Engagement
Policy work, media, events, and teaching.
Who keeps control over AI is decided not only in research but in law, in standards and in how public institutions work, and that is where the selected work below belongs.
Policy and regulation
- Federal Office for Information Security (BSI): joint work on threat modelling for secure human oversight (Ditz et al. 2026, Best Poster Award at AIES 2026) and on testing compliance with human-oversight requirements (Langer, Lazar & Baum 2025).
- German Bundestag: expert opinions, e.g. on draft legislation on autonomous driving; background consultations with members of the Bundestag and the European Parliament on two drafts of the EU AI Act.
Media
- Süddeutsche Zeitung — commentary on recursive self-improvement and the risks of AI agents (September 2026)
- Kathimerini — full-page interview on AI and the concentration of power (13 August 2026)
- In-Mind — „Human oversight of AI: an effective remedy for AI risks or a way to induce unwarranted trust?”, with Markus Langer and Johann Laux (3 August 2026)
- ntv.de — commentary on the OpenAI hack (July 2026)
- Tagesspiegel Background Cybersecurity — interview on why Germany needs an AI Safety Institute (21 May 2026)
- Deutschlandfunk Kultur — „Europas zweite Chance im KI-Rennen” (2026)
- F.A.Z. PRO Digitalwirtschaft — guest article on human oversight as an opportunity rather than an obstacle to innovation, with Johann Laux and Markus Langer (8 October 2025)
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung — op-ed calling for a German AI Safety Institute, with Jonas Andrulis, Kristian Kersting, Sebastian Vollmer, Annika von Mutius and Patrick Schramowski (31 March 2025)
Further appearances include Deutschlandfunk, ZDF, Saarländischer Rundfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Handelsblatt, heise online, Spektrum der Wissenschaft and Saarbrücker Zeitung.
I’m happy to talk to journalists about AI ethics, trustworthy AI, or the philosophy of technology. Contact me via mail or through Algoright.
Events and talks
- Public event series of the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Saarland, Algoright e.V. and DFKI, co-organized since 2023: AI and authoritarianism (2026), AI in health care (2025, with the BSI), AI in schools and universities (2024, with Saarland’s Minister of Education), AI and public opinion (2023), ChatGPT up close (2023).
- TEDxSaarbrigge: Digital Democracy (2025), co-organized with the Interdisciplinary Institute for Societal Computing and DFKI.
- Keynotes and panels: Handelsblatt Summit Künstliche Intelligenz (2024); BSI and Landesmedienanstalt Saarland, „AI Insights” (2024).
Teaching
- Ethics for Nerds (with Sarah Sterz and Holger Hermanns), Saarland University, 2015–2023; Hochschulperle of the Year 2019 (Stifterverband).
- AI Alignment and Formal Methods, seminar, Saarland University (2026).
- KI und Moral: Der Basiskurs, online course on KI-Campus with Sarah Sterz, André Steingrüber and Laura Stenzel (in publication).
- Machine Ethics, tutorial at IJCAI 2024, with Marija Slavkovik and Louise Dennis.
In all, 27 university courses since 2013 in computer science, philosophy and law. The full record is in the CV.