Prof. Dr. Rainer Mühlhoff

Institut für Kognitionswissenschaft
Wachsbleiche 27
49090 Osnabrück

Raum:
Tel.:
E-Mail: rainer.muehlhoff@uni-osnabrueck.de
Homepage:https://rainermuehlhoff.de

Weitere Informationen:
Lehrveranstaltungen
Lebenslauf / CV
Arbeitsschwerpunkte und Forschung
Publikationen

Lehrveranstaltungen

Lebenslauf

Rainer is a professor of Ethics of Artificial Intelligence at the Institute of Cognitive Science. He is also an associated professor at the Institute of Philosophy.

Before joining the University of Osnabrück, Rainer worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Excellence Cluster “Science of Intelligence” at the Technische Universität Berlin (2019–2021) and at the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1171 Affective Societies at the Freie Universität Berlin (2015–2019).

Rainer received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Freie Universität Berlin in 2016 (supervisors: Prof. Jan Slaby und Prof. Martin Saar). His dissertation was published under the title Immersive Macht. Affekttheorie nach Spinoza und Foucault (Campus, 2018).

Earlier, Rainer studied mathematics (MA/Diplom) with the minor subjects theoretical physics and computer science. He wrote his diploma thesis on “Higher Spin Fields on Curved Spacetimes” at the University of Leipzig in 2008. As part of a second degree he studied philosophy, gender studies and German literature in Berlin.

More information: https://rainermuehlhoff.de

Arbeitsschwerpunkte und Forschung

Rainer’s work focuses on ethics, social philosophy, philosophy of technology and media studies of the digital society. Current topics include

• ethics and social philosophy of artificial intelligence,
• ethics and critique with regard to structural effects,
• privacy and data protection in the context of Big Data,
• intersectionality and anti-discrimination in digital technology,
• critical media philosophy of Human-Machine interaction.

Rainer’s research on Artificial Intelligence starts from the assumption that Machine Learning Systems are sociotechnical systems (see “Human-Aided AI”). To map out the ethical and societal implications AI technology, he uses different philosophical schools and perspectives to analyze the interplay of technology, power and subjectivation. In particular, he brings together ethics with social philosophy and critical theories to analyse the effects of AI in terms of discrimination, social selection and inequality (see “Automatisierte Ungleicheit”).

A particular research interest is data ethics in the Context of AI and Big Data. These technologies make it possible to predict sensitive information about individuals based on the anonymized data of many other data subjects. This results in a novel, collectively induced invasion of privacy of the individuals concerned, raising new questions of collective responsibility in the digital society. Under the title Predictive Privacy Rainer works on an ethical and regulatory approach to restricting negative impact of predictive analytics.

More information: https://rainermuehlhoff.de

Publikationen

Print publications: https://rainermuehlhoff.de/en/publications.html

Videos: https://rainermuehlhoff.de/en/research/videos.html

Media coverage: https://rainermuehlhoff.de/en/talks-and-media/