A seasoned German AI researcher specializing in language and knowledge technologies and their applications.
More than 45 years in AI across the US, Germany, and China — as scientist, professor, lab director, founder, and advisor.
Hindered by layers of deeply entrenched, antiquated structures and mechanisms, society as it is can neither adequately benefit from the vast potential of the latest technological achievements nor muster sufficient instruments for taming and controlling the most powerful technologies ever built.
What makes me truly sad and deeply worried, however, is the fate of my beloved home continent, Europe. The region that appears most concerned about the growing tension between the AI revolution and its impact on human society has fallen so far behind in frontier technological development that all its immense efforts to address the problem through political and legal instruments — instead of building better technology within an adequately prepared society — seem rather hollow and futile.
The continent that drove scientific, technical, and social progress for centuries, that gave rise to modern democracy, the social welfare state, and the first working example of a multicultural, multilingual, and multinational society, has in recent times been weakened by decades of ideologically driven priorities and ill-guided policy-making.
It is encouraging to see that, in several European nations and at the level of the EU, we now have a new cohort of politicians and administrators who are seriously working toward a turnaround. In their fight against massive political inertia and bureaucratic thickets, they deserve our full support.
I have worked in AI for more than 45 years — in the US, in Germany, and in China.
My first part-time job, in 1978, was on the machine translation project METAL at the University of Texas in Austin. My first full-time job, in 1982, was as a research scientist at the AI Center of SRI (the former Stanford Research Institute) in Menlo Park, California.
I have since worked as an industrial research manager, university professor, research lab director, and founder of several AI startups.
Today I live mostly in my hometown of Berlin again, where I remain affiliated with the DFKI Berlin Lab at the rank of Scientific Director. This lab, which I started in 2007 and then led for ten years, is one of the seven locations of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Before 2007, I served as a lab director and site lead of DFKI Saarbrücken. These days I support DFKI in a part-time capacity, mainly by providing advice and helping to build networks with industry.
Part-time advisory role at the lab I founded — advising and helping to build networks with industry.
Visit DFKI →Advising enterprises that are building or deploying frontier AI technology.
Visit Amber Iris →Helping AI startups through their early-stage development.
Visit May Ventures →I also serve as an advisor to Corda Democracy and as a member of various advisory boards and groups, among them:
A lifetime member of the European Academy of Sciences and the International Committee on Computational Linguistics.
Professor of Industrial AI at the German University of Digital Science, member of several corporate and supervisory boards, and CEO of our small advisory firm, Amber Iris AI Consulting.