Mission trust: Wissing opens AI center in Berlin

AI, AI, AI. Hardly any event these days can do without these two letters. And what happens at the opening of an AI center? The word trust is mentioned even more frequently than AI. Volker Wissing is primarily responsible for this. On Tuesday, the now independent Federal Minister for Digital Affairs opened the hands-on exhibition in Berlin, which is attached to the German Museum of Technology.

The Innovation and Quality Center (IQZ) is part of the “Mission AI”, a national initiative to promote AI and the data economy. However, the main aim on site is to create and strengthen trust in AI. It's great that people in Germany are generally very open and interested in AI, says Wissing. They can now “experience AI” here. Experience means: in a room in purple and yellow, visitors can try things out at various stands.

Check moles, control robots

This includes, for example, having your moles examined by an AI. A smartphone is clamped in a holder and all you have to do is place the body part with the skin area to be examined between the camera and the table. Ideally, it should be an arm. But then the smartphone takes a picture and analyzes it. Behind this is the SkinDoc app. It is explained that the service can support dermatologists and that the AI has been trained on a huge database of images of skin changes. What's missing: information on where the images taken of my arm actually go. Maybe you just have to trust it.

At another hands-on station, you can control a robot using a Playstation controller. A real robot is then supposed to take over the tasks controlled by the controller in a warehouse, for example – as an AI twin. Wissing tries, but the robot with two arms rolls over. Placing a parcel on a shelf with the Fraunhofer Institute's EvoBot proves difficult despite the AI. Yet, it is supposed to make everything easier and better. The translation of the control system is too fast, says Wissing.

Brighter AI works in real time. The company presented replaces faces in video recordings with other faces. This is a technology that can be used when videos are recorded in public spaces. It protects people's privacy, for example when the automotive industry uses cameras to guide vehicles safely through traffic. After all, we are not so happy to entrust them with our location data and facial recordings.

Trustworthy AI as a competitive advantage

All of these applications come from Germany. According to Wissing, we need these and other innovations: “Without AI, we won't be competitive.” And AI needs trust. It is an advantage that we already have regulation for AI with the European AI Act. This is the only way to develop trustworthy AI. The Federal Minister believes that this will pay off in the long term. He also says that we in Germany and the EU have the necessary basic research, the top talent and have “backed the right horse”. Some financial resources are still lacking. Of course, he talks about the fact that we must remain innovative despite all the regulations.

What Wissing and Mission AI believe they can unite does not exactly correspond to the mindset in Silicon Valley. Regulation and innovation are currently mutually exclusive in the minds of established AI providers. But on the very day of the opening of the AI center, a Chinese AI company is making a name for itself. Deepseek's freely available models are said to be significantly cheaper to develop and operate, with the same performance as the large models from the USA. As a result, some AI profiteers are experiencing drastic falls on the stock market. Such events are unlikely to inspire confidence – either in AI or in US companies. “We are currently seeing from what is happening in China that size is not everything,” comments Wissing. “I am certain that there will be a global demand for high-quality, trustworthy artificial intelligence from Europe.”

In addition to trustworthy AI, it is also important to monitor and certify it. This is the focus of another IQZ in Kaiserslautern. But in Berlin, the focus is on citizens. They should be able to try out AI. School classes can come to guided tours and workshops, and discussion events are also planned.

“I'm now here in a giant eye,” says Wissing with VR glasses on his nose. So if you would like to go through the 3D model of a brain all the way back out to the eye, a trip to the IQZ is highly recommended.

(emw)