility, education, labour market, media, health, agriculture, research, administration, police and the legal system are being studied by the Commission. The knowledge gained from this should help “to make Saarland fit as an innovative region”, as the Commission’s first interim report states.

Meanwhile, the topic of “ethics” has been identified as a central issue. “I consider this to be important and appropriate, because dealing competently with the ethical challenges of the digitalisation process is key to good, successful and well thought-out state governance,” says Kevin Baum on his appointment to the Commission. He stresses that a successful digital revolution for the common good can only be achieved if the numerous pitfalls of the issue are identified, named and solved. He said that the appointment as an expert is therefore a great honour and he is looking forward to contributing technically and scientifically based suggestions and thus participating in the development of forward-looking recommendations for action.

Baum is doing his PhD in computer science and philosophy. In his research he is primarily interested in ethical questions of technological progress. He is deputy chairman of the Commission for Ethics of Security-Related Research at Saarland University. As a lecturer at Saarland University, he together with computer science professor Holger Hermanns and Sarah Sterz developed and held the interdisciplinary course of study “Ethics for Nerds” , which was awarded the title of „Hochschulperle des Jahres” by the Stifterverband für die deutsche Wissenschaft in January 2020

Furthermore, Baum is a researcher and project manager in the research project “Explainable Intelligent Systems (EIS)” at Saarland University, which is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. This highly interdisciplinary project combines disciplines from four faculties, including computer science and philosophy.

Background Saarland Informatics Campus:
800 scientists and about 2000 students from 81 nations make the Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC) one of the leading locations for computer science in Germany and Europe. Five world-renowned research institutes, namely the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, the Center for Bioinformatics and the Cluster for “Multimodal Computing and Interaction” as well as three networked departments and 18 degree programs cover the entire spectrum of computer science topics.

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