“America innovates, Europe regulates” is what Martin Wendiggensen hears again and again in the USA. This also explains Germany’s backwardness in the AI age. The lecturer and researcher at Johns Hopkins University was live from Washington on Wednesday for the FAZ conference “Artificial Intelligence” in Frankfurt. On this day, however, the prominent topic was the presidential elections in the USA.
A few hours after the elections, Wendiggensen spoke about how the digital agenda is now changing. “Trump has increasingly drawn Silicon Valley to his side,” he says. Above all, the top heads of the tech companies have increasingly turned to it. “Elon Musk made statements with his wallet,” says Wendiggensen.
He cites four reasons for Trump’s popularity in Silicon Valley: Trump promises less regulation in the field of AI, large subsidies and relaxed competition policy. He also wants to reduce electricity prices, which play a fundamental role in the age of computationally intensive training of AI models.
Martin Wendiggensen, researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, will be joining the AI conference live.Bettina Beichert
In addition to the US elections, many prominent topics relating to the future of artificial intelligence were discussed at the FAZ AI conference. The event is aimed at decision-makers and interested parties who want to learn more about the latest advances in AI research and the diverse effects on various industries in exchange with leading experts. It is organized and moderated by FAZ publisher Carsten Knop, the editorial director of the FAZ PRO series Holger Schmidt and FAZ PRO editor Johannes Winkelhage.
“A vicious circle of our own making”
AI pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber from the KAUST Generative AI Center in Saudi Arabia kicked things off. In his keynote speech, the Munich native spoke about why he believes Germany has missed the boat: “My home country can no longer keep up. The incentives in Germany are misaligned and that is why the best researchers are leaving the country. It’s a vicious circle of our own making.” Big American companies would snap up the best talent. In the end, he is still a little optimistic: “Germany has already worked its way out of many valleys.” He sees potential in the integration of AI in mechanical engineering and robotics.
Doris Weßels, professor of business informatics at the University of Applied Sciences in Kiel, also gave ideas on how to use generative AI in education. “First of all, the discussion is about exams and not about the educational goal. We have to concentrate on new skills,” she criticizes. Instead of finding ways to prevent cheating with ChatGPT, educators should focus on teaching students new ways to impart knowledge using AI. “We teachers have to continually learn in the age of generative AI,” she says.
How artificial intelligence is transforming the economy
Peter Buxmann, Professor of Business Informatics at the Technical University of Darmstadt, gave an overview of current findings from AI research. He raised the question: “What actually happens if the AI only learns from itself?” The answer is that the variety of content generated decreases over time. It refers to the “Model Autophagy Disorder” phenomenon, or MAD for short, discovered by researchers.
“With AI, we have been given a once-in-a-century opportunity to increase our productivity,” says FAZ editorial director for newsletters and verticals Holger Schmidt. As a new basic technology, generative AI will have a significant impact on the economy and work. “Now it’s high time to push development forward,” he says. Companies would now have to invest more in technology in order to increase their productivity and thus their competitiveness.
Topics at the FAZ AI conference on Thursday
The two-day AI conference enters its next round on Thursday. Topics will include how AI is changing the war room and what the future of creative collaboration between humans and AI could look like. Because the use of technology in everyday life is becoming increasingly important, participants will learn how to write precise and effective instructions for AI chatbots like ChatGPT in a prompt engineering master class.
The AI conference is part of the series of Frankfurt General Conferences, which take place regularly on various topics from economics, politics and finance. You can find an overview of upcoming events on the Website of the Frankfurt General Conferences.
