Interviews

Teleconsultations, patient portals, and home-monitoring devices. Governments and healthcare institutions see digital care as the solution. Assistant professor Esther Metting, an expert in digital care, also sees the potential. At the same time, she emphasizes that many people are currently being left behind digitally. In this episode of the JTS Scholars, she explains what we can do about that.

Associate Professor Mirjam Plantinga sees it as her mission to paint a realistic picture of artificial intelligence (AI). She is project leader at the ELSA AI Lab Northern Netherlands (ELSA-NN), a lab dedicated to the responsible development and application of AI in healthcare. In this edition of the JTS Scholars, she talks about the (im)possibilities of artificial intelligence. ‘When implementing AI, we must not lose sight of the fundamental questions of care.’

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in more and more areas, including industry. But how can we develop algorithms that are technologically advanced without losing sight of human values and practical applications? In this episode of JTS Scholars, Christos Emmanouilidis, Associate Professor at the University of Groningen, discusses the collaboration between the university, industry, and societal partners in research on human-centered AI.

Finding new medication for diseases like cancer and HIV takes time, a lot of time. That is why Muhamed Amin, Assistant Professor at University College Groningen, takes a different approach. In this edition of JTS Scholars, he explains how he develops AI algorithms to identify suitable drugs in large databases.

Digital communication is not just about text. Non-verbal expressions also play a major role. Janina Wildfeuer, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts, researches this ‘multimodality’ of digital communication. In the third episode of our series on the JTS Scholars, she explains how knowledge of this field can, among other things, help in detecting online fake news.

Autonomous systems that utilize AI are ubiquitous, ranging from Google search queries to smart traffic lights. However, we must be careful using them, says philosopher Herman Veluwenkamp. ‘When autonomous systems are developed, too little attention is paid to the question as to whether the choices they make are fair, and in many cases there is a lack of democratic control.’ He hopes to change that by means of a rating model.

Dutch traffic regulations are not equipped for self-driving cars. That is the conclusion of UG researcher Nynke Vellinga. In this episode of the JTS Scholars, she talks about her research into the legal framework of autonomous vehicles. ‘If we allow self-driving cars, we need to adapt the entire system.’

Does a thesis or exam still make sense now that AI is developing at lightning speed? According to Kai Yu Ma, academic teacher at the UMCG and the University of Groningen, language models such as ChatGPT have a profound impact on education. In this first episode of our JTS Scholars series, he talks about new forms of teaching and having an open conversation about AI with students.