Panel 1 – On Humans And Machines

What’s new in the field of Human-Machine-Interaction? (in german)

Chair: Sebastian Schleidgen (Hagen/Munich)

1:00–1:40 pm
Gabriele Gramelsberger (Aachen): Machine-Rational Sociality. Critique of the Sociality Inscribed in Machine Learning Procedures

Machine learning, unlike other algorithmic structures, is characterized by the fact that a specific sociality is inscribed in them. This reduced form of sociality is already evident in Alan Turing’s 1950 essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence, where Turing postulates that machines can have intelligence even though the Turing tables of human machines are unknown.

Turing’s postulate is based on the reverse conclusion that the statement “being regulated by laws of behavior implies being some sort of machine” also applies to the intentional motivation of humans. Turing elaborates on this by claiming that the intentional motivation of rule selection and deployment can also be understood as learning, primarily involving the exteriorization of learning mechanisms. He has in mind the classical behaviorist learning strategies in the form of negative and positive reinforcement, which he claims for learning in “child machines.” The contribution examines this line of development, which is used today in so-called reinforcement learning and which, due to its machine-rational sociality, enables ML algorithms to train themselves.

Gabriele Gramelsberger received her PhD in philosophy from Freie Universität Berlin in 2001, where she taught until 2014. In 2015, she completed a Habilitation in philosophy at the Department of History and Social Sciences at Technical University Darmstadt. Since 2017, she has held the Chair of Philosophy of Science and Technology at Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, after she was Professor of Philosophy of Digital Media at Witten/Herdecke University. She has led numerous research projects, including the BMBF collaborative project Living Algorithms & Cellular Machines (2009 to 2012), was a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (2008), and a fellow at the DFG research group Media Cultures of Computer Simulation at Leuphana University Lüneburg (2014 to 2016) and at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technology and Media Philosophy at Bauhaus University Weimar (2015). She has been a member of the Alliance initiative Digital Information since 2018 and a full member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts since 2019.

1:40–2:20 pm
Manfred Hild (Berlin): On haptic interaction with self-referential machines

If one breaks with the generally prevailing view that autonomous robots must be equipped with separate sensors and actuators, all connected to a central digital processor, and instead uses special local sensorimotor loops, so-called “cognitive sensorimotor loops” (CSLs), then surprisingly rich and divers patterns of movement suddenly emerge. These unfold through the close coupling between body and environment and, in particular, through haptic interaction with humans.
As it turns out, CSLs do not require a digital processor, but can be realised through simple analogue circuits. This naturally opens up the possibility of using novel synapse-like components (so-called memristors) – both for implementing adaptive processes (movement optimisation) and for storing implicit models during the body’s self-exploration.

Manfred Hild studied mathematics and psychology at the University of Konstanz and then worked as a research assistant at the Fraunhofer Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems (AIS) in Sankt Augustin and at the LFG Artificial Intelligence at the Humboldt University in Berlin, where he completed his PhD on autonomous robotics in 2007 and established the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory (NRL), which he still heads today. After spending several years as a visiting researcher at the SONY Computer Science Lab in Paris, he was appointed Professor of Digital Systems at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin in 2014, where he established the Humanoid Robotics course in 2018, which he continues to represent and develop today.
His scientific interests include the dynamics of recurrent neural networks, humanoid robotics with a focus on sensorimotor and audio-visual perception, and autonomous learning methods for self-exploration. Other areas of interest are computer music and analogue circuit technology, digital signal processing and FPGA applications.

2:20–3:00 pm
Christopher Coenen (Karlsruhe): The Digitalisation of Taylorism. From Alterity to Embodiment and Back Again?

The contribution is an attempt to use elements of Don Ihde’s post-phenomenological approach for a comparative analysis of historical and digital Taylorisms. The assumption is that using his approach for this purpose requires its broader extension to collective action and interpersonal relations.

Dipl.-Pol. Christopher Coenen is leader of the research group Health and Technization of Life at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and an expert on the topic of human enhancement as well as managing editor of the journal NanoEthics: Studies of New and Emerging Technologies.

He is currently working on the following projects: Sociotechnical Futures as Socioepistemic Practices. An Analysis Matrix for Technology Assessment, FUTUREBODY – The Future of the Human Body in Light of Neurotechnological Progress, and INOPRO – Intelligent Orthotics and Prosthetics.