Strengthen the transfer of artificial intelligence to the economy

Many industrialized nations are pushing for the implementation of artificial intelligence in business — and they are outdoing themselves with funding programs. Germany is at the top of all statistics when it comes to the share of GDP from industrial production, but not when it comes to government funding for industrial AI applications. Against this background, the Federal Ministry of Research had invited to an expert discussion on “AI for SMEs in industry.” And we were there.

On behalf of the VDMA, our founder and managing director Jörn Steinbeck was invited to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Berlin on 22.10.2019. In addition to representatives from the major industry associations VDMA (Mechanical and Plant Engineering) and ZVEI (Electrical Engineering and Electronics), representatives from 7 SMEs were invited — including oee.ai as the smallest company.

The discussion was led by Federal Minister Anja Karliczek. The focus was on the question of what hurdles SMEs face when using artificial intelligence, so that the Federal Ministry can provide support in reducing them.

In essence, three areas of action were identified:

• Cultural hurdles: The openness to AI technology in SMEs is rated as having room for improvement — both within their own company and in terms of data exchange across company borders.
• Technical hurdles: In addition to the lack of AI know-how in companies, best practice ideas and successful use cases have not yet spread so widely that they are taken up by a large number of companies. It simply comes down to understanding what the technology can do and what specific problem it is able to solve.
• Data security: Since many AI technologies are based, insufficient data security is seen as a problem area for SMEs. Justified or not — this is how industry representatives reflect the perception of managers.

The Federal Ministry has responded to the project in several places GAIA X referred to which addresses some of the challenges for SMEs.

We went home with a very good feeling: The Federal Government is proactively addressing challenges faced by SMEs, even though SMEs themselves are not yet fully aware of these issues. The industry associations competently represent the interests of their members. And last but not least: A heterogeneous group of industry and politics discusses industrial policy issues in a focused and equal way.

A report on the expert discussion can be found on the Ministry's website at this link.

Further information can be found in the AI Strategy of the German Federal Government (Webpage, pdf) as well as on the Learning systems platform.

Our special thanks go in particular to the VDMA, which arranged our participation in the event.