New impetus for AI in Germany
Germany has had an AI strategy at the federal level since 2018 and has significantly expanded investments in AI in this context. The BMBF’s annual budget for AI has increased more than twentyfold from 2017 to the present.
The BMBF is currently funding the research, development and application of AI within the framework of 50 ongoing measures with a focus on research, competence development, infrastructure development and transfer into application. These will now be supplemented by at least 20 other initiatives in a targeted manner. In the current legislative period, the BMBF alone will invest over 1.6 billion euros in AI.
Building on this, the BMBF is taking the BMBF’s commitment to the next level with the AI Action Plan. The clear goal is to give a new impetus to the German AI ecosystem and, in particular, its interface with education, science and research, and business.
Goals
- Germany’s excellent basis in research and skills must be translated into visible and measurable economic successes and have a concrete, tangible benefit for society.
- In doing so, we have to answer the questions of what the unique selling point of “KIMade in Germany” (or “Made in Europe”) can be and how we KI can optimally dovetail with our previous strengths.
- In addition, it is also a matter of putting the current discourse on the risks of KI and the necessary legal framework on a scientifically and empirically sound basis. This also applies to the risk classification of the KIsystems.
- The KIaction plan is a preliminary step towards working with other ministries and stakeholders to further develop theKI Federal Government’s strategy as a whole and to align it with the new challenges.
- At the same time, it is important to bring Germany’sKI activities, strengths and interests into the European context in a targeted and coordinated manner and thus to raise them qualitatively to another level of cooperation.
Activities
With the KIAction Plan, it BMBF has identified eleven specific fields of action in which there is the most urgent need for activity. They also illustrate how the BMBF’s measures are already acting today and what must and should follow in the coming months and years.
1. Continue to consistently strengthen the research base
2. Setting up a research agenda for new perspectives
3. Expand the KIinfrastructure in a targeted manner
4. Accelerate an AI Skills Offensive
Application & Transfer
5. Accelerate the transfer of AI to growth and economic opportunities
6. AI in health: societal benefits for all
7. Unlock the social and scientific benefits of AI in a targeted manner
8. Research and design of AI-based technologies in the education system
Conditions for success
9. Seek even greater European and international solidarity
10. Promote social dialogue and multidisciplinary research
11. Adopt a suitable, agile and innovation-friendly regulation