Einstein Center Digital Future
facilityBerlin, Germany
Research output, citation impact, and the most-cited recent papers from Einstein Center Digital Future (Germany). Aggregated across the NobleBlocks index of 300M+ scholarly works.
Top-cited papers from Einstein Center Digital Future
Event cameras are bio-inspired sensors that differ from conventional frame cameras: Instead of capturing images at a fixed rate, they asynchronously measure per-pixel brightness changes, and output a stream of events that encode the time, location and sign of the brightness changes. Event cameras offer attractive properties compared to traditional cameras: high temporal resolution (in the order of μs), very high dynamic range (140 dB versus 60 dB), low power consumption, and high pixel bandwidth (on the order of kHz) resulting in reduced motion blur. Hence, event cameras have a large potential for robotics and computer vision in challenging scenarios for traditional cameras, such as low-latency, high speed, and high dynamic range. However, novel methods are required to process the unconventional output of these sensors in order to unlock their potential. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of event-based vision, with a focus on the applications and the algorithms developed to unlock the outstanding properties of event cameras. We present event cameras from their working principle, the actual sensors that are available and the tasks that they have been used for, from low-level vision (feature detection and tracking, optic flow, etc.) to high-level vision (reconstruction, segmentation, recognition). We also discuss the techniques developed to process events, including learning-based techniques, as well as specialized processors for these novel sensors, such as spiking neural networks. Additionally, we highlight the challenges that remain to be tackled and the opportunities that lie ahead in the search for a more efficient, bio-inspired way for machines to perceive and interact with the world.
Abstract Over the last decade, neural networks have reached almost every field of science and become a crucial part of various real world applications. Due to the increasing spread, confidence in neural network predictions has become more and more important. However, basic neural networks do not deliver certainty estimates or suffer from over- or under-confidence, i.e. are badly calibrated. To overcome this, many researchers have been working on understanding and quantifying uncertainty in a neural network’s prediction. As a result, different types and sources of uncertainty have been identified and various approaches to measure and quantify uncertainty in neural networks have been proposed. This work gives a comprehensive overview of uncertainty estimation in neural networks, reviews recent advances in the field, highlights current challenges, and identifies potential research opportunities. It is intended to give anyone interested in uncertainty estimation in neural networks a broad overview and introduction, without presupposing prior knowledge in this field. For that, a comprehensive introduction to the most crucial sources of uncertainty is given and their separation into reducible model uncertainty and irreducible data uncertainty is presented. The modeling of these uncertainties based on deterministic neural networks, Bayesian neural networks (BNNs), ensemble of neural networks, and test-time data augmentation approaches is introduced and different branches of these fields as well as the latest developments are discussed. For a practical application, we discuss different measures of uncertainty, approaches for calibrating neural networks, and give an overview of existing baselines and available implementations. Different examples from the wide spectrum of challenges in the fields of medical image analysis, robotics, and earth observation give an idea of the needs and challenges regarding uncertainties in the practical applications of neural networks. Additionally, the practical limitations of uncertainty quantification methods in neural networks for mission- and safety-critical real world applications are discussed and an outlook on the next steps towards a broader usage of such methods is given.
The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO)-a standardized vocabulary of phenotypic abnormalities associated with 7000+ diseases-is used by thousands of researchers, clinicians, informaticians and electronic health record systems around the world. Its detailed descriptions of clinical abnormalities and computable disease definitions have made HPO the de facto standard for deep phenotyping in the field of rare disease. The HPO's interoperability with other ontologies has enabled it to be used to improve diagnostic accuracy by incorporating model organism data. It also plays a key role in the popular Exomiser tool, which identifies potential disease-causing variants from whole-exome or whole-genome sequencing data. Since the HPO was first introduced in 2008, its users have become both more numerous and more diverse. To meet these emerging needs, the project has added new content, language translations, mappings and computational tooling, as well as integrations with external community data. The HPO continues to collaborate with clinical adopters to improve specific areas of the ontology and extend standardized disease descriptions. The newly redesigned HPO website (www.human-phenotype-ontology.org) simplifies browsing terms and exploring clinical features, diseases, and human genes.
