Digital strategy: The KI Bundesverband demands more coordination of the individual measures, a European plan and a clear budget for digital sovereignty.
The federal government’s digital strategy promised in the coalition agreement was adopted on August 31, 2022. With it, the federal government is planning “a comprehensive digital awakening”, as the Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and Transport (BMDV) announced at the beginning of July 2022 when the draft was published. Transport and Digital Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) promised at the time that he wanted to resolve “the implementation backlog of past legislative periods”. However, the 50-page paper that has now been adopted does not look like a great success, as critical voices remark.
Individual measures not interlinked, timetable missing
In addition to the federal lever projects of broadband and mobile communications expansion, standardization and a digital identity for citizens to be provided by the state (for electronic administrative channels), the digital strategy attaches particular importance to artificial intelligence (AI). For the “future technology AI”, however, there is no concrete roadmap that guarantees that Germany does not become dependent on the technology of other countries.
The KI Bundesverband has therefore already taken a stand and, although it praised the strategy in principle (as a necessary step in the right direction), it also commented on its weaknesses. The document lists numerous individual measures that are not coordinated with each other, and there is a lack of implementation and financing security for large-scale projects.
Digital sovereignty by watering can
The race for digital sovereignty is not over yet, and its importance is becoming clear in view of the geopolitical developments in Russia, China, but also within the USA. The dependency in the area of digital core technologies and infrastructure could lead to similar situations as are currently being felt with Russian gas. In its press release, the KI Bundesverband therefore appeals to the federal government to work together with other actors and partners on the development of “democracy-securing technologies” at European level.
Accordingly, it is important to pool the available resources. The federal government’s digital strategy lists lighthouse projects by name and the KI Bundesverband also regards them as a central measure for promoting digital independence. However, the association is missing a concrete design here. The targeted funding of such projects “as a catalyst and guide” would “strengthen Germany’s digital competitiveness”, as the President of the AI Federal Association Jörg Bienert emphasizes. Instead, according to him, “the watering can principle” seems to apply.
Distribution battles foreseeable without a digital budget
Concrete plans to implement digital sovereignty through key technologies seem to be a blind spot in the digital strategy. The association proposes a coordinated strategy for “clear and defined lighthouse projects”. A body above the level of state secretaries is necessary for this, because according to the association, large-scale projects can only work if the federal government, states, business and society pull together. As an example of such a large-scale project, the association cites LEAM, a project to build a large European language model (LEAM stands for Large European AI Models).
For LEAM, the underlying consortium of various stakeholders from research, business and media, in which the federal association is also involved, estimates the costs at around 400 million euros (“at least 375 million euros” plus operating costs for the entire cluster of the data center are estimated in the concept paper) . With the current criticism of the federal government’s digital strategy, the association is apparently also representing tangible financial self-interests, specifically for this project. The LEAM concept paper is available online.
Competitiveness: need for action from an entrepreneurial point of view
The AI researcher and engineer Jonas Andrulis (founder and CEO of the Heidelberg start-up Aleph Alpha) takes a similar line. According to him, Aleph Alpha’s multilingual AI language models enable a new generation of human-machine collaboration, and the research and business partners confirmed that the model developed in Heidelberg, by focusing on European languages and culture, “compares to the battleships of US providers “a step ahead”. As for performance, he referred to current benchmarks and announced that his team is currently training a language model with 300 billion parameters. Models with up to 80 billion parameters are in production. The multimodal extension of the language model obviously plays an important role, because a picture says more than a thousand words, according to Andrulis.
According to the entrepreneur, the offer that Aleph Alpha developed works: “Our sovereign data center purrs like a kitten – the commercial interest in independent next-generation AI is huge.” This refers to the independent AI high-performance data center alphaONE, whose official opening is imminent in September 2022. Andrulis sees a great need for action on the scientific side, because he worries about academic excellence. “German researchers are world class,” he emphasized in an interview. However, modern AI research requires resources and infrastructure that many universities lack. “Some of our partners are already using our hardware. Of course, this is not a sustainable solution,” he warned, with a view to the digital strategy.
More voices and sources on digital strategy
The KI Bundesverband and entrepreneurs like Andrulis are not alone in their criticism. The CDU/CSU federal parliamentary group and the internet industry association eco criticize the strategy as too timid in statements and also lack concrete implementation plans. A fundamental sticking point in the digital strategy is the lack of an originally agreed digital budget, which (in addition to the departmental budget) makes the implementation of the projects possible in the first place. Without such a budget, distribution battles between the ministries are foreseeable and would block implementation.
In the digital strategy, the federal government outlines the projects (and tasks) of all ministries on 50 pages. A current Heise report offers an overview with further details: “Digital strategy: Wissing’s shaky work”. The main goal of the public sector is therefore still to become sovereign with Open Source. A contribution by Jörg Bienert (the president of the KI Bundesverband) can be found in a specialist debate portal, who had previously criticized the draft strategy – the current statement partly quotes from it.
The KI Bundesverband represents the interests of over 400 AI and deep-tech companies, making it the largest AI network in Germany. According to its members, they are committed to an ecosystem of artificial intelligence that is based on European values, is in harmony with democracy and through which Europe achieves digital sovereignty. According to the association, this is only possible if Germany and the EU are attractive business locations that enable innovation. The future competitiveness of Germany in the field of technology and IT does not seem to be sufficiently secured in the current version of the digital strategy.
