3rd International
3rd International
Bringing together the Open Internet Search community in Europe, involving science, computing centres, libraries, politics, legal and ethics experts and society, the Open Search Symposium series provides a forum to discuss and advance the ideas and concepts of Open Internet search in Europe.
Conference Videos
All videos are hosted at CERN.
Keynote
11 October 2022Keynotes
12 OctoberKeynote
13 October 2022Session "Alternative Search Approaches"
(12 October 2022)Session "Ethics in Search"
(13 October 2022)
11 October 2022Keynotes
12 OctoberKeynote
13 October 2022Session "Alternative Search Approaches"
(12 October 2022)Session "Ethics in Search"
(13 October 2022)
Keynote 11 October 2021
Keynote #ossym21, 11 October 2021
Tim Smith
“Why Science Needs Open Search”
Keynote speech by Tim Smith, held at the 3rd International Open Search Symposium #ossym2021. Tim Smith is Head of Collaboration, Devices and Applications Group at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.
Keynotes 12 October 2021
Keynote #ossym21, 12 October 2021
Astrid Mager
“Encoding social change? Analysis of open search technology between German hacker ethics and Asian start-up culture“
Keynote speech by Astrid Mager, held at the 3rd International Open Search Symposium #ossym2021. Astrid Mager is researcher at Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW); lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna. | The video is hosted on CERN’s servers.
Keynote #ossym21, 12 October 2021
Werner Stengg
“European Commission perspective to Open Search“
Keynote speech by Werner Stengg, held at held at the 3rd International Open Search Symposium #ossym2021. Werner Stengg is digital expert in the cabinet of EU Commissioner and Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager. As such he is responsible for coordination of digital policy, Artificial Intelligence and data economy, Platform Economy, Disinformation.
Keynote 13 October 2021
Keynote #ossym21, 13 October 2021
Carla Hustedt
“Safeguarding democratic rights and values in the digital space. A foundation’s perspective“
Opening speech for the session “EthicsInSearch” at the 3rd International Open Search Symposium #ossym2021. Carla Hustedt is Director “Centre for Digital Society” at Stiftung Mercator.
#ossym21, 12. Oktober 2021
Session “Alternative Search Engines”
Video recordings from the Session “Alternative Search Engines” at 3rd Open Search Symposium #ossym21.
“Xayn: Reinventing Internet Search with Privacy and Convenience”
Leif-Nissen Lundbæk is co-founder and CEO at Xayn. Michael Huth is co-founder of Xayn and Chief Research Officer. He is also Head of the Department of Computer Science at Imperial College London.
“Reimagining search: Flipping the ad-supported model”
Sridhar Ramaswamy is CEO and Co-Founder Neeva and a former Google executive in charge of Ads.
Session “Ethics in Search”
13 October 2022
“Search Ethics and Data Democracy – How we all have a responsibility creating a data democracy where neither state nor big tech control our lives via data.”
Pernille Tranberg is an expert and advisor in data ethics and data democracy and co-founder of the European thinkdotank DataEthics.eu.
“Data Ethics Decision Aid (DEDA): How to implement Ethical Decisions step-by step in Data Projects”
Mirko Tobias Schäfer is Associate Professor at Utrecht University and co-founder and project leader of the Utrecht Data School.
“Why the Internet search needs ethical guardrails”
Christine Plote is founding member and member of the Executive Board of the Open Search Foundation e.V. She is Co-Moderator of the Working Group Ethics and co-leads the project #EthicsInSearch.
Papers and articles #ossym21
Privacy in Open Search: A Review of Challenges and Solutions
by Samuel Sousa (Graz University of Technology), Christian Guetl (Head of CoDiS Lab, TU Graz and member of Open Search Foundation), Roman Kern (Know-Center GmbH)
Keynotes
Keynote #ossym21, 11 October 2021
Tim Smith
“Why Science Needs Open Search”
Keynote speech by Tim Smith, held at the 3rd International Open Search Symposium #ossym2021. Tim Smith is Head of Collaboration, Devices and Applications Group at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.