Event cameras are bio-inspired sensors that differ from conventional frame cameras: Instead of capturing images at a fixed rate, they asynchronously measure per-pixel brightness changes, and output a stream of events that encode the time, location and sign of the brightness changes. Event cameras offer attractive properties compared to traditional cameras: high temporal resolution (in the order of is), very high dynamic range (140dB vs. 60dB), low power consumption, and high pixel bandwidth (on the order of kHz) resulting in reduced motion blur. Hence, event cameras have a large potential for robotics and computer vision in challenging scenarios for traditional cameras, such as low-latency, high speed, and high dynamic range. However, novel methods are required to process the unconventional output of these sensors in order to unlock their potential. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of event-based vision, with a focus on the applications and the algorithms developed to unlock the outstanding properties of event cameras. We present event cameras from their working principle, the actual sensors that are available and the tasks that they have been used for, from low-level vision (feature detection and tracking, optic flow, etc.) to high-level vision (reconstruction, segmentation, recognition). We also discuss the techniques developed to process events, including learning-based techniques, as well as specialized processors for these novel sensors, such as spiking neural networks. Additionally, we highlight the challenges that remain to be tackled and the opportunities that lie ahead in the search for a more efficient, bio-inspired way for machines to perceive and interact with the world.
Assistive technology featuring artificial intelligence (AI) to support human decision-making has become ubiquitous. Assistive AI achieves accuracy comparable to or even surpassing that of human experts. However, often the adoption of assistive AI systems is limited by a lack of trust of humans into an AI’s prediction. This is why the AI research community has been focusing on rendering AI decisions more transparent by providing explanations of an AIs decision. To what extent these explanations really help to foster trust into an AI system remains an open question. In this paper, we report the results of a behavioural experiment in which subjects were able to draw on the support of an ML-based decision support tool for text classification. We experimentally varied the information subjects received and show that transparency can actually have a negative impact on trust. We discuss implications for decision makers employing assistive AI technology.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has diffused into many areas of our private and professional life. In this research note, we describe exemplary risks of black-box AI, the consequent need for explainability, and previous research on Explainable AI (XAI) in information systems research. Moreover, we discuss the origin of the term XAI, generalized XAI objectives, and stakeholder groups, as well as quality criteria of personalized explanations. We conclude with an outlook to future research on XAI.
The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) in combination with easy-to-use interfaces such as ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google's Bard represent both a Herculean task and a sublime opportunity for Business and Information Systems Engineering.The technology and its applications already have considerable impact in many domains directly related to the design, operation, and application of information systems.In this editorial, we seek to explore this new reality as researchers, practitioners, and legislators will -in some form or another -have to deal with it.Our goal is to provide insights and encourage research in this new, exciting, and rapidly developing field. From Foundational Technology towards Killer ApplicationChatGPT emerged as the hottest topic on the Internet at the end of 2022 and established itself as a ''cultural sensation'' (Thorp 2023).This spontaneous hype can be seen as the latest pinnacle of the steady development of AI-powered chatbots, language-related services (e.g., for translation or content generation), and special research applications (e.g., for protein design; Madani et al. 2023) over the last couple of years.These systems instantiate sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) techniques within massive computational infrastructures to communicate fluently with humans.Today, conversational AI relies on neural transformer models (Uszkoreit 2017).These models are excellent at processing longer sequences of data-like text-by using self-attention processes that enable the model to focus on different areas of the input.A significant advancement in NLP is the emergence of LLMs, which are constructed using the transformer architecture.These models combine large-scale architectures with huge amounts of textual training data.This scaling up has allowed LLMs to understand and generate text at a level
We show that artificial neural networks with rectifier units as activation functions can exactly represent the piecewise affine function that results from the formulation of model predictive control (MPC) of linear time-invariant systems. The choice of deep neural networks is particularly interesting as they can represent exponentially many more affine regions compared to networks with only one hidden layer. We provide theoretical bounds on the minimum number of hidden layers and neurons per layer that a neural network should have to exactly represent a given MPC law. The proposed approach has a strong potential as an approximation method of predictive control laws, leading to a better approximation quality and significantly smaller memory requirements than previous approaches, as we illustrate via simulation examples. We also suggest different alternatives to correct or quantify the approximation error. Since the online evaluation of neural networks is extremely simple, the approximated controllers can be deployed on low-power embedded devices with small storage capacity, enabling the implementation of advanced decision-making strategies for complex cyber-physical systems with limited computing capabilities.
