My great interest in artificial intelligence led me to Berlin on the evening of 15 May – thanks to the new ICE line already within a few hours. On the next day the conference “The Rise of AI” took place with more than 800 guests and 75 speakers from 21 different nations. I was very excited to see what would happen there.
The conference took place in the capital branch of Deutsche Telekom AG, and the whole thing started around 9:00 am with 12 different tables: In a large room there were speakers from different companies using Artificial Intelligence and telling what they were working on. Visitors had 45 minutes to either concentrate on a few topics or rotate between several tables to take as much knowledge as possible with them. It was a good opportunity to see directly how companies are building their projects and what they are doing at the moment.
Conversational AI
Topics ranged from cloud AI platforms, to the use of AI in human resources, to health issues such as early detection of skin cancer. I spent most of my time at Parlamind‘s AI-Table-Topic: “How to train and use a conversational AI”. Conversational AI currently has a very big impact on society and science: chatbots like Alexa, Siri and Co. are widespread and can be used everywhere. Much has been said about how to program a chatbot yourself with the help of neural networks. But not only that was in the focus, but also the methods with which you can make a chatbot intelligent, so that it is able to learn on its own.
There were a total of six different stages, parallel to which workshops were held.
Stage 1: Future Stage
I paid special attention to the lecture of the host Fabian Westerheide about the status of the AI-Industry in 2019, which was also the opening lecture. Here we talked about the status of Artificial Intelligence worldwide and especially in Germany. Political and legal topics in connection with AI, as well as AI’s status in the Business Market were explained. Further topics were: “Living in the post AI Wold”, “AI in China, Europe and USA”, “Debate: What do we need for ‘AI Made In Germany’?”, “Digital Ethics-Shaping value-based AI” and for me one of the most interesting topics: “AI is not a threat but a chance for our society”.
Stage 2: Applied Stage
In this stage practical applications of AI in daily use were shown. Among the numerous presentations, “AI Computer Vision, Semantic Extraction and Natural Language Processing Technologies” by Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss and “How to put AI to work in different Industries-Use Cases and Client Examples” by Dr.Wolfgang Hildesheim stood out.
A very interesting use case in the second presentation was the use of the intelligent Auto Assistant, which informs about defects in the car in real time. If these defects are rather uncritical and can be repaired by the driver himself, the assistant shows instructions to solve the problem quickly.
Stage 3: Evolution Stage
Very impressive lectures also took place in this area. The two I attended were: “Bees and Robots: How modern biological research brings new challenges and inspiration to technology” by Prof. Dr. Tim Landgraf from Freie Universität Berlin and “Artificial vs. Natural Intelligence: Can the brain still teach us better machine learning?” by Prof. Dr. Moritz Helmstaedter. The first lecture dealt with the analysis of collected data from bees equipped with very small cameras and sensors on their heads. It was analyzed whether there is a connection between the behavior of humans and bees. The other was a 3D model of a brain to investigate what the connections between the nerves look like when a certain signal is sent.
Stage 4: Unicorn Stage
Various startups have presented their products which have been successfully launched on the market, such as “The first AI Product for Railway Infrastructures- Konux” by Vlad Lata or “ESA AI Demo: How to apply AI on Earth Data” by Gautier Chapuis, Daniel Seidel and Anouk Visser.
Workshops:
Parallel to the lectures at the stages, exciting workshops were also held. I took part in two very informative workshops: “Skin Cancer Detection using IBM PowerAI” and “Experiences from AI Projects: What works? What doesn’t?”.
In general I found the conference very interesting and could take a lot of positive things with me.
Many of the topics could be used well in our current projects, especially in the area of our content delivery platform TopicPilot. I am looking forward to a near future with intelligent agents that enrich our daily lives.
Let’s get to work!
Is artificial intelligence already being used in your company? Or do you have ideas on how it can help your company? We would be very interested in that.
