No. 114/2022

4 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 114/2022 EDITORIAL Dear readers, Artificial intelligence is the key technology for scientific progress. If we fall behind now, we’ll get left behind, says AI researcher Holger Hoos in this edition. The potential inherent in AI reveals itself when we look at the topics currently dominating our lives: the pandemic, climate change, the impending hunger crisis, the Ukraine war and the conflicts stoked by fake news and online hate. AI helps to develop vaccines and better diagnostics. It is needed to manage the complex green energy systems of the future and to construct climate models. It can contribute to making agriculture more environmentally friendly. When it comes to disinformation and propaganda online, whilst AI is part of the problem, it can also help in the search for solutions. The examples from the Humboldt Network in this edition also illustrate just how exaggerated some of our hopes as well as some of our fears actually are: at present, AI that can really think for itself or even empathise is still the stuff of science fiction, as is an evil machine intelligence that turns on its creator. AI functions within narrow margins. How useful or harmful it is, whether it serves humans or weakens democracy depends on the kind of AI we want. The debate about this is already well underway and shows that instead of being left behind, Germany and Europe could become pathbreakers in values-based AI that serves society. GEORG SCHOLL Editor in Chief CONTENTS Photo: Henning Mack 06 03 HUMBOLDTIANS IN PRIVATE What academic moms have to juggle 06 BRIEF ENQUIRIES What drives researchers and what they are currently doing COVER ILLUSTRATION Martin Rümmele/Raufeld