Featured Theme

Technology for society

From AI chatbots and digital public services to social robots, emerging technologies are transforming how we live, connect, and make sense of the world. They are reshaping our democracies, our interactions, and even our realities. We believe it’s crucial to look beneath the surface: to critically examine the societal impacts and power structures entangled with technological waves. Our mission is to help you navigate these shifts and turn uncertainty into possibility by remastering technology and imagining alternative futures.

On the agenda

How can we ensure that technology enhances human capabilities instead of replacing them?

How to mitigate technology-driven environmental harms and ethical risks?

Demos line animation

What kind of governance models and policies are needed to steer technology towards democratic renewal, common good, and societal vision? 

How we can help you

Browse through some of our most recent support streams helping public sector, civil servants, and organisations in navigating and succeeding in the digital era.

Looking for new questions?

Every day, we work with brave people who want to make change. Sometimes, priorities are not clear—or there are just too many of them.

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Or take a look at all of our work around technology and AI. ->

Featured examples of our work

Knowledge Technologies for Democracy (KT4D)

KT4D aims to harness the benefits of knowledge technologies such as AI and big data to foster more inclusive civic participation in democracy. Demos Helsinki develops a governance framework and a roadmap for democratic use of AI.

Human-centric, agile, and ethical human-robot interaction (ARISE)

ARISE is a Horizon Europe-funded project that aims towards making industrial human-robot interaction (HRI) more accessible, cheaper, and easier to adopt. The particular focus of the project is on HRI in healthcare, intralogistics and manufacturing.

ARISE is a multidisciplinary project that aims to set the standards of human-centric, agile and ethical HRI. It employs and coordinates a set of different methodologies combining the development of technologies while considering social science ethical perspectives and attempting private sector penetration.

Forging Successful AI Applications for European Economy and Society (FORSEE)

FORSEE is a Horizon Europe research project that aims to expand beyond visions that define AI strictly in terms of technological and economic efficiency, developing a nuanced and enriched notion of success for society as a whole. The mission of FORSEE is to analyse existing successful AI applications to strategically enhance the capabilities of the AI industry, policymakers and the public to address the future risks and opportunities of AI.

Avoiding AI biases - A Finnish assessment framework for non-discriminatory AI

This research project aimed to extensively map the risks to fundamental rights and non-discrimination in machine learning-based AI systems that were either in use or were planned to be used in Finland. The project assessed the fundamental rights impacts of AI in different contexts such as social services, finance and health care. The main goal of the project was to develop an evaluation framework to ensure the non-discrimination of AI systems in different use cases.

 

Accounting Technologies for Anti-Rival Coordination and Allocation (ATARCA)

ATARCA was an H2020-funded research project aiming to create Bitcoin-like but anti-rival cryptographically protected tokens and test their applicability to governing data markets on one hand and fostering cooperation in community-driven currencies, on the other hand, aiming to resolve the market failures in the long run.

Our experts on this theme

Jussi Asikainen

Tuukka Puonti

João Sigora

Johannes Anttila

Kelly Yen

Vera Djakonoff

Bhuvana Sekar

Aleksi Neuvonen

Anna Björk

Ella Välimäki

Rita Latikka

Johannes Mikkonen

Lara Best-Dunkley

Atte Ojanen

Interested in making a change?
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