Germany Aims to Boost Its Position in Artificial Intelligence

The German government is hosting a two-day Digital Summit in Berlin to discuss ways to strengthen its position in artificial intelligence. Despite a lag and dependence on the US, Germany is looking for opportunities in AI investments and niches. The summit expects to attract dozens of guests from around the world, including ministers of digitalization from France, the Netherlands, and Canada, as well as directors of several technology companies and scientists. The main theme, as in previous years, remains artificial intelligence. German Minister of Digitalization Karsten Wildberger expects the summit to give a new boost to the country’s AI development. Germany has made some progress in AI in recent years, with domestic companies playing a key role in its application in industry, the establishment of a large number of AI startups, and the state launching a strategy for the development of data centers. However, some experts doubt that Germany can compete with the global leaders. One of the key problems is that Germany and Europe are still heavily dependent on the US in the field of artificial intelligence. US technology companies, from OpenAI to NVIDIA, generate the largest revenues, build data centers, and set technological standards. Anyone who wants to use the most advanced solutions usually has to buy American technology. This situation is confirmed by the Berlin think tank Agora Digitale Transformation. Its executive director, Stefan Heumann, estimates that not much has changed since last year’s summit. Unfortunately, we are not particularly sovereign. This was intensively discussed last year, but since then, not much has happened. It could even be said that dependence has increased further, Heumann says. The imbalance is particularly visible in investments. Agora Digitale Transformation analyzed the federal budget and calculated that the state allocates around 800 million euros for AI projects, which is only 0.15% of the total budget. In comparison with the enormous investments of American technology giants, this amount seems modest. According to the same think tank, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta invest around 655 billion euros in AI this year, which is more than the entire German federal budget. German Minister Wildberger, however, warns that money is not the only decisive factor. It’s not always just about money, but also about the way we think. Are we brave enough to really grasp this technology and use its possibilities? I think we still need to catch up on our backlog in this area, he said in an interview with the Bericht aus Berlin program. Similarly, business leaders think. Bernhard Rohleder, the head of the Bitkom digital industry association, warns that Germany depends on the import of so-called basic AI models. The models are large models on which systems like ChatGPT, Claude from Anthropic, or the Chinese DeepSeeka are based. We still can’t develop them in Germany in the way that others can, Rohleder says. Despite this, he believes that the opportunity has not been missed. The train of artificial intelligence is moving fast, but it’s constantly stopping at intermediate stations, Rohleder says. In other words, not every country needs to develop its own ChatGPT, and not every government needs to invest billions like American technology giants. The key is, according to him, in smart, not just large investments. Germany could, for example, focus more on the development of so-called physical artificial intelligence, which includes the application of AI in machines, factories, robots, and autonomous vehicles. It could also invest more in basic research and build partnerships with countries outside the US, as an example of cooperation between the Canadian AI company Cohere and the German company Aleph Alpha from Heidelberg. The theme of discussion during the two-day summit is therefore not lacking, but Germany has months of intense work ahead of it. As Minister Wildberger said: Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and speed up the pace.