BACKGROUND: Artificial intelligence (AI) holds the promise of supporting nurses' clinical decision-making in complex care situations or conducting tasks that are remote from direct patient interaction, such as documentation processes. There has been an increase in the research and development of AI applications for nursing care, but there is a persistent lack of an extensive overview covering the evidence base for promising application scenarios. OBJECTIVE: This study synthesizes literature on application scenarios for AI in nursing care settings as well as highlights adjacent aspects in the ethical, legal, and social discourse surrounding the application of AI in nursing care. METHODS: Following a rapid review design, PubMed, CINAHL, Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Xplore, Digital Bibliography & Library Project, and Association for Information Systems Library, as well as the libraries of leading AI conferences, were searched in June 2020. Publications of original quantitative and qualitative research, systematic reviews, discussion papers, and essays on the ethical, legal, and social implications published in English were included. Eligible studies were analyzed on the basis of predetermined selection criteria. RESULTS: The titles and abstracts of 7016 publications and 704 full texts were screened, and 292 publications were included. Hospitals were the most prominent study setting, followed by independent living at home; fewer application scenarios were identified for nursing homes or home care. Most studies used machine learning algorithms, whereas expert or hybrid systems were entailed in less than every 10th publication. The application context of focusing on image and signal processing with tracking, monitoring, or the classification of activity and health followed by care coordination and communication, as well as fall detection, was the main purpose of AI applications. Few studies have reported the effects of AI applications on clinical or organizational outcomes, lacking particularly in data gathered outside laboratory conditions. In addition to technological requirements, the reporting and inclusion of certain requirements capture more overarching topics, such as data privacy, safety, and technology acceptance. Ethical, legal, and social implications reflect the discourse on technology use in health care but have mostly not been discussed in meaningful and potentially encompassing detail. CONCLUSIONS: The results highlight the potential for the application of AI systems in different nursing care settings. Considering the lack of findings on the effectiveness and application of AI systems in real-world scenarios, future research should reflect on a more nursing care-specific perspective toward objectives, outcomes, and benefits. We identify that, crucially, an advancement in technological-societal discourse that surrounds the ethical and legal implications of AI applications in nursing care is a necessary next step. Further, we outline the need for greater participation among all of the stakeholders involved.
Digital transformation is currently one of the most prominent topics in information systems research. Existing work in this context mainly focuses on the digitalisation of business models and impacts on economy or society. However, with the transformation of business models also come significant IT-induced changes of workplace environments. In this paper, success factors of digital workplace transformation are investigated, thereby adding a micro-perspective to the ongoing research stream on digital transformation. We will show for an organisation in the wholesale industry that the expected work design characteristics have an important influence on the employees’ attitude towards digital workplace transformation. In more detail, we will show that enabling employees to expect being autonomous, competent and connected at the workplace is not only vital for their expected future work performance, but also for their expected well-being in the workplace. Both of the latter, in turn, increase employees’ positive attitudes towards digital workplace transformation and consequently their intentions to actively support the necessary change process.