Keynote #ossym21, 12 October 2021
Astrid Mager
“Encoding social change? Analysis of open search technology between German hacker ethics and Asian start-up culture“
Keynote speech by Astrid Mager, held at the 3rd International Open Search Symposium #ossym2021. Astrid Mager is researcher at Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW); lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna. | The video is hosted on CERN’s servers.
Keynote #ossym21, 12 October 2021
Werner Stengg
“European Commission perspective to Open Search“
Keynote speech by Werner Stengg, held at held at the 3rd International Open Search Symposium #ossym2021. Werner Stengg is digital expert in the cabinet of EU Commissioner and Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager. As such he is responsible for coordination of digital policy, Artificial Intelligence and data economy, Platform Economy, Disinformation.
Keynote #ossym21, 13 October 2021
Carla Hustedt
“Safeguarding democratic rights and values in the digital space. A foundation’s perspective“
Opening speech for the session “EthicsInSearch” at the 3rd International Open Search Symposium #ossym2021. Carla Hustedt is Director “Centre for Digital Society” at Stiftung Mercator.
#ossym21, 12. Oktober 2021
Session “Alternative Search Engines”
Video recordings from the Session “Alternative Search Engines” at 3rd Open Search Symposium #ossym21.
“Xayn: Reinventing Internet Search with Privacy and Convenience”
Leif-Nissen Lundbæk is co-founder and CEO at Xayn. Michael Huth is co-founder of Xayn and Chief Research Officer. He is also Head of the Department of Computer Science at Imperial College London.
“Reimagining search: Flipping the ad-supported model”
Sridhar Ramaswamy is CEO and Co-Founder Neeva and a former Google executive in charge of Ads.
#ossym21, 13. Oktober 2021
Session “Ethics in Search”
Video recordings from the Session “Ethics in Search” at 3rd Open Search Symposium #ossym21.
“Search Ethics and Data Democracy – How we all have a responsibility creating a data democracy where neither state nor big tech control our lives via data.”
Pernille Tranberg is an expert and advisor in data ethics and data democracy and co-founder of the European thinkdotank DataEthics.eu.
“Data Ethics Decision Aid (DEDA): How to implement Ethical Decisions step-by step in Data Projects”
Mirko Tobias Schäfer is Associate Professor at Utrecht University and co-founder and project leader of the Utrecht Data School.
“Why the Internet search needs ethical guardrails”
Christine Plote is founding member and member of the Executive Board of the Open Search Foundation e.V. She is Co-Moderator of the Working Group Ethics and co-leads the project #EthicsInSearch.
Conference Programme
Discuss interdisciplinary aspects of Open Search
technical • ethical • legal • economic • awareness • applications
Keynotes
Tim Smith
Head of Collaboration, Devices and Applications Group at CERN
Astrid Mager
Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW); lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna
Werner Stengg
Digital expert in the cabinet of EU Commissioner and Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager; responsible for coordination of digital policy, Artificial Intelligence and data economy, Platform Economy, Disinformation
Carla Hustedt
Director “Centre for Digital Society” at Stiftung Mercator
Research Tracks
- Federated Web-Crawling
- Web Content Analysis
- Search and Discovery
- Open Search for Science and Education
- Cross cutting aspects
- Applications
Session:
Alternative Search Approaches
Sridhar Ramaswamy
CEO and Co-Founder Neeva, former Google executive in charge of Ads
Dr. Leif-Nissen Lundbæk
CEO and Co-Founder Xayn
Prof. Dr. Michael Huth
Chief Research Officer and Co-Founder Xayn, Head of the Department of Computing at Imperial College London
Rémi Berson
Software engineer at Brave Search, expert for privacy preserving technologies
Session:
#ethicsinsearch
Pernille Tranberg
Expert and advisor in data ethics and data democracy, co-founder of the European thinkdotank DataEthics.eu
Dr. Mirko Tobias Schäfer
Associate Professor at Utrecht University, co-founder and project leader of the Utrecht Data School
Nelly Clausen
Researcher at Utrecht University with focus on data ethics, project manager of DEDA German
Christine Plote
Open Search Foundation e. V., Co-manager of #ethicsinsearch
Overview timetable
Day 1 | 11 Oct. 21
13:00 | Conference Opening
Welcome
OSF and CERN
13.15 | Keynote
“Why science needs open search”
Tim Smith
Head of Collaboration, Devices and Applications Group at CERN
13.45 | Interactive Impulse
“Economic Challenges of Open Search”
Olivier Blanchard, Open Search Foundation e.V.
