The House of Wisdom Coffee Conversations continue in the autumn semester. This time there are two presenters, who are both Visiting Fellows at JYU. Welcome to learn and discuss!
Digitalization & Sustainability: Managing the Twin Transition of Cities
Sustainability and digitalization are the two dominant transformative forces organizations are currently facing. The challenge to become both greener and more digital has been framed as a ‘twin transition’, highlighting their interdependency. Today’s cities are home to more than half of the world’s population and thus account for a significant amount of today’s global sustainability threats. One stream of the nascent literature on ‘digital sustainability’, rooted predominantly in the area of management, argues that innovative digital technologies can help addressing sustainability issues. Therefore, cities have come under pressure to implement ‘smart’ solutions that build on digital technologies in urban transformation projects on the sustainability trajectory. Scholars from environmental and urban studies, however, have raised concerns that such technologies themselves come with unintended environmental and social side effects.
We focus on the challenges and pitfalls of increasing digitalization of cities and shed light on the possibility of ‘sustainable digitalization’. In doing so, we draw attention to a concept that is increasingly popular, namely ‘digital humanism’, which places the human front and center in digitalization efforts. Yet, in order to extend its current scope focusing on the ‘here and now’, we suggest adding a spatial and a temporal dimension to the concept, which are currently still lacking. Such an extension would allow to consider negative externalities that innovative technologies have both for future generations and for those humans involved elsewhere such as via global supply chains. By adding a spatiotemporal perspective to digital humanism, our commentary contributes to a better understanding of the interdependence between digitalization and sustainability in the twin transition of cities.
Tobias Polzer is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Organization Studies at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna). His research interests include reforms in the public sector in the areas of digitalization, public governance, public financial management and public procurement.
The care home of the future? Challenging promissory & ageist discourses of AI for sustainable later-life care
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in care (nursing) homes – from social robots to chatbots – have been heralded as solutions to the sector’s systemic challenges like chronic staffing shortages and loneliness among residents. Yet, researchers and practitioners have raised socio-ethical concerns about the implications of AI in health and care practices. Although gender and racial biases in AI have gained considerable attention, ageist biases remain largely unnoticed. Amidst the promise and apprehension surrounding AI, understanding the perspectives of those developing and implementing these technologies on their use, impact, and sustainability in later-life care is crucial.
For this, I draw on 18 semi-structured interviews with AI developers and care home staff/advocates and ethnographic research at a digital health and ‘AgeTech’ conference. Findings reveal a range of promissory discourses about the role of AI in the context of an ageing population. Despite positive intentions, all groups engaged in sociotechnical ageism, promoting simplistic representations of older people and their technological capacity. Additionally, the study uncovered both positive and ambivalent experiences of AI-based care. While the concept of 'integrative' care, combining human and technological elements, was prominent among participants, several divides emerged between AI developers and care staff. For instance, developers lacked experiential knowledge of the daily functioning of care homes, influencing their AI design and its sustainable adoption. Care staff exhibited limited experiential knowledge of AI and held more critical views about its use, impacting their trust in these technologies. I conclude by reflecting on approaches to regenerating AI-human relations for later-life care.
Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves (PhD, FRSA, FHEA) is an award-winning sociologist of technology and ageing, based at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies. She holds a prestigious Sydney Horizon Fellowship in AI social science, sustainable ageing, and social health. Barbara is an internationally recognised expert on loneliness, social isolation, and socio-digital inequalities in later life. Her research has been used to improve technology co-design for frail older people (65+) and to inform care practices and policy in Canada, Australia, and Portugal. Barbara has a background in sociology and human-computer interaction. Prior to moving to Australia, she was an Associate Director at the Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada.
Join the event on-site or online
We encourage you to take a moment away from your desk and participate on-site at the House of Wisdom (officially known as the Gardener´s House, J-building), where coffee and tea will be served for all. However, remote participation is also possible. You are warmly welcome to join the event either way!
To join the event remotely, use the link below (passcode 719684). In addition, use your own name as you join to be let in from the waiting room.
The header image was generated with AI.
