Next DigHum Lecture:

Tuesday, February 24, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. (17:00) Central European Time (UTC+1)

Topic: “The Imperative of Openness in AI”
(scroll down for abstract and CV)

Speaker: Sayeed Choudhury (Carnegie Mellon Libraries, USA)
Moderator: Helga Nowotny (Complexity Science Hub, AT)

To participate in the talks via Zoom go to: https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/96389928143?pwd=UU5YRkNuRmdoWHV4MFBwMWRCcUErdz09
(Password: 0dzqxqiy)

The talk will be live streamed and recorded on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/digitalhumanism

For further announcements and information about the speakers in the Lecture Series, see https://dighum.org/#latest-news. Please note that you can access the slides and recordings of our past events via that link.

In case you missed the last lecture by Dario Guarascio you can watch the recording of “The Military-Digital Complex: Digital Technologies and the New World (dis)Order”.


Announcement of our next events:
10.03.26 DigHum Lecture Stefan Szeider on “LLMs when left alone”
24.03.26 DigHum Lecture Darja Djordjevic on AI Compagnions 
reminder our new public calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/dighumtuwien%40gmail.com/public/basic.ics

We are looking forward to seeing you!

Stefan Woltran




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ABSTRACT “The Imperative of Openness in AI”:

In February 2024, Columbia University in the US co-hosted a workshop with Mozilla that resulted in a paper “Towards a Framework for Openness in Foundation Models: Proceedings from the Columbia Convening on Openness in Artificial Intelligence.” Using this framework, this talk will offer an update on developments related to openness in AI since February 2024, with an emphasis on the imperative to advance this framework and develop an open technology stack for AI. Such a stack will be important to advance human-centered, responsible, transparent, and participatory AI.This topic is particularly important in the European context, given the EU AI Act and increasing calls for digital sovereignty. Taking a global perspective, the talk will also highlight the difference between sovereignty and agency, particularly as it relates to nations without resources to build their own foundation models.

Short Bio of Sayeed Choudhury:

G. Sayeed Choudhury is the Associate Dean for Digital Infrastructure and Director of the Open Source Programs Office (OSPO) at Carnegie Mellon Libraries and an affiliated faculty member of the Block Center for Technology and Society and Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, as well as the Executive Director of the Open Forum for AI.
He was the Director of a Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant for coordination of University OSPOs and was a Co-Investigator for the Black Beyond Data Project. Choudhury is a member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Board, Human AI Collective Advisory Board – BGV & EAIGG, and Schmidt Sciences Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) Advisory Board. He was the Software Area Expert and member of the Steering Committee for the Research Data Alliance (RDA) – US.

Choudhury was a President Obama appointee to the National Museum and Library Services Board. He was a member of the National Academies Committee on Forecasting Costs for Preserving, Archiving, and Promoting Access to Biomedical Data and a member of the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information. He was also a member of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access. He has testified for the Research Subcommittee of the Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

He was a member of the board of the National Information Standards Organization, OpenAIRE2020, DuraSpace, the ICPSR Council, Digital Library Federation advisory committee, Library of Congress’ National Digital Stewardship Alliance Coordinating Committee, Federation of Earth Scientists Information Partnership (ESIP) Executive Committee and the Project MUSE Advisory Board. Choudhury was a member of the ECAR Data Curation Working Group. He has been a Senior Presidential Fellow with the Council on Library and Information Resources, a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins and a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the recipient of the 2012 OCLC/LITA Kilgour Award.

Choudhury has served as principal investigator for projects funded through the National Science Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Library of Congress’ NDIIPP, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Microsoft Research, and a Maryland based venture capital group.

Choudhury has published articles in journals such as the International Journal of Digital Curation, D-Lib, the Journal of Digital Information, First Monday, and Library Trends and presented at various open-source events hosted by the United Nations, Open Forum Europe, Open Ireland Network, and the Linux Foundation.

Previously, he was Associate Dean for Digital Infrastructure, Applications, and Services and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University (JHU), where he led the JHU Library team that supported the Covid-19 dashboard and launched the JHU’s open source programs office (OSPO), the first of its kind within a US university.

Short Bio of Helga Nowotny:

Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, and a founding member of the European Research Council and former President of the ERC. Currently she is member of the Austrian Council for Sciences, Technology, and Innovation, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, member of the Board of Trustees of the Falling Walls Foundation, Berlin and Member of the Council of Administration at the IEA de Paris. Among the numerous awards from Academies of Science and Honorary Doctorates are an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Oxford and the Leibniz- Medal from the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW). Her latest book publications are „The Cunning of Uncertainty“ (2015), „An Orderly Mess“ (2017) and „In AI We Trust: Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms“ (2021), “Future Needs Wisdom. An Intellectual Memoir” (2024).