AI Monday – Stuttgart – 09/12/2019

This was the last AI Monday in 2019 and we are looking back at 5 fantastic events a, with 20 speakers and over 500 participants. Especially the level on interaction during and after the event, the many business cards that have been exchanged and follow up meetings scheduled have made all the work to make this happen worth it. Special thanks to Daniel Bareiss and Cihan Sügür and the team behind them for all the support!This last event happened again at the incredible “Foundry” of Porsche Digital. We had again 4 speakers with very diverse topics.Katrin-Cécile Ziegler, a Digital Economist, TEDxSpeaker and Journalist for all things digital started with a very exciting topic: “BCI & Mind Control: AI in Neurotechnology. What’s the status quo?” Although the field of neurotechnology pursues the goal of digitally networking our brain via interfaces, it has received little attention in the European discourse so far. But not only Elon Musk wants to be the next winner of the conquest of human brain. Patents have increased over 500 percent in the last few years. The innovative healing chances of Neurotechnology with AI are impressive. On the other hand, the impacts on mental privacy are ethically questionable. Katrin clarified both sides in a comprehensible manner and illuminated in her keynote the technological status quo.Next up were Alexander Kolbai & Rainer Bareiss who talked about their “Connected Autonomous Driving” meetup and the process of tinkering with DoItYourself RoboCars to real autonomous vehicles. “Connected Autonomous Driving” is the platform for tech enthusiasts and interested parties to exchange all about autonomous and electric driving and artificial intelligence. You can build our own DoItYourself RoboCars (model vehicles 1:10 to 1:5) and equip them with autonomous software. You then record driving and image data and train the vehicles with the help of fast hardware and artificial intelligence to drive them autonomously. The goal is to analyze autonomous and electric driving from scratch, the technologies behind and their state as well as where the journey might go. The plattform makes the whole thing accessible to a broad community through hands-on training and workshops (DIYRoboCar building) in order to build a real autonomous car sooner or later. Alexander & Rainer even brought 2-3 vehicles and presented them.Dr. Patrick Glauner, Head of Data Academy at Alexander Thamm GmbH, was next talking about “How to Push the Boundaries of Your Business with AI: Lessons Learned Along the Entire Data Journey”. In recent years, plenty of companies in Germany and Europe have started to invest in AI in order to remain competitive. However, most AI projects merely make it beyond the proof of concept phase. In his talk, he presented a number of challenges, both technical and managerial, that he and the team at Alexander Thamm had come across in more than 600 AI projects. He presented respective best practices along the entire data journey and how these lead to deployed applications that create real business value. As an outcome, his talk triggered the audience to rethink their businesses in order to become a successful AI-driven company that prospers in an ever more competitive environment. We also had a good discussion around the role of the CIO and how it competes with a potential CDO (Chief Digital Office).And finally Katja Fischer and Sabrina Goerlich from the DesignSprintStudio, got us up and into an funny interaction. The topic was “VOICE Design Sprint”. Whether in the car, at home or anywhere on the go – using your voice to interact, is one of the most natural things you can do. On the go, consumers have their hands and especially their eyes occupied. But not just that, during mobility a lot of mental preparation takes place: whether it is getting ready for work, deciding what to cook for dinner, making a to-do list, or setting up appointments. Using a serious game called “Speech Dating”, we let our audience experience what can go wrong in a conversation when body language and visual stimuli are switched off. Voice Design Sprint integrates qualitative and quantitative data from user research and serious games, so that the developed application is not only based on AI, but also complemented by actual human interaction. Google defines ‘Voice Design’ as a design principle of interaction design between human and machine, putting humans back in the center of AI.The evening was concluded like always: good conversations, drinks and more pizza than you can stomach. Thanks again to the Porsche team being such a perfect host again.Next AI Mondays in 2020 will be announced soon. Stay tuned.