The third After-Work Lounge of the KI-Labs Kurpfalz on September 15th gave the 55 participants an overview of AI applications in companies. It was again held in the hybrid event format (either on-site at the Business Development Center Heidelberg or online) that had already been used successfully at the last After-Work Lounge.
"Just as electricity has made its way into all branches of the economy, artificial intelligence will also change many industries and economic sectors and has the potential to create great additional value," said Dr. Barthold Albrecht at the beginning of the event. The founder and CEO of Intelligent Artificials GmbH gave an explanation of why AI is attracting so much attention right now. The two main factors are the large amount of data generated since the introduction of the Internet and the computing power that has developed over the last few years.
The next speaker Wolfgang Andris is Senior Machine Learning Engineer at HD Vision Systems GmbH and deals with AI in the light field. Light field data can be used together with deep learning models for quality inspection. The model can be trained with just a few data sets and will become better and better the more data is generated. The advantage is that many more defects are detected than with the naked eye.
The third speaker, Dr. Jonas Moßler, participated virtually in the event. He was displayed on a large screen for the guests on site. The founder and CEO of SUSI & James GmbH spoke about the connection between language and AI. Digital employees can be used to support human teams for example in medical offices.
Julian Meier, Co-Founder of Lampix, presented a very practical application. The company deals with so-called "Smart Surfaces", i.e. intelligent surfaces that can be, among others, of interest to restaurants. For example, the menu can be projected onto the table and the guest can order food and drinks by pressing the light circles. The system also automatically detects whether the customer's glass is empty and can ask him to reorder something.
All speakers agreed that the development in the field of AI has already picked up speed, but that there is still a lot of potential for development. "Artificial intelligence applications are usually still very specialized and it is difficult to find solutions to a problem from an existing system," explained Julian Meier.
The participants used the following question and answer session and the subsequent get-together to exchange views and further discuss the future of AI.
The KI-Lab Kurpfalz is designed to bring together specialists and managers who want to realize AI projects in their companies, as well as founders and scientists with experts. Paul Becker, project manager at the KI-Lab Kurpfalz says: "Today's event has shown the potential applications of artificial intelligence. We would like to help companies to overcome concerns and point out the opportunities that artificial intelligence already offers today. In doing so, we are primarily addressing small and medium-sized companies."
About the KI-Lab Kurpfalz:
On 27th December 2019, the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs, Employment and Housing announced that it will provide 2.3 million euros in funding for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in medium-sized companies through the establishment of regional AI labs. The KI-Lab Kurpfalz is one of 19 regional AI labs that are supported as part of the "Action Program AI for Medium-Sized Businesses" of the state government. The aim of the joint initiative of the Heidelberg Technology Park and bwcon GmbH is to provide small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with low-threshold access to the future technology AI.
The offers and further training programmes of the KI-Lab Kurpfalz can help SMEs to develop the necessary key competences of AI - where they are needed. Data collection, evaluation, analysis and subsequent use require experience and special instruments - the Heidelberg Technology Park will provide these in the form of methods, materials and data in cooperation with bwcon GmbH. This also includes data from the Data X Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
