Lena Kästner represents the interface between philosophy and AI

"The professorship is at the interface between philosophy and artificial intelligence, something which attracted me," Prof. Dr. Lena Kästner admits. Kästner completed a bachelor of science in cognitive science at the University of Osnabrück, followed by a master's degree in cognitive neuroscience at University College in London. She completed her doctorate in philosophy at Ruhr University in Bochum. Her dissertation was entitled "Philosophy of Cognitive Neuroscience: Causal Explanations, Mechanisms & Empirical Manipulations".

Prof. Dr. Lena Kästner then spent time as a researcher in St. Louis (USA), London (UK), Bochum, San Diego (USA), Berlin, and Canberra (AUS) before being appointed junior professor at Saarland University.

In Bayreuth, Kästner is taking up a newly created professorship. "I find it unbelievably exciting that I can contribute here in building the bridge between the traditional humanities and cutting-edge AI research," she says. She was particularly taken with the interdisciplinary nature of the University of Bayreuth. "Interdisciplinary teaching is very close to my heart," Kästner emphasises. "I took an interdisciplinary course myself and found it very enriching." In her work in Bayreuth, Kästner therefore intends to draw on her own practical experience. With the two fields of philosophy and computer science, she says, one has to deal with different subject cultures. "The way of communicating is completely different," she explains. But that is what makes it so exciting.

"AI is increasingly extending into our everyday lives," says Käsnter. If you look back just 30 years, you can see how much has happened in this area. "And much more will happen in the near future," she believes. The questions that concern Kästner are: "How do we wish to regulate this? What do we value?" However, she is not directly concerned with the legal structure. Her work starts one step before that. "We need to find ways to understand AI in order to know how we intend to use it in our modern society." These are also central questions in Kästner's current research project "Explainable Intelligent Systems".