Dr. Anne Mollen

Research interests

• Digitisation, democray and society
• Socio-technical systems and data-centred technologies
• Digitisation and sustainability
• Automation, algorithms, Machine Learning and Artifiial Intelligence
• Media appropriation and media practices

Research project

SustAIn: The Sustainability Index for Artificial Intelligence

How sustainable is Artificial Intelligence? At this point in time, we are aware that a lot of energy is needed in the development and application of AI, that so-called click workers classify data sets for training AI systems under very poor working conditions and that these systems quite often reinforce existing patterns of discrimination. In view of an increasing number of AI systems in use, there is an urgent need to discuss how AI can be made more sustainable. This is where the project SustAIn comes in.

Short CV

Anne Mollen’s research focuses on sustainability and digitalisation as well as automation in media communication and data-centric technologies. She studied Communication and Political Science at WWU Münster (B.A.) from 2006 to 2009 and International Communications at the University of Leeds (M.A.) from 2009 onwards. She then worked as a research assistant in the Collaborative Research Centre 597 „Transformations of the State“ at the University of Bremen, where she worked in a project on the Transnationalisation of public spheres in the European Union. She received her PhD in 2018 with a thesis on the socio-technical constitution of digital communicative spaces. She was the chair of YECREA from 2016 to 2018.

As a digitisation expert, Anne Mollen has advised various bodies on issues of sustainability and digitisation, for example the Bundestag parliamentary group of "Bündnis 90/Die Grünen", the Centre for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ZVKI) or as part of a G7 multi-stakeholder conference organised by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport. She is a member of the Sustainable AI working group of the German Committee for Sustainability Research. From 2021 to 2022, she was Senior Policy & Advocacy Manager at the civil society organisation AlgorithmWatch. In this role, she researched, published and developed policy recommendations on automation in the workplace, public sector and on sustainability. She continues to advise the organisation and leads the project "SustAIn: The Sustainability Index for Artificial Intelligence".