PhD Student

• Philosophy of trust and testimony
• Philosophy of power and violence
• Philosophy of science and technology
• (Epistemic) justice, vulnerability, resilience, trauma

Trial by Machine? Reflecting on Trust as a Resilience and Vulnerability Factor and on the Scope of Information Technology Transformations in Critical Infrastructures (Working Title)

The planned dissertation project analyzes the role of trust in complex socio-technological systems. On the one hand, different ways in which trust can act as a resilience or vulnerability factor will be investigated, and on the other hand, their relevance in the context of information technology transformations will be examined.

Trust relationships are already inscribed in the construction of critical infrastructures due to the high degree of networking of the most diverse areas of knowledge. Trust in the preliminary work, parallel decisions and actions of other actors, as well as in information technologies, acts here as an enabling and success condition, for example on the circulation of information both within different systems and between them. Furthermore, trust issues in the context of critical infrastructures are closely related to the possibility and management of functional crises and affect the possibilities of preparedness and prevention that depend on trust in information and forecasts.

As a rule, we cannot judge the truth of the information available to us for coping with complex situations independently of others, which means that we are always already dependent on trust in the testimonies of others. Information technologies (or transformations in the information and communication system of modern societies) exacerbate this challenge in two ways. On the one hand, as the central basic infrastructure, they are essential to the circulation of information about the world, and on the other hand, they are also involved in the generation of data and information. The increasing use and constant change of information technology intensifies the problem of trust in foreign testimony, as phenomena such as (mutual) dependence, epistemic opacity, etc. are exacerbated.

In this context, questions about the extent and significance of informational transformations from an epistemological as well as recognition-theoretical perspective become virulent. The increasing digitalization, algorithmization, and automation of information processing in the criminological context serves as an exemplary object of investigation. Human testimonies are increasingly supported, verified or replaced by new simulation technologies and the like. What began some time ago, for example, with the use of radar controls and the resulting replacement of people by machines in evidence collection and analysis in traffic control, is now continuing in other areas through the increased use of AI- and ML-based technologies. This results not only in changing infrastructural practices, but also in new knowledge structures that also hold potential for reconfiguring trust relationships. Therefore, it is necessary to ask how 'classical' human and computer-intensive forms of testimony differ and how far-reaching this difference is. The outlined questions will be pursued by means of literature and case studies.