Theory of Machine Learning Group University of Tübingen

Public engagement

A classroom blackboard listing Krisen, Klima, Krankheiten, Krieg and KI
Blackboard scribbles left behind after a seminar, spotted by Ulrike when she entered the lecture hall (2020). Not easy to translate, but the words mean: Crises: Climate, Diseases, War, AI.

Public AI exhibition: Cyber and the City

In Tübingen in 2018, the ambivalences around the topic of AI, combined with plans to start industry-funded research labs in town, had sparked heated protests: against AI in general, and very concretely against AI research, AI researchers, and their hosting institutions in Tübingen. As a result, AI became a highly polarizing topic in Tübingen, bringing researchers and activists into fierce opposition. Dialogue became almost impossible.

This was the reason why we created the public exhibition “Cyber and the City: Künstliche Intelligenz bewegt Tübingen” at Tübingen's city museum. The exhibition was conceptualized and designed over the course of two years by two colleagues in cultural anthropology (Thomas Thiemeyer and Tim Schaffarczik), Ulrike von Luxburg, the local city museum (Guido Szymanska and Wiebke Ratzeburg), and 36 master's students of cultural anthropology and machine learning. It showed how AI works, but also recapitulated the strong debate about machine learning research in Tübingen and explained the arguments and reasoning of both sides. Over the course of one year, the exhibition was visited by 40,000 people (in a city with around 90,000 inhabitants). While the exhibition itself has closed by now, the exhibition webpage created by the students is still available. Our exhibition team received the Communicator Award, Germany's national award for science communication, in 2024.

Poster for Cyber and the City: Künstliche Intelligenz bewegt Tübingen Visitors gathered outside Tübingen's city museum for the exhibition opening
Entrance to the Cyber and the City exhibition at Tübingen's city museum An exhibition demonstration explaining image recognition with a parrot image
The Stadtgespräch — Talk of the Town installation with curtains and lights Yellow exhibition displays documenting the public debate about AI research and industry funding

Children’s University

You might want to watch Ulrike von Luxburg's Kinderuni lecture on YouTube: “Warum ist künstliche Intelligenz nicht immer gerecht?” (Why is AI not always fair?).