Research cooperations
Working Group in ALGOR-POLITICS
To investigate the impact of the new technologies on „the socio-technical systems”
The Eötvös József Research Centre of the Ludovika University of Public Service launches a new Working Group in Algor-Politics, to investigate the impact of the new technologies, including AI on „the socio-technical systems”. The mission of the working group is to bring together and deepen professional knowledge from different angles of the social sciences and the humanities, in collaboration with experts of the computer sciences and further natural sciences, in order to assess the socio-technical challenges brought by the new technologies in human societies. The working group will keep special focus on the political philosophical aspects of the issue, including the crucial impact of AI on representative democracies and their exercise of power. The working group will provide a platform to discuss the hottest issues in the political and constitutional realm of that sphere of innovation.
Artificial Intelligence is by now among the most widely debated themes on the public agenda. Interdisciplinary channels are clearly needed to tackle the socio-political and constitutional framework of the new developments. While the European Union is in the forefront of the efforts to find instruments to address and manage its social risks and avoid potential damages to the human psyche and the finely balanced and fragile edifice of society, it is still an open question what human and social values we should exactly protect and how, in the case of the politcal applications of AI. In the meantime the United Kingdom initiated an international process (AI Safety Summit 2023) to work out the right framework for those who participate in these new industries and its different innovative sectors. 28 participating countries and their governments signed the The Bletchley Declaration about the tasks dictated by the realities of the way AI is used in contemporary societies. It is in this context that Pope Francis opened a new perspective by his Message for the 57th World Day of Peace, in January 2024. The Pope, too, calls attention to the fact that AI is already introducing considerable changes to the fabric of societies and exerting a profound influence on cultures, societal behaviours and peacebuilding. He encourages “a cross-disciplinary dialogue aimed at an ethical development of algorithms – an algor-ethics – in which values will shape the directions taken by new technologies.”
The working group addresses the political implications of the use of AI in society from different perspectives, to identify and analyze the human and social values that must prevail in parliamentary democracies even in an era characterized by the use of AI.
Chairs of the Working Group
- Ferenc Hörcher – head, research professor, Research Institute of Politics and Government
- Bernát Török – director, senior researcher, Eötvös József Research Centre; head, Institute of the Information Society
Members
- Ádám Darabos - researcher, Ludovika University of Public Service
- Gergely Deli – rector, Ludovika University of Public Service
- Johanna Fröhlich – researcher, Ludovika University of Public Service
- András Jancsó - researcher, Ludovika University of Public Service
- Ferenc Oberfrank - research physician, Insitute of Experimental Medicine
- Gábor Prószéky – director general, research professor, Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics
- András Pünkösty – researcher, Institute of the Information Society
- Ádám Smrcz – researcher, Ludovika University of Public Service
- Péter András Varga – researcher, Institute of Philosophy
- Zsolt Ződi – senior researcher, Institute of Information Society
External members
- Matías Aranguiz (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
- Mathis Bitton (Harvard University)
Budapest, 15.01.2024.