BACKGROUND: In the intensive care unit (ICU), continuous patient monitoring is essential to detect critical changes in patients' health statuses and to guide therapy. The implementation of digital health technologies for patient monitoring may further improve patient safety. However, most monitoring devices today are still based on technologies from the 1970s. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate statements by ICU staff on the current patient monitoring systems and their expectations for future technological developments in order to investigate clinical requirements and barriers to the implementation of future patient monitoring. METHODS: This prospective study was conducted at three intensive care units of a German university hospital. Guideline-based interviews with ICU staff-5 physicians, 6 nurses, and 4 respiratory therapists-were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the grounded theory approach. RESULTS: Evaluating the current monitoring system, ICU staff put high emphasis on usability factors such as intuitiveness and visualization. Trend analysis was rarely used; inadequate alarm management as well as the entanglement of monitoring cables were rated as potential patient safety issues. For a future system, the importance of high usability was again emphasized; wireless, noninvasive, and interoperable monitoring sensors were desired; mobile phones for remote patient monitoring and alarm management optimization were needed; and clinical decision support systems based on artificial intelligence were considered useful. Among perceived barriers to implementation of novel technology were lack of trust, fear of losing clinical skills, fear of increasing workload, and lack of awareness of available digital technologies. CONCLUSIONS: This qualitative study on patient monitoring involves core statements from ICU staff. To promote a rapid and sustainable implementation of digital health solutions in the ICU, all health care stakeholders must focus more on user-derived findings. Results on alarm management or mobile devices may be used to prepare ICU staff to use novel technology, to reduce alarm fatigue, to improve medical device usability, and to advance interoperability standards in intensive care medicine. For digital transformation in health care, increasing the trust and awareness of ICU staff in digital health technology may be an essential prerequisite. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03514173; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03514173 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/77T1HwOzk).
BACKGROUND: Due to demographic change and, more recently, coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the importance of modern intensive care units (ICU) is becoming apparent. One of the key components of an ICU is the continuous monitoring of patients' vital parameters. However, existing advances in informatics, signal processing, or engineering that could alleviate the burden on ICUs have not yet been applied. This could be due to the lack of user involvement in research and development. OBJECTIVE: This study focused on the satisfaction of ICU staff with current patient monitoring and their suggestions for future improvements. We aimed to identify aspects of monitoring that interrupt patient care, display devices for remote monitoring, use cases for artificial intelligence (AI), and whether ICU staff members are willing to improve their digital literacy or contribute to the improvement of patient monitoring. We further aimed to identify differences in the responses of different professional groups. METHODS: This survey study was performed with ICU staff from 4 ICUs of a German university hospital between November 2019 and January 2020. We developed a web-based 36-item survey questionnaire, by analyzing a preceding qualitative interview study with ICU staff, about the clinical requirements of future patient monitoring. Statistical analyses of questionnaire results included median values with their bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals, and chi-square tests to compare the distributions of item responses of the professional groups. RESULTS: In total, 86 of the 270 ICU physicians and nurses completed the survey questionnaire. The majority stated they felt confident using the patient monitoring equipment, but that high rates of false-positive alarms and the many sensor cables interrupted patient care. Regarding future improvements, respondents asked for wireless sensors, a reduction in the number of false-positive alarms, and hospital standard operating procedures for alarm management. Responses to the display devices proposed for remote patient monitoring were divided. Most respondents indicated it would be useful for earlier alerting or when they were responsible for multiple wards. AI for ICUs would be useful for early detection of complications and an increased risk of mortality; in addition, the AI could propose guidelines for therapy and diagnostics. Transparency, interoperability, usability, and staff training were essential to promote the use of AI. The majority wanted to learn more about new technologies for the ICU and required more time for learning. Physicians had fewer reservations than nurses about AI-based intelligent alarm management and using mobile phones for remote monitoring. CONCLUSIONS: This survey study of ICU staff revealed key improvements for patient monitoring in intensive care medicine. Hospital providers and medical device manufacturers should focus on reducing false alarms, implementing hospital alarm standard operating procedures, introducing wireless sensors, preparing for the use of AI, and enhancing the digital literacy of ICU staff. Our results may contribute to the user-centered transfer of digital technologies into practice to alleviate challenges in intensive care medicine. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03514173; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03514173.
The adoption of machine learning (ML) and, more specifically, deep learning (DL) applications into all major areas of our lives is underway. The development of trustworthy AI is especially important in medicine due to the large implications for patients' lives. While trustworthiness concerns various aspects including ethical, transparency and safety requirements, we focus on the importance of data quality (training/test) in DL. Since data quality dictates the behaviour of ML products, evaluating data quality will play a key part in the regulatory approval of medical ML products. We perform a systematic review following PRISMA guidelines using the databases Web of Science, PubMed and ACM Digital Library. We identify 5408 studies, out of which 120 records fulfil our eligibility criteria. From this literature, we synthesise the existing knowledge on data quality frameworks and combine it with the perspective of ML applications in medicine. As a result, we propose the METRIC-framework, a specialised data quality framework for medical training data comprising 15 awareness dimensions, along which developers of medical ML applications should investigate the content of a dataset. This knowledge helps to reduce biases as a major source of unfairness, increase robustness, facilitate interpretability and thus lays the foundation for trustworthy AI in medicine. The METRIC-framework may serve as a base for systematically assessing training datasets, establishing reference datasets, and designing test datasets which has the potential to accelerate the approval of medical ML products.
