“Artificial Intelligence” in Switzerland 2024: Rapid Diffusion and Increasing Digital Inequality

New publications on techno-religion, human augmentation technologies, internet use in Switzerland

Vortragsreihe: Wie Digitalisierung und Künstliche Intelligenz unsere Gesellschaft verändern

Daniela Jaramillo-Dent wins Best Seminar Award for outstanding teaching

Generative AI is Taking Over Everyday Life in Switzerland: From Experimentation to Regular Use

Michael Reiss successfully defended his cumulative dissertation  

Two Awards at SACM 2025 for the Media Change and Innovation Division

Internet Use as Everyday Religion on the Rise, Cyborgization Still in its Early Stages

Kiran Kappeler successfully defended her dissertation

What testing commercial neurotech has taught us, and why these technologies require informed engagement now.
The post The Neurotech Booth at RightsCon That Never Happened first appeared on Open Knowledge Blog.

As the war escalates, the digital battlefield is proving just as volatile as the physical one putting civilian lives directly in the line of fire. 

If you’ve ever wondered how platforms seem to know exactly where you came from, like prompting you to follow an account after watching a shared video, it’s probably due to ad trackers.

You’ve probably seen a link that looks normal at first, then keeps going: ?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spring_sale. All that extra text after the ? is an ad tracker.

Le comité exécutif de la Ville de Montréal a entériné la nomination des 17 personnes qui se verront remettre, le 8 mai, les insignes de l’Ordre de Montréal. Nous sommes heureux d’annoncer que Catherine Régis, chercheuse au CRDP, figure parmi elle et sera reçue officière.

Alison Grant, Canadian Ambassador to Austria, and Barbara Cullinane, Irish Ambassador to Austria, visited the University of Klagenfurt

How do climate change and artificial intelligence interact? How AI can help in the fight against climate change?
The post AI between climate change and climate protection appeared first on HIIG.

As global conservation policy focuses primarily on the expansion of protected areas, one may ask if and how protected areas contribute to the conservation of endangered species and habitats. The usual way to answer this question in the context of conservation is to regularly survey, or monitor plants, animals and ecosystems.

Dunja Pucher successfully defended her doctoral thesis entitled “On the Stable Set and Graph Coloring Problems: Semidefinite Relaxations and a Quantum Annealing Approach” on April 27, 2026. 

Studierende lassen Experi­ment mit Höhen­forschungs­ballon steigen - Preis für Informatikerin Borrmann - JMU für Gleich­stellung ausgezeichnet - Programm für ausländische Gäste - Liturgie der Zukunft

The idea of using the entire internet as a basis for AI training data represents an unimaginable technical effort with questionable benefits for the quality of the respective models, yet there are developers of generative AI systems who claim to have done precisely that – naturally without asking permission of the rights holders of the media content used, let alone sharing any profits with them.

Together, we are developing a tool that will bring public data closer to citizens, allowing them to get data by simply asking a question.
The post Brazil and OKFN partner to enable citizens to ‘talk’ to national data first appeared on Open Knowledge Blog.