Ringvorlesung - Living Labs and Regulatory Sandboxes - The politics of testing digital innovations at small scale

Digital innovation — from AI tools to autonomous vehicles and maintenance robotics — increasingly mobilize real-world experimentation for technology development. Concepts such as living labs, test beds, regulatory sandboxes, among others, are often considered low-risk and inclusive forms of testing socio-technical transformations at small scale and with public participation. At the same time, their proliferation raises questions concerning risks, the ethics of experimentation, and the path dependencies ensuing from such sites. In this lecture, Sebastian Pfotenhauer discusses the use of living labs and sandboxes in the context of digital transformations. Using examples from a variety of technical domains — medical AI, mobility, robotics — we will talk about the trade-offs between testing and democratizing innovation, between scaling and situating innovations, as well as the representativeness and legitimacy of such approaches.