After the first Bits & Bäume 2018, the second Bits & Bäume – The Conference for Digitization and Sustainability took place from September 30th to October 2nd, 2022 at the Technical University of Berlin. The topics covered all content at the interface of sustainability and digitisation, with the following questions being discussed in particular:

• How can digitisation be designed in such a way that it contributes to a sustainable and democratic transformation of society?
• What does a globally, economically, socially and ecologically just future look like in the digitised world?
• What can the tech community (bits) and justice and environmental movements (trees) learn from each other? And how can they, as civil society, enter into an organised exchange with social-ecological pioneering companies, science and politics?
• How can we become politically active together?

In addition to twelve other organisations, our befriended German organisation, the FIfF (Forum Computer Scientists for Peace and Social Responsibility) is one of the sponsors. The conference counted about 2,500 participants, including presenters.

Hans-Jörg Kreowski gave a lecture there in German, which he worked out together with Wolfgang Hofkirchner.

Hans-Jörg Kreowski, Wolfgang Hofkirchner | Artificial Intelligence stopping the climate change – or not? | video | pdf

Kreowski writes about the contribution:

The climate change – together with a bunch of further global crises – is leading into a social catastrophe that will cause the empoverishment of hundreds of millions of people and may even endanger the existence of humankind. Is there a way out? Can a technological push avoid the disaster? Will digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) help to solve the problems? 

Many politicians, economic leaders, scientists and engineers answer with an optimistic YES. But if one looks more closely into the state of the art of AI, the ways and intentions it is developed, the attitudes of the AI experts, and the overall political and economic context, then the answer is rather NO.

Digitalisation and AI in particular can only be part of the solution if they are integrated into a novel convivialistic way of life with worldwide freedom and peace and in harmony with nature. The humankind must be aware that it forms a community of fate and global netizenship, that a global dialogue is necessary to find agreements how to reach a world worth living for all people, and that a global governance must be built to organize a planetary politics and sustainable economy.