Klaus Fuest, Roland Berger
14:30 | Research Track
“Federated Web-Crawling” – Part 1
Session Chair: Christian Guetl (Graz University of Technology, Austria)
“URL Frontier: an open source API and implementation for crawl frontiers”
Julien Nioche, DigitalPebble
“Processing Crawled Data”
Mark Overmeer, MarkOv Solutions
15:15 | Virtual Coffee Break and Networking
15:45 | Research Track
“Federated Web-Crawling” – Part 2
Session Chair: Christian Guetl (Graz University of Technology, Austria)
“Avoiding Useless Content While Crawling the Web Data Archive”
Olaf Behrendt, Infotiger UG | Alexander Hierle, Infotiger UG
“From web graphs to prioritizing web crawls”
Sebastian Nagel, Common Crawl
16:30 | Virtual Cocktails
17:30 |
End of Day 1
Day 2 | 12 Oct. 21
9:00 | Keynote
„Encoding social change? Analysis of open search technology between German hacker ethics and Asian start-up culture“
Astrid Mager
Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW); lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna
9:45 | Virtual Coffee Break and Networking
10:00 | Research Track
“Web Content Analysis”
Session Chair: Session Chair: Michael Granitzer (University of Passau, Germany)
“The Impact of Main Content Extraction on Near-Duplicate Detection”
Maik Fröbe, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle | Matthias Hagen, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg | Benno Stein, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
“FastWARC: Optimizing Large-Scale Web Archive Analytics”
Janek Bevendorff, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar | Martin Potthast, Leipzig University | Benno Stein, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
“Creating a Dataset for Keyphrase Extraction in Physics Publications and Patents”
Andre Rattinger, Graz University of Technology | Christian Guetl, Graz University of Technology
“Understanding Websites”
Mark Overmeer, MarkOv Solutions | Krasimir Berov, Studio Berov | Ronny Lam, HNW.NU
11.30 | Keynote
„European Commission perspective to Open Search“
Werner Stengg
Cabinet expert on the cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, European Commission
12:30 | Lunch Break and Networking
13:30 | Session
“Alternative Search Approaches”
Session Chair: Christine Plote, Open Search Foundation e.V.
“Xayn: Reinventing Internet Search with Privacy and Convenience”
Dr. Leif-Nissen Lundbæk
CEO and Co-Founder Xayn
Prof. Dr. Michael Huth
Chief Research Officer and Co-Founder Xayn, Head of the Department of Computing at Imperial College London
“Goggles: Democracy dies in Darkness, and so does The Web”
Rémi Berson
Software engineer at Brave Search, expert for privacy preserving technologies
“Reimagining search: Flipping the ad-supported model”
Sridhar Ramaswamy
CEO and Co-Founder Neeva, former Google executive in charge of Ads
15:00 | Virtual Coffee Break and Networking
15:30 | Research Track
“Search and Discovery”
Session Chair: Maria Dimou (CERN)
“A Proposal for Client Based User Profiles for Open Search”
Igor Jakovljevic, Graz University of Technology | Andreas Wagner, CERN | Christian Guetl
Graz University of Technology
“Indico & Citadel Search: A collaboration case study”
Adrian Mönnich, CERN | Carina Antunes, CERN | Pedro Ferreira, CERN | Michal Kolodziejski, CERN | Pedro Lourenco, CERN | Pablo Panero, CERN | Andreas Wagner, CERN
“Neuropil – a distributed, privacy-preserving, search index structure”
Stephan Schwichtenberg, pilar GmbH
“Searching on Heterogenous and Decentralized Data: A Short Review”
Julius Möller, University of Oldenburg | Dennis Jankowski, OFFIS Institute for Computer Science | Axel Hahn, University of Oldenburg
17:00 |
End of Day 2
Day 3 | 13 Oct. 21
9:00 | Keynote
Safeguarding democratic rights and values in the digital space. A foundation’s perspective
Carla Hustedt
Director “Digitised Society” of Stiftung Mercator
9.15 | Session
“Ethics in Search”
Session Chair: Anton Frank (Open Search Foundation/Technical University of Munich)
“Search Ethics and Data Democracy – How we all have a responsibility creating a data democracy where neither state nor big tech control our lives via data.”
