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Research Center for Trustworthy Data Science and Security

Nils Köbis researches the influence of AI on ethical behavior

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Portrait Nils Köbis © Fabian Strauch​/​UDE
Prof. Nils Köbis is investigating the influence of artificial intelligence on ethical behavior at the Research Center for Trustworthy Data Science and Security.
From childhood, we learn what is good and what is bad through our parents and social environment. The social exchange via AI-controlled software is currently becoming increasingly influential. But are the norms of ethical behavior integrated into the algorithms? Prof. Dr. Nils Köbis is researching this at the Research Center for Trustworthy Data Science and Security.

At the Research Center for Trustworthy Data Science and Security (RC Trust) of the Research Alliance, Professor Köbis investigates the influence of AI on ethical behavior as well as the problem of corruption and how AI could help to combat it. "People with professional conflicts of interest tend to interpret morality partly in their favor. We are investigating whether people follow the (un)ethical recommendations of AI," says Köbis. Initial results show: "Dishonest advice promotes dishonesty - honest advice does not necessarily promote honesty. Regardless of whether they come from AI or humans. The transparency of algorithms alone is not enough in the fight against corrupting AI."

In another project, Professor Köbis is working on AI chatbots, i.e. computer programs that are trained to mediate virtual friendships. "The chat responses cannot be fully controlled by the developers," he says. The voice bot uses phrases from love or horror stories, for example, which are sometimes full of violence and end tragically. In addition, the program sometimes forgets its human conversation partners after an update, and the company developing the bot also takes part in the chats alongside the person using it and the bot. "The tech companies also know what we entrust to AI. But they don't reveal what they do with the data," says the researcher.

Nils Köbis studied psychology (2007-2010) at the University of Münster and social psychology (2010-2012) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he researched corruption from 2012 to 2016 and received his doctorate in 2018. He then worked as a post-doc on corruption, ethical behavior and AI at the Center for Experimental Economics and Political Decision-Making at the University of Amsterdam. He then joined the project "Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence" at the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development - first as a Postdoctoral Researcher (2016-2020), Research Scientist (2021/2022) and finally as Senior Research Scientist (2022-2023). Since 2023, he has been a member of the Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security at UA Ruhr and has accepted the professorship "Human Understanding of Machines and Algorithms" at the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research has received several awards and funding throughout Europe.

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