12.03.2024
The summer school “Taming the risks of digital technologies - interdisciplinary collaboration for a trustworthy future” this year is hosted by SecHuman and RC Trust!
Date: 29 – 31 July 2024
Place: Beckmanns Hof, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Open for: PhDs and Postdocs as well as PIs from the discipline of IT security or related areas of research
Registration for the Summer School will open in April 2024 on the website of SecHuman!
The summer school “Taming the risks of digital technologies - interdisciplinary collaboration for a trustworthy future” will bring together researchers working in the field of manipulative technologies. It will bring together scholars from various disciplines including IT security research, computer science, communication science, psychology, economics and more. The summer school will feature keynotes, hands-on workshops highlighting the risks but also providing insights into concrete countermeasures to manipulative tech.
Background:
The many advantages and new possibilities of digitalization are increasingly accompanied by unclear responsibilities, a lack of accountability, and growing power to digital tech firms. Meeting the new challenges and threats that come along with digital interconnectivity requires a multifaceted approach that addresses both technical vulnerabilities and human factors. By bringing together experts from diverse fields, an interdisciplinary approach enables a comprehensive understanding of the current and developing challenges – and helps to develop holistic solutions that address technical, human, legal, and ethical aspects.
Recent technological advances such as deepfakes (the hyperrealistic imitation of audio-visual content) but also ever more powerful Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT or LLaMa) pose new risks. Namely, using such technologies enables new forms of manipulation, deception, and fraud. The consequences of such attacks range from the societal level such as manipulation of democratic processes, to the individual level where people might reveal sensitive information, or transfer data or money to attackers.