Pernille Tranberg
Expert and advisor in data ethics and data democracy, co-founder of the European thinkdotank DataEthics.eu
“Data Ethics Decision Aid (DEDA): How to implement Ethical Decisions step-by step in Data Projects”
Dr. Mirko Tobias Schäfer
Associate Professor at Utrecht University, co-founder and project leader of the Utrecht Data School
Nelly Clausen
Researcher at Utrecht University with focus on data ethics, project manager of DEDA German
“Why the Internet search needs ethical guardrails”
Christine Plote
Open Search Foundation e. V., Co-manager of #ethicsinsearch
Panel Discussion
10:30
Virtual Coffee Break and Networking
11:00 | Research Track
“Open Search for Science and Education”
Session Chair: Stefan Voigt (Open Search Foundation, DLR)
“Open Search @ DLR – towards transparent access to web-based information in science”
Tobias Hecking, German Aerospace Center (DLR) | Dennis Jankowski, OFFIS Institute for Computer Science | Julius Möller, University of Oldenburg | Maximilian Schwinger, University of Oldenburg, Stefan Voigt, German Aerospace Center (DLR)
“Modules for Open Search in Mathematics Teaching”
Melanie Platz, Saarland University | Lea Marie Müller, Saarland University | Engelbert Niehaus, University Koblenz-Landau – Campus Landau | Svenja Müller, University of Koblenz-Landau
“Towards Open Domain Literature Based Discovery”
Oliver Bensch, Mastricht University | Tobias Hecking, DLR
12:00 | Lunch Break and Networking
13:00 | Research Track
“Cross cutting aspects”
Session Chair: Kai Erenli (University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna)
“Privacy in Open Search: A Review of Challenges and Solutions”
Samuel Sousa, Graz University of Technology | Christian Guetl, Graz University of Technology | Roman Kern, Know-Center GmbH
“The effect of search engine optimization on search results: The SEO Effect project”
Sebastian Schultheiß, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences | Sebastian Sünkler, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences
“The Development of a Social-Media-Strategy for the Open Search Foundataion Applying the Social-Media-Cycle”
Alexander Decker, Technical University Ingolstadt / Open Search Foundation, Starnberg, Germany
14:00
Virtual Coffee Break and Networking
14:15 | Research Track
“Applications”
Session Chair: Melanie Platz (Saarland University, Germany)
“Improved Discovery and Access to Research Data in Energy Systems Analysis”
Johannes Frey, InfAI – Leipzig Universtiy | Carsten Hoyer-Klick, German Aero-space Center (DLR)
“Requirements for an Open Search Infrastructure from the Perspective of a Vertical Provider”
Leon Martin, University of Bamberg | Felix Engl, University of Bamberg | Andreas Henrich, University of Bamberg
“Towards Open Search Applications for the Broader Community”
Melanie Platz, Saarland University, Germany | Aleksandar Bobic,
CERN, Switzerland / Graz University of Technology, Austria | Christian Guetl, CoDiS Lab, Graz University of Technology, Austria
“Conceptual considerations for comprehensive and cooperative crawling and indexing the Web”
Michael Granitzer, University Passau | Stefan Voigt, Open Search Foundation
15:45 | Coffee Break
16.00 | Session OSF Working Groups
Updates from the OSF Working Groups:
Tech, Awareness, Ethics, Legal, Applications, Economy
16:45 | Wrap-up
Closing Discussion
17:15 | Way ahead and Farewell
Speakers
Rémi Berson
Software engineer at Brave Search, expert for privacy preserving technologies
Rémi is a software engineer currently working on Brave Search, the private and independent search engine. One area he is particularly interested in is openness and how to make Brave Search fundamentally different from other search engines by allowing communities to deeply alter the way results are surfaced from the index (a.k.a. Goggles).
