The latest issue of FIfF Kommunikation, the German journal in the field of informatics and society, issued by the Forum Computer Professionals for Peace and Social Responsibilty (FIfF) in December 2024, focusses again on the topic of AI.

Hans-Jörg Kreowski – FIfF board member and co-head of one of our GSIS units – co-authors the editorial for the focus that contains ten articles, all in German.

Among them there is an article by Kreowski and Wolfgang Hofkirchner on “Künstliche Intelligenz und die Krisen der Menschheit” that deals with the role of AI in the context of the current polycrisis of human development.

In addition, the issue contains a tribute to the life and work of Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski on the occasion of his 90th birthday on 31 December 2024. Born in Berlin, Fuchs-Kittowski’s grandfather Emil Fuchs had to look after him because his parents were persecuted. During the last days of World War II, he lived in Vorarlberg, Austria, and helped resistance groups to smuggle politically and racially persecuted people into Switzerland. After the war, he completed an apprenticeship in Leipzig. Only then did he study philosophy there with Ernst Bloch and others. He specialised in biological, cybernetic and mathematical questions and investigated problems of determinism. Though his results from then on meant criticism, this was the start of his academic career in the German Democratic Republic. The author of this appreciation, Werner Winzerling, then describes the adverse circumstances that led to the liquidation of the academic institutions in the East and also the loss of Fuchs-Kittowski’s job after the reincorporation of the GDR into the Federal Republic of Germany. It was a bitter irony of history that a former officer of the Waffen-SS was involved in this process, who was even awarded an honorary doctorate by the Humboldt-Universität Berlin.

Our Institute joins the appreciation above. Fuchs-Kittowski’s scientific accomplishments build a source of inspirations for the field of informatics and society and beyond. Our current Research Group on Emergent Systems, Information and Society – founded in 2015 as Arbeitskreis of the Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin – was founded to honour and continue the lifetime achievement of Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski. He is an Honorary Member of GSIS.

FIfF is a befriended organisation.