Michael Funk

University of Vienna

"AI and Climate – Transdisciplinary Integration as Ethical Wisdom"

Climate research and environmental sciences are classical examples of transdisciplinary research.Many sociological or epistemological studies have been emphasizing the complexity of globalprocesses including both biophysical natural phenomena and human cultural traditions. For instance,the Springer Handbook of Transdisciplinarity and other voices in the debate like Gibbons, Nowotny,Hacking, Hirsch-Hadorn etc. highlight the multifaceted disciplinary approaches of environmentalsciences - including computer models - and its integrative challenges as significant examples oftransdisciplinarity. During the last decade the concept of Anthropocene (and its critique) gainedgrowing attention. Here again, at the intersection of geology, humanities etc. the role of humantechnical culture is analysed as key factor of 21 st -century earth history. On the other hand, since 2019the topic of AI (re)entered the stage of public, scientific and political debates, that go far beyond onesingular disciplinary perspective. Legal regulation is entangled with economic perspectives, politicaland technical practice as well as ethics.In my presentation I am going to bring both debates together with a specific focus ontransdisciplinary integration. Therefore, in a first step I am analysing the key concept: What istransdisciplinarity - in contrast to inter- or cross-disciplinarity? In a second step I give some examplesof transdisciplinary integration in environmental science and AI regulation. Third, I turn to the ethicalside of the coin. Two questions will be discussed: To what extant is ethics of technologies atransdisciplinary affair? Is there a specific claim on transdisciplinary ethics, that results of recentchallenges of climate change and AI development? Finally, I will argue for a double broadening:Transdisciplinary skills are very close to ethical wisdom - and vice versa: there is an ethicalrequirement of transdisciplinary skills. Both sides of the coin, that is my point, involve an often-overlooked intrinsic similarity that should receive more attention.

Bio

Dr. Michael Funk is senior scientist at the Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna, Austria.Hitherto he had been employed at the Chair of Philosophy of Technology (Univ. Vienna, 2016-2021) -where he also obtained a doctoral degree in philosophy - and in the same sector at TU Dresden(2007-2015). Dr. Funk can look back at more than ten years of experience in transdisciplinaryresearch at the cross roads of philosophy and computer science. He is author as well as editor ofnumerous books and articles in philosophy of technoscience. Specific topics include applied ethics ofRobotics and AI, epistemology of informatics and methods of transdisciplinary research. See fordetailed information: funkmichael.com/research/