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The defining theme of TRANSFORM was, of course, artificial intelligence (AI). From the practical application of AI to the ethical, political, and legal frameworks, there were many discussions and presentations in various formats.
The week before TRANSFORM, my colleagues and I had already hosted“AI Discovery Day”in Düsseldorf at TYPO3 GmbH, where we exchanged ideas on AI with various agencies, and now I was attending the corporate side of the event at TRANSFORM.
Armed with the insights from our discussions with the agencies, Bitkom’s TRANSFORM was doubly interesting.
There were several commonalities, particularly in our assessment of the current AI landscape in Germany and Europe, as well as the rapid pace of change that is hitting us with full force.
Many tasks that were neglected in the past—by both policymakers and businesses—are now coming back to haunt us. Very practical problems, such as the sluggish expansion of the network and the lack of digitization in public administration and the private sector, are hurdles that still need to be overcome.
As our Minister of Justice, Dr. Marco Buschmann, explained in very practical terms in his keynote address using the example of the e-file, reducing bureaucracy is proving difficult, and the benefits of AI cannot be harnessed by public administration if the data needed to train the models continues to be available only on paper.
The initiative was launched in 2013 with the E-Government Act (EGovG), the contract for the federal e-file was awarded in 2017, and little has changed to date; the hope is that by 2025/2026, the e-file will be the new standard. Until then, AI can only relieve the burden on public administration to a limited extent—a real competitive disadvantage for Germany in times of skilled labor shortages and lengthy bureaucratic procedures. The gap between aspiration and reality could not be wider.
In the private sector, there is reason to hope for breaking free from the dominance of American and Chinese companies. Aleph Alpha and Mistral AI are two beacons of hope. However, there is no guarantee that the gap can be closed. The balance of power has been too lopsided so far, as Jonas Adrulis (CEO, Aleph Alpha) also emphasized at TRANSFORM.
He pointed out that the enormous sums cited in the press for American AI companies are only a fraction of what companies like Google or Microsoft actually invest. Mobilizing similar levels of investment in Germany and Europe to advance European models remains a challenge. Yet everyone at TRANSFORM actually agrees that a European model is more important than ever.
Many companies have recognized the potential of AI. German companies are already using AI in a variety of ways, as Marianne Stroehmann (Managing Director Enterprise & Site Lead Hamburg, Google) made clear in her presentation. According to a study commissioned by Google, German companies currently use AI primarily in the following areas:
At TRANSFORM, numerous use cases for AI and AI-based solutions were presented. It is important to overcome reservations and quickly adapt to this new technology in order to remain competitive with foreign rivals in the future.
Whether it’s T-Systems using AI to drive the expansion of fiber-optic networks in Germany, SAP with its own AI assistant that optimizes processes within the SAP ecosystem, or the many small startups with innovative ideas that were able to showcase themselves at TRANSFORM—all of this demonstrates that AI holds incredible potential for businesses. The prerequisite is that German companies continue to digitize in order to harness the potential of AI for themselves.
It is precisely this point that naturally brings us— punkt.de, GmbH—back into the picture; the digital transformation of small and medium-sized businesses and large corporations is more important than ever. For companies to use AI, they need the appropriate data to train their models. Of course, this transformation isn’t happening only on the client side; we, as an agency, are already changing as well.
Over the past two weeks, through the AI Discovery Day and TRANSFORM, I’ve gained an overview of the changes taking place both on our agency side and on the client side, as well as where the journey is currently headed. I’m curious to see how this blog post holds up over time and whether, in 1–2 years, I’ll still feel the same optimism about AI as I do today.
