University Of Tübingen Establishes National AI Center With A Symposium
On Tuesday, July 18, 2023, the Tübingen AI Center celebrated its permanent establishment as a national AI center with a symposium. Since July 1, 2022, it has been funded by the federal and state governments with 20 million euros a year. Around 250 guests from science, business and politics experienced a diverse program with speeches from politics, research and AI start-ups as well as initiatives that introduce children and young people to artificial intelligence.
The rector of the University of Tübingen, Professor Karla Pollmann, opened the program together with the directors of the Tübingen AI Center, Professor Matthias Bethge and Professor Bernhard Schölkopf. In her speech, Pollmann referred to the scientific excellence and agility of the AI researchers and the rapid growth of the AI ecosystem in the region. In particular, she emphasized the special role of AI in the further development of the university and praised the close cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence for Machine Learning in order to make the best possible use of the new possibilities offered by AI for research in the various scientific disciplines.
Matthias Bethge thanked the state government of Baden-Württemberg and the federal government for the long-term funding of the Tübingen AI Center. This will make it possible to double the founding team of professors, Max Planck directors and research group leaders over the next few years and to create an attractive academic research environment. Bethge spoke out in favor of maximum agility in order to be able to keep up with the pace of global AI development in research, transfer and training: “We are facing major future questions and challenges and our scientists are committed to making our society in Germany and Europe fit for shaping the future.”
Bernhard Schölkopf added that the Tübingen AI Center works closely with the European Laboratory for Intelligent Systems (ELLIS). Thanks to generous support from the Hector Foundation, the first ELLIS institute is currently being built in Tübingen, which, together with the Tübingen AI Center, is recruiting the best minds.
In his speech, Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann emphasized that Baden-Württemberg had laid the foundation for an innovation campus for artificial intelligence and intelligent systems at an early stage with the founding of Cyber Valley in 2016. “Today, the Tübingen location is at the forefront of AI research in Europe, has the only master’s degree in machine learning in Germany and with ELLIS a network that attracts the best minds from all over Europe to Baden-Württemberg,” says Kretschmann. This attraction is now increasing. With federal and state funding of ten million euros each year until 2028, the AI Center is a magnet for top researchers. “Technological sovereignty is more than ever the prerequisite for a strategically sovereign Europe,
The Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Mario Brandenburg, underlined the importance of the AI competence centers: “Artificial intelligence is a key technology that above all offers many opportunities. In order to increase these opportunities, we must further strengthen AI research and specialist training. At the same time, we must also push the implementation in concrete use cases and promote national and European networking. The Tübingen AI Center and the entire Stuttgart-Tübingen region are examples of this vision. Together with the other AI competence centers, this is a strong foundation for Germany as an AI location.”
After the ceremony, scientists from the Tübingen AI Center presented current research findings. Topics such as explainable machine learning or the use of machine learning for sustainable AI were discussed here. The managing director of Cyber Valley GmbH, Rebecca Reisch, described the importance of technology transfer from basic research to business. The start-ups Maddox AI, a spin-off of the Tübingen AI Center, and Aleph Alpha, a member of the Cyber Valley start-up network, presented what such a transfer can look like in concrete terms.
Then the Baden-Württemberg Minister for Science, Research and Art, Petra Olschowski, spoke about the social challenges and opportunities surrounding the topic of AI: “AI research has recently made impressive progress. Machine learning methods, such as those being researched at the Tübingen AI Center, have particular potential and are increasingly part of our lives – examples range from personalized medical diagnostics to chatbots. But the social effects of these future AI technologies must also be considered and shaped. The new AI Center therefore focuses on people,” said the minister.
Other guests represented two projects that had successfully applied for funding from the “Agile Transfer Fund”. This new measure of the Tübingen AI Center is intended to help researchers and students to initiate the implementation of socially useful ideas with the help of artificial intelligence: The Polybot project led by research group leader Wieland Brendel aims to create the technological prerequisites for automating regenerative agriculture with the help of swarms of flexible small robots. The financial support enables the team to recruit highly qualified personnel at short notice. “KI macht Schule” is about making AI accessible to schoolchildren as a technology and supporting the fast and competent integration of the topic into the curriculum.
About the Tübingen AI Center
The Tübingen AI Center is a research facility of the University of Tübingen in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS). The researchers aim to advance the further development of robust learning systems for the benefit of society and the economy. Learning algorithms should require less data and be able to successfully deal with external and unexpected influences. At the same time, automated decision-making processes should be easier to interpret and fairer. The center wants to break new ground in linking basic research with transfer and training, and together with other researchers in Europe, contribute to the development of socially valuable technologies under the label “AI made in Europe”.
Together with four other centers of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, it has been funded by the BMBF and the MWK Baden-Württemberg with 20 million euros per year since July 1, 2022. Embedded in the fast-growing Tübingen science and technology campus, the scientists at the Tübingen AI Center cooperate closely with the Europe-wide research network ELLIS and the Baden-Württemberg Cyber Valley Initiative, which connects researchers with start-ups and industry in the region.