Kategorie: Blog

  • ESG: vom virtue signalling in den Untergrund?

    ESG: vom virtue signalling in den Untergrund?

    Bis vor Kurzem habe ich noch Scherze gemacht über die Rolle des Kartellrechts als effektives Hindernis für ESG. Spätestens mit Trumps Amtseinsetzung ist mir das Lachen vergangen. Net Zero Allianzen erleben einen Exodus von profilierten Unternehmen, u.a. aus juristischen Gründen. Wird Nachhaltigkeit in den Untergrund gedrängt?

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  • Die Datenrevolution frisst ihre Kinder

    Die Datenrevolution frisst ihre Kinder

    KI automatisiert vieles. Und sie gilt als neutral. Erreichen wir dank ihr nun endlich Chancengleichheit? So einfach ist es nicht: Ohne menschliche Intervention wird KI zu einer Fortsetzung der Diskriminierung mit anderen Mitteln. Dazu kommt: LLMs geht nach jahrelangem Datenraubzug die Nahrung aus. Sie füttern sich vermehrt mit eigenen Daten. Doch dadurch droht ein Modellkollaps.

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  • KI: Fortschritt, Frechheit und Fantasterei

    KI: Fortschritt, Frechheit und Fantasterei

    Die Blick-Digitalexperten Thomas «Bö» Benkö und Tobias Bolzern haben mich zu «Prompt Zero» eingeladen, dem «ersten AI Podcast der Schweiz». Hier dreht sich alles rund um das Thema künstliche Intelligenz. Diese Einladung konnte ich natürlich nicht ausschlagen. Der Einsatz von KI in den Medien ist ein kontroverses Thema – Transparenz, Ethik und Urheberrechte prallen hier…

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  • Rainwater Harvesting in Bangladesh

    Rainwater Harvesting in Bangladesh

    In 2017 I visited various NGO projects in Bangladesh. Upon return to Switzerland I wrote a piece on a method to harvest rainwater in order to secure the supply of healthy water. The article was originally published in the Bangladesh newspaper Daily Sun on February 7, 2018.

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  • Getting to the root of food waste in bananas

    Getting to the root of food waste in bananas

    The food waste of bananas created by consumers is only the tip of the iceberg. Even more waste is created at the farm level, where up to 40% of bananas are put to waste. The high percentage of waste at farm level puts an additional strain on the cost/income ratio of farmers.

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  • Robinhood: democratized finance on shaky ground

    Robinhood: democratized finance on shaky ground

    More than 900 years after the heroic figure Robin Hood set out to steal from the rich and give to the poor, two American entrepreneurs borrowed his name to establish a fintech company that claims to “democratize finance for all”. But the new Robinhood’s claim of ‘democracy’ is on shaky ground. Just as the company…

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  • Privacy conundrums in early 2021: on violators and accomplices

    Privacy conundrums in early 2021: on violators and accomplices

    How is it possible that an app that simultaneously breaches privacy principles and that, for the time being, undermines ideals of inclusiveness, is so successful? And why do even people who are usually strong advocates of the very values Clubhouse violates, hop on this latest trend?

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  • No, we don’t want to ‘democratize’ AI

    No, we don’t want to ‘democratize’ AI

    The talk about democratizing AI is a clever marketing move. Democracy is an inherently positive term. By suggesting that AI is in everyone’s interest, it is not far off from framing AI as a basic need. But let’s not be fooled: AI is not a basic need. It is a tool, that is, a means…

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  • Four reasons why hyping AI is an ethical problem

    Four reasons why hyping AI is an ethical problem

    Hyping AI creates ethical challenges on top of the existing ones. Here is how: 1. AI hype does not question the very purpose of AI. 2. AI hype is linked to misleading promises. 3. AI hype directs energy at something that is barely tangible. 4. AI hype exaggerates the capabilities of AI when effectively humans…

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  • Opposing facial recognition: accuracy is not the point

    Opposing facial recognition: accuracy is not the point

    Facial recognition has come under massive scrutiny. Approaches to using it are quite divided. While China uses the technology routinely and extensively in order to surveil their citizens’ everyday life; San Francisco, notably the ‘home territory’ of those companies driving the development of this type of technology, has banned it last spring.

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  • digitalization and ethics: a simple outline of foundations

    digitalization and ethics: a simple outline of foundations

    It shouldn’t take a scandal of the dimensions achieved by Facebook/ Cambridge Analytica to make it clear that we must not use technology blindly without asking ourselves some ethical questions, but incidents like these certainly help to raise awareness on an ever broader scale. Yet, despite an increasing amount of articles calling for integrating ethics…

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