Dealing with uncertainties is one of the most challenging issues that prevent nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) from being a widespread reality. Many different robust schemes have been presented recently, such as multi-stage NMPC, in which the uncertainty is represented as a scenario tree. While multi-stage NMPC achieves promising performance in practice, it suffers from an exponential increase in complexity with the number of uncertainties considered making its real-time application difficult for large case studies. We suggest in this work to use multi-stage NMPC as a generator of data pairs that are used to learn the robust NMPC policy by means of deep neural networks. This choice is motivated by recent practical successes of deep learning and theoretical results that explain the improved representation capabilities of deep networks with respect to shallow networks. We present empirical evidence which shows that the use of deep neural networks with many hidden layers as opposed to shallow networks with only one significantly improves the learning process of a robust NMPC control law. These findings are illustrated with simulation studies of an industrial polymerization reactor.
We introduce EDS, a direct monocular visual odometry using events and frames. Our algorithm leverages the event generation model to track the camera motion in the blind time between frames. The method formulates a direct probabilistic approach of observed brightness increments. Per-pixel brightness increments are predicted using a sparse number of selected 3D points and are compared to the events via the brightness increment error to estimate camera motion. The method recovers a semi-dense 3D map using photometric bundle adjustment. EDS is the first method to perform 6-DOF VO using events and frames with a direct approach. By design it overcomes the problem of changing appearance in indirect methods. Our results outperform all previous event-based odometry solutions. We also show that, for a target error performance, EDS can work at lower frame rates than state-of-the-art frame-based VO solutions. This opens the door to low-power motion-tracking applications where frames are sparingly triggered “on demand” and our method tracks the motion in between. We release code and datasets to the public.
The Virtual Brain (TVB) is now available as open-source services on the cloud research platform EBRAINS (ebrains.eu). It offers software for constructing, simulating and analysing brain network models including the TVB simulator; magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) processing pipelines to extract structural and functional brain networks; combined simulation of large-scale brain networks with small-scale spiking networks; automatic conversion of user-specified model equations into fast simulation code; simulation-ready brain models of patients and healthy volunteers; Bayesian parameter optimization in epilepsy patient models; data and software for mouse brain simulation; and extensive educational material. TVB cloud services facilitate reproducible online collaboration and discovery of data assets, models, and software embedded in scalable and secure workflows, a precondition for research on large cohort data sets, better generalizability, and clinical translation.
BACKGROUND: Owing to an increase in digital technologies in health care, recently leveraged by the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians are required to use these technologies appropriately and to be familiar with their implications on patient care, the health system, and society. Therefore, medical students should be confronted with digital health during their medical education. However, corresponding teaching formats and concepts are still largely lacking in the medical curricula. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to introduce digital health as a curricular module at a German medical school and to identify undergraduate medical competencies in digital health and their suitable teaching methods. METHODS: We developed a 3-week curricular module on digital health for third-year medical students at a large German medical school, taking place for the first time in January 2020. Semistructured interviews with 5 digital health experts were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using an abductive approach. We obtained feedback from the participating students and lecturers of the module through a 17-item survey questionnaire. RESULTS: The module received overall positive feedback from both students and lecturers who expressed the need for further digital health education and stated that the field is very important for clinical care and is underrepresented in the current medical curriculum. We extracted a detailed overview of digital health competencies, skills, and knowledge to teach the students from the expert interviews. They also contained suggestions for teaching methods and statements supporting the urgency of the implementation of digital health education in the mandatory curriculum. CONCLUSIONS: An elective class seems to be a suitable format for the timely introduction of digital health education. However, a longitudinal implementation in the mandatory curriculum should be the goal. Beyond training future physicians in digital skills and teaching them digital health's ethical, legal, and social implications, the experience-based development of a critical digital health mindset with openness to innovation and the ability to assess ever-changing health technologies through a broad transdisciplinary approach to translate research into clinical routine seem more important. Therefore, the teaching of digital health should be as practice-based as possible and involve the educational cooperation of different institutions and academic disciplines.