Before Brave, he worked on bleeding-edge privacy preserving technologies such as data-driven anti-tracking, adblocking, privacy preserving analytics and search at Cliqz, a Munich-based startup, and Ghostery. Always busy building and experimenting, pragmatic problem solver, excited about performance and data.
Day 2 | 12 October | 14:00
“Goggles: Democracy dies in Darkness, and so does The Web”
Oliver Blanchard
Open Search Foundation e. V., Moderator Working Group Economy
Management Consultant, digitization & innovation expert, Founder DigiDoo Consulting & Digitalbeirat.io
Day 1 | 11 Oct. 21 | 13.45
“Economical Challenges of Open Search”
Nelly Clausen
Utrecht University
Nelly Clausen is a researcher at Utrecht University. At Utrecht Data School, she has been working on the topic of data ethics for over a year and is the project manager of DEDA German. Here she gives DEDA workshops in several languages and presents at conferences on data ethics in administrations.
Day 3 | 13 October | 9:30
Data Ethics Decision Aid (DEDA): How to implement Ethical Decisions step-by step in Data Projects
Klaus Fuest
Principal, Roland Berger Holding GmbH
Day 1 | 11 Oct. 21 | 13.45
“Economical Challenges of Open Search”
Carla Hustedt
Director „Centre for Digital Society“ at Stiftung Mercator
Day 3 | 13 October | 9:00
“Safeguarding democratic rights and values in the digital space. A foundation’s perspective”
Professor Michael Huth, PhD
Chief Research Officer and Co-Founder Xayn
Professor Michael Huth (PhD) is Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer of Xayn and teaches at Imperial College London. His research focuses on Cybersecurity, Cryptography, Mathematical Modeling, as well as security and privacy in Machine Learning. Huth served as the technical lead of the Harnessing Economic Value theme at PETRAS IoT Cybersecurity Research Hub in the UK. In 2017, he founded the privacy tech company together with Leif-Nissen Lundbæk and Felix Hahmann. The Xayn mobile app is a private search and discovery browser for the internet – combining a search engine, a discovery feed and a mobile browser with focus on privacy, personalisati-on and intuitive design. Winner of the first Porsche Innovation Contest, the Berlin-based AI company has already worked successfully with Porsche, Daimler, Deutsche Bahn, and Siemens.
Professor Huth studied Mathematics at TU Darmstadt and obtained his PhD at Tulane University, New Orleans. He worked at TU Darmstadt, Kansas State University and spent a research sabbatical at The University of Oxford. Huth has authored numerous scientific publications and is an experienced speaker on international stages.
Day 2 | 12 October | 13:30
“Xayn: Reinventing Internet Search with Privacy and Convenience” –> More information
Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, PhD
CEO and Co-Founder Xayn
Leif-Nissen Lundbæk (PhD) is Co-Founder and CEO of Xayn. His work focuses mainly on algorithms and applica-tions for privacy-preserving artificial intelligence. In 2017, he founded the privacy tech company together with Professor Michael Huth and Felix Hahmann. The Xayn mobile app is a private search and discovery browser for the internet – combining a search engine, a discovery feed and a mobile browser with focus on privacy, personalisation and intuitive design. Winner of the first Porsche Innovation Contest, the Berlin-based AI company has already worked successfully with Porsche, Daimler, Deutsche Bahn, and Siemens.
Before founding Xayn, Leif-Nissen Lundbæk has worked with Daimler AG and IBM. He studied Economics at the Humboldt University in Berlin, received his M.Sc in Mathematics at Heidelberg University, an M.Sc. with distinction in Software Engineering at The University of Oxford and obtained his PhD in Computing at the Imperial College London.
Day 2 | 12 October | 13:30
Xayn: Reinventing Internet Search with Privacy and Convenience
Astrid Mager
Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW)
Astrid Mager is senior postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA), Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and teaches at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna. She is currently working on her habilitation project “Algorithmic Imaginaries. Visions and values in the shaping of search engines”, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Her research interests include the study of digital technology and society, internet practices and governance, as well as digital inequalities and alternative technologies.
