University of Mannheim: A smart city must also be social

Mannheim scientists will receive one million euros from the Volkswagen Foundation to research the influence of smart cities on social inequality.

Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important role in many areas of life – and it raises fundamental social and ethical questions. The Volkswagen Foundation has therefore announced a funding initiative on the subject of “Artificial Intelligence – Its Effects on Tomorrow’s Society” and awarded the contract to eight interdisciplinary projects. One of them goes to scientists at the University of Mannheim in collaboration with the Stuttgart Media University and the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (LMU). Your project is set to run for four years and will receive a total of 1.5 million euros in funding. Around one million euros of this will go to the University of Mannheim.

The interdisciplinary project is headed by Prof. Heiner Stuckenschmidt, holder of the Chair for Artificial Intelligence (AI), together with the sociologist and co-director of the Mannheim Data Science Center Prof. Frauke Kreuter, who will lead the Chair for Statistics and Data Science on April 1st the LMU takes over. Together they examine the opportunities and risks of using intelligent systems in traffic planning in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region.