Background Clinically significant prostate cancer (PCa) diagnosis at MRI requires accurate and efficient radiologic interpretation. Although artificial intelligence may assist in this task, lack of transparency has limited clinical translation. Purpose To develop an explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) model for clinically significant PCa diagnosis at biparametric MRI using Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) features for classification justification. Materials and Methods This retrospective study included consecutive patients with histopathologic analysis–proven prostatic lesions who underwent biparametric MRI and biopsy between January 2012 and December 2017. After image annotation by two radiologists, a deep learning model was trained to detect the index lesion; classify PCa, clinically significant PCa (Gleason score ≥ 7), and benign lesions (eg, prostatitis); and justify classifications using PI-RADS features. Lesion- and patient-based performance were assessed using fivefold cross validation and areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Clinical feasibility was tested in a multireader study and by using the external PROSTATEx data set. Statistical evaluation of the multireader study included Mann-Whitney U and exact Fisher-Yates test. Results Overall, 1224 men (median age, 67 years; IQR, 62–73 years) had 3260 prostatic lesions (372 lesions with Gleason score of 6; 743 lesions with Gleason score of ≥ 7; 2145 benign lesions). XAI reliably detected clinically significant PCa in internal (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.89) and external test sets (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.87) with a sensitivity of 93% (95% CI: 87, 98) and an average of one false-positive finding per patient. Accuracy of the visual and textual explanations of XAI classifications was 80% (1080 of 1352), confirmed by experts. XAI-assisted readings improved the confidence (4.1 vs 3.4 on a five-point Likert scale; P = .007) of nonexperts in assessing PI-RADS 3 lesions, reducing reading time by 58 seconds (P = .009). Conclusion The explainable AI model reliably detected and classified clinically significant prostate cancer and improved the confidence and reading time of nonexperts while providing visual and textual explanations using well-established imaging features. © RSNA, 2023 Supplemental material is available for this article. See also the editorial by Chapiro in this issue.
Model predictive control (MPC) is an optimization-based strategy for high-performance control that is attracting increasing interest. While MPC requires the online solution of an optimization problem, its ability to handle multivariable systems and constraints makes it a very powerful control strategy specially for MPC of embedded systems, which have an ever increasing amount of sensing and computation capabilities. We argue that the implementation of MPC on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) using automatic tools is nowadays possible, achieving cost-effective successful applications on fast or resource-constrained systems. The main burden for the implementation of MPC on FPGAs is the challenging design of the necessary algorithms. We outline an approach to achieve a software-supported optimized implementation of MPC on FPGAs using high-level synthesis tools and automatic code generation. The proposed strategy exploits the arithmetic operations necessaries to solve optimization problems to tailor an FPGA design, which allows a tradeoff between energy, memory requirements, cost, and achievable speed. We show the capabilities and the simplicity of use of the proposed methodology on two different examples and illustrate its advantages over a microcontroller implementation.
Digitalization can increase resource and energy productivities. However, the production and usage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) require materials and energy, and the application of ICTs fosters economic growth. This paper examines whether digitalization helps or hinders an absolute decoupling of environmental throughput from economic growth. The paper combines the literature on “green IT” and “ICT for green” with studies on decoupling, i.e., the relationship between economic growth, technological change, and environmental throughput. The paper identifies several strains of the decoupling debate and connects them to the environmental implications of digitalization. We focus on the relation between digitalization and (1) the question of finite non-renewable energies, (2) the environmental Kuznets curve, (3) the role of energy consumption for economic growth, (4) efficiency improvements vis-à-vis rebound effects, and (5) the role of general purpose technologies for resource and energy demand. We find that the empirical basis regarding digitalization’s relation to these four aspects is still weak and hence, further research is needed. Comparing the mitigating and the aggravating impacts of digitalization, we conclude that a more active political and societal shaping of the process of digitalization is needed to make ICT work for global environmental sustainability.