Day 2 | 12 Oct. 21 | 9:00
Encoding social change? Analysis of open search technology between German hacker ethics and Asian start-up culture
Christine Plote
Open Search Foundation e. V., Co-manager of #ethicsinsearch
Day 3 | 13 Oct. 21 | 9:45
“Why Internet Search needs more ethical values”
Tim Smith
Head of Collaboration, Devices and Applications Group at CERN
Physicist, Computer Scientist, Mountaineer.
Passionate about science and facilitating science through efficient collaboration and communication services, and development tools.
Open Science advocate.
Day 1 | 11 October | 13:15
“Why science needs open seach”
Werner Stengg
Cabinet expert on the cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, European Commission
Day 2 | 12 October | 11:30
„European Commission perspective to Open Search“
Sridhar Ramaswamy
Chief Executive Officer, Co-founder, Neeva
Venture Capital Partner, Greylock
Sridhar Ramaswamy is the Chief Executive Officer of Neeva — ads free, private search– started by himself, Cosmos Nicolaou, and Vivek Raghunathan in 2019. Sridhar has been a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners since October 2018.
Prior to founding Neeva, Sridhar oversaw all of Google’s Advertising products, which included search, display and video advertising, analytics, shopping, payments, and travel. He joined Google as an engineer in 2003 and was an integral part of the growth of AdWords and Google’s advertising business. Before that, Sridhar was a Director of Engineering for the analytics platform at E.piphany. He also held research positions at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and Bell Communications Research (Bellcore).
Sridhar earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and his Master of Science and Ph.D. in computer science from Brown University. He has published numerous papers on database systems and database theory and holds several patents in that area.
Day 2 | 12 October | 14:30
Dr. Mirko Tobias Schäfer
Associate Professor at Utrecht University, co-founder and project leader of the Utrecht Data School
Dr. Mirko Tobias Schäfer is Associate Professor at Utrecht University, focusing on “Governing the Digital Society”. He is co-founder and project leader of the Utrecht Data School. Mirko’s research interests focus on the socio-political impact of (media) technology. With the Utrecht Data School and the research platform Datafied Society, he investigates the impact of data practices and algorithms on public governance, public media and public space.
Day 3 | 13 October | 9:30
Data Ethics Decision Aid (DEDA): How to implement Ethical Decisions step-by step in Data Projects
Pernille Tranberg
Expert in data ethics and data democracy, co-founder of the European thinkdotank DataEthics.eu
Pernille Tranberg is an independent speaker and advisor in data democracy, data ethics, data understanding and digital self-defense. She speaks to school kids and teachers, politicians, officials and NGOs, business leaders and multinationals.
She is the co-founder of the European thinkdotank DataEthics.eu and is often cited as expert source in the press.
She is currently especially active teaching teachers data understanding (dataforståelse.dk – in Danish) and working with research ethics (dataforgood.science).
She is former tech and investigative reporter at Politiken (1996-2005), editor-in-chief TÆNK (2005-2009) (Danish small equivalent to ConsumerReport and Stiftungwarentest), Head of editorial development at Berlingske Media (2009-2013), journalistic fellow SDU (2013-2014 – where she wrote about a trustmark for news) and special Consultant in The Danish Business Authority (2014-2015) .
She holds a Master in journalism from Columbia University New York (1995), a BA from the Danish School of Journalism in Aarhus (1994), and she is ‘Academy Economist’ from Niels Brocks Handelsakademi (1988).
Day 3 | 13 October | 9:15
Search Ethics and Data Democracy
Talks
Keynote | 12 October | 9:00
Encoding social change? Analysis of open search technology between German hacker ethics and Asian start-up culture
Astrid Mager, Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW)
Susi.AI is an open source personal assistant that has its roots in decentralized technology, peer-to-peer principles and the German hacker culture. It is devoted to values and rights of the Free Software movement: „access to source code is a fundamental right“ (Stallman, cited in Birkinbine 2020). With the recent move of SUSI.AI towards Asia, however, other cultural visions, values and notions of freedom entered the developer community. SUSI.AI is still relying on the initial hacker community, but also making use of the Google summer of code program funding open source project, for example.
