Ethical and data protection implications in the use of AI
Ethical and data protection issues arising from the collection and use of data - whether for improving the adaptability of cities to climate change or for other purposes - were addressed in data protection training sessions and ethics workshops.
Clarification of data protection issues
Two data protection training sessions for project participants ensured that the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation were complied with throughout the project and that questions in this context could be discussed and clarified.
Ethical implications of AI-supported climate adaptation
The ethical implications of AI-based technologies, their development and application were first of all - derived from the relevant scientific literature on the subject - so-called ethical principles were developed: Sustainability, democracy, freedom (from discrimination), protection of privacy, transparency, traceability, verifiability, (manipulation) security, and accountability. These were transferred to the practical research work of the AI developers in the I4C project as part of the ethics workshops, discussed using examples and finally set out in an ethics concept, which went through an internal and external (Thales Academy for Applied Philosophy and the Ethics Committee of the University of Freiburg) review process (concept paper on the consideration of ethical issues in the I4C project - available via the University of Freiburg).
Based on the publication of the ethics concept, the experience gained in the project with the design of the ‘ethics by, in and for design’ approach from the Federal Government's Artificial Intelligence Strategy (2018) was shared publicly so that similar projects can build on this and the integration of ethical issues and principles in AI research projects can be further developed.
Knowledge transfer on the use of AI tools in climate adaptation
The results of the project were made accessible to the interested public in Freiburg as part of two exhibitions: in the pop-up exhibition Daten:Raum:Freiburg, digital projects of the city administration in cooperation with regional companies and research institutions were presented over the course of a month - including the Intelligence for Cities (I4C) project. The project also took part in the MobiLab roadshow (a mobile participation project of the Eucor project), which was held in Freiburg for two days in June 2023. Four I4C professors discussed the topic of ‘Cities under heat stress’ with the climate adaptation manager of the city of Freiburg at a public panel discussion as part of the Freiburg Horizons event series, and findings from the interdisciplinary work in I4C were shared at the FRIAS Lunch Lectures.