“Studying socio-technical shocks in real time”
The need to design technologies responsibly is something that we’re hearing more about all the time. Why do we need a major research cluster dedicated to this topic?
That’s true. It is good to see that this topic is much more prominent today than five years ago. But there is still a sense that we’re just getting started. We still lack good answers to many questions. The ethics boards set up by big tech companies frequently fail. Start-ups scale up more rapidly all the time. And we keep being taken by surprise by apparently unexpected dynamics such as the “ChatGPT moment”. With TransforM, we want to investigate these transformative innovation dynamics and learn to control them better. But we also want to flip the logic of innovation on its head to some extent. Less of the attitude: “Here’s an amazing new technology – what can be done with it and how do we make it profitable and more or less socially acceptable?” Instead we want to ask: “What kind of innovation do we actually need and want? What are the societal problems that we want to solve? And what role does technology play, for example with regard to mobility justice, health care, AI or regional competitiveness?” We want to join forces with all relevant disciplines to study how to shape processes of this kind.
But haven’t these disciplines already been working together for quite some time?
At TUM and some other universities, we have seen enormous progress over the past 10 years. But surprisingly, Germany as a whole still lags behind other countries in breaking down the walls between the social sciences and natural science and engineering disciplines in order to release new potential for exciting research.
On the one hand, the transformative power of technology is far from being at the center of social science research, although there is probably no societal issue that is not deeply affected by technology. In Europe there is no comparable initiative in which the social sciences address the topic of technology in such a concentrated form as TransforM. I myself come from the field of science and technology studies, STS. My co-spokespersons Hanna Hottenrott and Holger Patzelt specialize in the economics of innovation and entrepreneurship research, respectively. In addition, we have participants from the fields of governance, sociology, management, economics, international relations, consumer science, anthropology, history, operations research and other areas – from TUM as well as LMU, Max Planck, ifo, ZEW and the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy.
On the other hand, social scientists are often brought on board technology projects as a mere formality, where they are expected to make some sort of contribution under the heading of societal acceptance. That’s a bit like asking an AI professor to install a software update on my PC. The separation is not as sharp as it used to be. But it’s still there.
So how should research be conducted?
The world of social science shouldn’t just wait for years to see what comes of a new technological development. We have to face questions at an early stage and in real time, even if these questions are highly speculative. At present, for example, we have to look into quantum computing although nobody knows at this stage whether, how and for whom this technology will specifically function. Consequently, social scientists should be close to the laboratory right from the start of research projects. To achieve that, we want to develop a dialog competency in TransforM and also try out new forms of collaboration. For example, we want to create a new integration platform, called SCOPE, through which we will address socio-technological issues and research projects with partners from the world of technology.
Which topics will these projects deal with?
One example might be the question of how autonomous driving can work across national borders, which are still cultural and regulatory boundaries. With our platform, we can address this question not only from a social sciences perspective, in other words with researchers who study political culture, international standards, corporate responsibility or the principles of open data use. We can also explore these issues with those who develop autonomous systems and infrastructure concepts, for example my TUM colleagues Markus Lienkamp, Klaus Bogenberger, Johannes Betz and Alois Knoll. We intend to establish an overall pool of around 20 experienced experts covering various topics who will be available to advise us in real time. And we have already done pioneering work in that regard at TUM, for example in the area of embedded ethics and social science with my colleagues Ruth Müller and Alena Buyx.
You have made several mentions of real time. What do you mean by that?
We want to be in a position to respond to shocks in our socio-technological world from a social sciences perspective while they can still be felt. An example would be the covid pandemic. Every researcher in the world was affected by it and many responded spontaneously with their research agenda, although these were often very much ad-hoc and unstructured reactions. Where would we have been if we’d had a mechanism at the beginning of the pandemic, in which an interdisciplinary group of 10 social scientists had dropped everything and focused their combined expertise on the issue at hand? And if this group had also had an established link to natural sciences, engineering and health sciences experts in order to work on this topic for several months? That is something that we want to try out with an experimental unit called a real-time response team. And covid is just one example. Especially with the rapid development of digital platforms, certain path dependencies could have been avoided through real-time examination of the options.
How does TransforM plan to involve the public?
In many areas, technological developments are hardly imaginable without citizen involvement – from bridge construction to genetically modified foods. With TransforM, we want to go beyond the kind of one-off participation where – to put it bluntly – the public are quickly asked to give their ok, often much too late. With our Public Technology Lab, we want to work with the Deutsches Museum to set up a permanent, multi-modal infrastructure for participation with which citizens in the Munich region will be involved in various technological developments – and not only with those segments of the population who already attend university events. In that regard, too, TUM has done trailblazing work, for example in an initiative with my colleagues Jörg Niewöhner, Sabina Leonelli, Anne Rademacher and Silke Beck. We can also learn from other major projects such as the MCube future cluster, where, in so-called sandboxes we have tested many new forms of mobility and ways of embedding them in society.
What opportunities do you see for a genuine change in thinking when it comes to the shaping of the technological and societal transformation?
We are seeing encouraging examples. Advances in neurotechnologies such as brain-computer interfaces have been more cautious and inclusive than with genetic engineering – although such flagship initiatives as the Human Genome Project and Human Brain Project were similarly gigantic in scale. Many social science concerns were taken into account at an earlier stage and, up to a point, a regulatory toolbox and a discussion culture were developed. Of course there is plenty of room for improvement.
But we also see that it is much harder today to inject issues of public acceptance, social justice, political legitimacy and sustainability into the current debates than just a few years ago because the discussions now revolve around military security and competition between economic powers. That is unfortunate, because the ability to combine economic and foreign policy strength with a model for a livable, inclusive and socially just society could be a competitive advantage for Europe. With that in mind, TransforM aims to contribute to better innovations and innovation strategies.
TUM rises to number 22 worldwide
