Brave new world with artificial intelligence?

Thursday, 27 February 2025 00:00
Written by Portal Editor

The Leipzig Book Fair will start in 2025 with a new, discursive discussion forum on the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on various areas of society.

The Human and AI Forum: Brave New World? in Hall 5 will explore the influence of AI on democracy and politics, art and culture, society, social affairs and education, as well as media and propaganda. Experts, authors, artists, journalists, scientists and politicians who deal with AI and its contexts will have their say.

The new Human and AI Forum sheds light on the ambivalence of digital technology

"The rapid rise of AI in numerous areas of life is fascinating - and worrying in equal measure. How will our society change when it consumes more and more artificially generated content? Do authors have to fear for their livelihoods? Or will they be able to score points with the uniqueness of human experiences for a long time to come? Our new forum, to which I would like to warmly invite you, is all about the risks but also the many opportunities of this technology," says Astrid Böhmisch, Director of the Leipzig Book Fair.

Participants in the program include PEN Germany, representatives from Wikimedia, Microsoft and the Chaos Computer Club, as well as "The AI Podcast" from ARD and the podcast "Understanding AI" from Deutschlandfunk. The audience is also invited to take part. Questions can be asked not only at the end of the one-hour panel discussions - concerns and topics can already be submitted via the website.

Upgrade for society, social affairs and education thanks to AI?

What ethical rules do we need when dealing with AI? How do algorithms become transparent and how can discrimination be avoided? Alena Buyx, former chair of the German Ethics Council, and Florian Schwiecker, former criminal defense attorney, will discuss this. Jacob Beautemps explores the potential of AI for social innovation processes. The YouTuber and science journalist shows the possibilities that AI offers in the areas of energy, mobility, medicine and security. Do AI and the common good go together? Franziska Heine from Wikimedia Germany and Lisa Steigertahl from Microsoft Germany, among others, will discuss open source technologies and the participation of civil society. Eva Wolfangel, award-winning science journalist, and AI researcher Patrick Krauss explain the fascinating differences, but also similarities, between humans and machines.

On power shifts and regulation: AI in democracy and politics

Can the negative effects of AI be limited with the help of international regulations and cooperation? Constanze Kurz from the Chaos Computer Club, together with the two scientists Katja Muñoz and Thorsten Thiel, examines the influence of AI on international competitiveness. Author Dana Grigorcea, Robert Schwartz, head of the Romanian editorial team at Deutsche Welle, and media scientist Simon Roloff discuss how AI-generated stories in social media influence our democracies, using the example of the manipulated presidential elections in Romania. But can AI also strengthen democratic structures? This question is the subject of a study by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, whose co-author Nikolai Horn from the think tank iRights.Lab speaks to political representatives. Communication scientist Christian Pentzold and digital politician Anke Domscheit-Berg are devoted to the social and economic effects of AI and the question of how power relations are shifting and where new scope for action is emerging.

Should machines write books? - AI in art and culture

Whether in the visual arts, literature, music, theater or film - AI opens up unimagined creative possibilities, but at the same time raises key questions about copyright and artistic creation and changes the production and reception of art and culture. Deutschlandfunk's live podcast episode "Understanding AI" addresses the use of AI from the book idea to marketing and asks how AI is changing the world of literature. The authors Sara Wegmann, Jan Cornelius and Jonas Lüscher talk about the hopes that AI raises: To what extent can it be used to find a new language between nations and generations? The protection of the rights of creative people is the focus of both the panel with Ursula Feindor-Schmidt, specialist lawyer for copyright and media law, and representatives of the publishing industry, as well as the discussion with Gesche Joost, President of the Goethe Institute, and Konrad Schmidt-Werthern from the Office of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Check facts or fake them? – AI in media and propaganda

The line on which AI moves in the media is very fine. On the one hand, it opens up new possibilities for journalism - from personalized news to support with fact-checking - but on the other hand, AI also stands for disinformation, manipulation and the loss of journalistic diversity. Oliver Voß from Tagesspiegel and Viktor Marinov from Correctiv discuss these risks. Experts Bastian Martschink and Johannes Pursche, as well as Holger Volland, CEO of brand eins, explain exactly how this manipulation works, how we can arm ourselves against it and what role AI can play in combating disinformation. In its live episode, "The AI Podcast" from ARD addresses the questions: How deceptively real are AI-generated works today? And can perfectly coordinated algorithms provide us with entertainment in the future that is even too good?