Workshop on “AI, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Economic Planning for a good life for all in Planetary Boundaries”

Note: There are two versions of the description of this workshop. On the official website of the Informatik Festival 2025 you can find the older, German description, on Johannes Buchner (one of the co-organizers of the workshop) you can find the updated, English description. We share the updated, English one below:

If the workshop will be held in German or in English will be decided spontaneously, depending on the audience.

“In this workshop, we will discuss how AI, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and cybernetic economic planning can contribute to the socio-ecological transformation towards a circular economy within planetary boundaries. Four short scientific presentations will be followed by an interactive programming session. The range of discussion stretches from possible reforms of the current economic system to its (potentially disruptive) transformation towards a completely different economic mode of production. As social and ecological crises worsen, fundamental doubt arises if the structural logic of capitalism makes it possible to overcome these crises.

At the same time, AI, cybernetics, system models, and socio-ecological databases open up possibilities to address questions of a complex, fully circular economy directly. In recent years, debates on abstract and concrete drafts of economic democratization based on decentralized democratic economic planning (DEP) have gained momentum. Identifying workable ways in which resources can be used through economic, technological, and social practices to meet human needs within ecological limits is a challenge which could be solved by linking these innovative approaches.

On the basis of recent modeling approaches, databases and still unanswered questions, we would like to invite you to a discussion and further development of such ideas for a democratic economic system respecting planetary boundaries.

Speakers and Topics of the Talks

• Manuel Gambert: How we plan at the moment – and why
• Bartolomeus Häussling Löwgren: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), brightway and Planning
• Walther Zeug: Planning, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and openLCA
• Johannes Buchner: Reinforcement Learning, Circular Economy and the Strategic Triangle of AI for Sustainability, partly based on the article Reinforcement Learning and Life Cycle Assessment for a Circular Economy – Towards Absolute Sustainability

Organising Team

• Johannes Buchner, IPE Berlin and Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, FU Berlin
• Manuel Gambert, Computer Scientist and Economist, PRODATO Integration Technology GmbH, Nürnberg
• Bartolomeus Häussling Löwgren, Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands
• Eric Meier, INDEP – International Network for Democratic Economic Planning, Bonn
• Immanuel Thoke, Department for Statistical Learning, Leipzig University
• Walther Zeug, Helmholtz-Center for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig

Additional information

In the workshop, we aim to bring together scientists working on Postcapitalist Economic Systems with a wider audience of critical computer scientists. To get an impression of the field and the topics that will be discussed at the workshop, see e.g. the podcast episode on Postcapitalist Economic Systems (in German).