VWS Grant: How Is AI Changing Science

Since August 2022, the Working Group on the History of Science in Vienna is part of the research project “How is Artificial Intelligence Changing Science?” funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. To clarify current changes in sample disciplines (film studies, sociology, geosciences) three working groups share their perspectives:

History of Science: At the University of Vienna, Anna Echterhölter and Markus Elias Ramsauer contribute from the perspective of the social history of quantification. We are focusing on the development of classification and clustering in the social sciences. The first approach uses colonial statistics from German Oceania as a case study. The second case study investigates world models at a time in which the use of electronic computers had recently been adapted for the social sciences. More specifically, the PhD Project “The World(s) of Global Modeling (1972-1989)” by Markus Ramsauer analysis these early attempts of multi-sectoral, computer-based modeling as politico-scientific endeavor.

The Media Studies group is located in Bonn with Jens Schröter (PI) and Andreas Sudmann, contributing media archaeologies and media ethnographies of selected project partners. The working group in Computer Science is led by Alexander Waibel, who has been a pioneer in ANN, and Fabian Retkowski, who has developed a state of the art summarizer.

There are frequent online workshops dedicated to exploring the potential, limitations, risks and ambivalences of AI-based methods. The series “ai\research\explorations” treats topics such as “AI & the digital transformation,” “Sequence Models and the Scientific Field,“ “Clustering: Automated Order in the Social Sciences,” the later is costed in cooperation with the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) Vienna. The results of the opening conference at the Sorbonne Center of Artificial Intelligence in Paris “Beyond Quantity. Research with Subsymbolic AI” can be found here Open Access.