This indicates that free software is not entirely independent from corporate players, quite on the contrary (Birkinbine 2020, Coleman 2013). In a sense, both hands are feeding each other, but one of them is much more powerful than the other. Drawing on concepts from STS such as “vanguard visions” (Hilgartner 2015), values by design (Von Hippel 2006), and the political economy of free software (Birkinbine (2020) this presentation will pose the following questions:
What visions, values and rights are driving SUSI.AI and how are they encoded in the technology? What compromises are SUSI developers willing to make to remain capable to act? And how do they handle the balancing act between free software and corporate actors? And, on a more general level, what are the wider sociopolitical implications in terms of tech development; especially in Europe where fundamental rights are framed as “core European values” (Mager 2017)?
These questions will be answered based on a rich body of qualitative research materials including interviews with German, Asian and US-American SUSI.AI/ open source developers, participatory observations of open tech events in Frankfurt (CCC), Berlin and Singapore (FOSSASIA) and two joint workshops with SUSI.AI developers.
This research is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, project number: V511-G29).
Session: Alternative Search Approaches | 12 October | 13:00
Xayn: Reinventing Internet Search with Privacy and Convenience
Dr. Leif-Nissen Lundbæk and Prof. Dr. Michael Huth
Search engines are used every day by people all over the world to access the internet. Until recently, they provided either a profiled search experience based on massive data collection or an unprofiled, but private search. Based on edge learning, the German tech company Xayn developed a search engine that offers users privacy and a convenient search with personalised results – by bringing the algorithms to the data and not vice versa. In this talk, the co-founders Leif-Nissen Lundbæk and Michael Huth discuss the development of the decentralised technology and present how AI, privacy and user control can be combined.
Session: Alternative Search Approaches | 12 October | 14:00
“Goggles: Democracy dies in Darkness, and so does The Web”
Session #ethicsinsearch | 13 October | 9:15
Search Ethics and Data Democracy
How we all have a responsibility creating a data democracy where neither state nor big tech control our lives via data.
Session #ethicsinsearch | 13 October | 9:30
Data Ethics Decision Aid (DEDA): How to implement Ethical Decisions step-by step in Data Projects
Nelly Clausen and Dr. Mirko Schäfer, Utrecht University
Data ethics is always seen as difficult, far removed and not easily applicable. But with technology and innovation and the rise in data-driven processes, data ethics is becoming more and more important. Therefore, we need to be able to use and implement data ethics in our lives and work, and our tool The Data Ethics Decisions Aid (DEDA) can help with this.
Programme Committee
Prof. Dr. Wolf-Tilo Balke, L3S Research Center, Braunschweig, Germany
Prof. Dr. Alexander Decker, Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, Germany
Prof. Dr. Arjen P. de Vries, Radboud University, Netherlands
Dr. Christian Geminn, University Kassel, Germany
Prof. Dr. Michael Granitzer, University Passau, Germany
Prof. Dr. Christian Guetl, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Prof. Dr. Andreas Henrich, University Bamberg, Germany
Prof. Dr. Robert Jäschke, Humboldt University Berlin & L3S, Hannover, Germany
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Nils Jensen, Ostfalia University of Applied Science, Wolfenbüttel, Germany
Prof. Dr. Mohammed Kaicer, Faculty of Sciences Kenitra, Morocco
Dr. Dennis-Kenji Kipker, University Bremen, Germany
Prof. Dr. Dieter Kranzlmüller, Leibniz Supercomputing Centre and LMU, Munich, Germany
Prof. Dr. Dirk Lewandowski, University of Applied Science, Hamburg, Germany
Prof. Dr. Engelbert Niehaus, University Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany
Dr. Uta Priss, Ostfalia University of Applied Science, Wolfenbüttel, Germany
Prof. Dr. Christin Seifert, University of Twente, Netherlands
Dr. Stefan Voigt, Open Search Foundation, Germany
Dr. Andreas Wagner, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland