German digital strategy: There is a sensible fork in the AI ​​race

A superlative IPO is coming up in the USA in the coming weeks: The AI ​​company Anthropic is planning its debut and is expected to be valued in the trillions. According to analyses, the majority of US economic growth is now due to tech investments including data centers. And advertising for AI products as everyday companions is omnipresent.

And Germany like that? At the digital summit, the Federal Chancellor and Digital Minister are unanimously calling for more speed in the development and use of the technology. At the same time, only a tiny fraction of the budget is earmarked for AI.

Anyone who looks at this discrepancy can easily come to the conclusion: Germany is missing something here. Something crucial. Something that could bring economic growth. And if we don't join in the global race, Germany will only be able to pick up the crumbs that the AI ​​nations USA and China have dropped.

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But this perspective ignores important factors: First of all, it is not at all clear that what AI companies in the USA are currently building is suitable as a business model. Even though they now sell subscriptions for their AI chatbots and integrate advertising, and you can make money with both, the dimensions of viable business models are still a long way away. Especially since corporate customers who use the technology are slowly realizing that AI can cost them quite a bit. And start to calculate whether the price justifies the performance. In addition, protests against data centers are particularly strong in many places in the USA because they cause energy prices to skyrocket and harm the environment.

That doesn't mean that Germany and Europe should ignore the technology. On the contrary. Ultimately, new dependencies arise when users, companies or authorities want to use AI in this country and need to access US models to do so. But there is a way between overhyping and ignoring: targeted investments.

Europe will not be able to keep up with the frontier models, i.e. the most powerful AI models from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Too little venture capital, too little Big Tech, because training these large language models requires huge amounts of data. There are other areas in which companies in this country could score points: in industrial applications, in robotics, in specialized models for sensitive purposes from health to administration, in which one might prefer not to rely on a US provider with all its risks and side effects.

Of course, this approach is not as dazzling as the latest top models from the USA. On the other hand, the abysses - from resource consumption to emissions to copyright and personal rights violations - are less deep.