The printing press, the steam engine, electricity, the personal computer, the internet. And now artificial intelligence.
Björn Omer puts the self-learning program, which can also generate images and text, in line with other great inventions and fundamental technologies. It is interesting not in itself, but because it enables countless other technologies and products. Leading AI researcher Omer will attend the Munich Economic Debates hosted by the Ifo Institute on Monday evening South German newspaper On stage. The computer science professor heads the Computer Vision and Learning Group at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich.
Omar is not prone to bombast like others in the AI scene. He wants to explain AI, not sell it. But he also wants to wake people up in a calm tone: “We shouldn’t sleep through this revolution like we did with digital.”
Omar's specialty is teaching machines how to see. The world has seen how far he's come since 2022. Even before American company Open AI made waves with Chat-GPT – a chatbot that can generate human-like language in a fraction of a second thanks to so-called generative AI – Omar's team had stable spread On the network. On command, the AI outputs images as if they were drawn by human hands.
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Anyone can copy and use Stable Diffusion for free. Omar, who is likely to become a billionaire, does not see AI as a money machine, but as a service to humanity. Because companies like Stability AI have used its services for free The technology had raised a lot of capital at high valuations. But Omar remained a researcher; his goal was to use AI ethically: not as a tool to create new digital monopolies like Google. But in a way that would allow Germany and Europe to maintain their sovereignty. And to prevent reliance on AI from the US or China, whose functions no one in this country could fully understand. “If we put our heads in the ground, when we pull our heads out of the ground, AI will be everywhere. But then it will be dominated by foreign companies and on their terms.”
But why do you need all this? In practice, generative AI enables a new relationship between humans and machines, says Omer.
Until now, only computer science experts who know programming languages could design computers:Let's face it“Up until now, the only personal thing about your computer was that you personally paid for it.” Today, AI can understand natural language. “You can finally instruct the computer in your language, maybe even in a Bavarian dialect.” In addition, a sketch of a website is enough to send the AI to write the computer code for that website. A bit like magic.
Medium-sized businesses can also benefit from AI.
In the past, software reflected the personalities and interests of its developers. New AI models, on the other hand, can be tailored to the user, says Omer. AI listens and learns. This also helps German small and medium-sized companies. They can tap into their “deep knowledge,” their trove of private data, through customized AI applications.
Billions of dollars are pouring into developing and commercializing AI. Omar calms the hype. Ultimately, it’s not about science fiction fantasies, it’s about the tool: “Technology should always help us overcome our limitations. We’re not the strongest or fastest animals, so we invent things that make us stronger and faster.
Omer is realistic about Europe: He sees the continent as already lagging behind when it comes to the foundation on which AI software runs, namely specialized AI chips. Instead of starting from scratch and building capabilities like Nvidia or Intel, the focus should be on software. Europe and Germany have some catching up to do.
But here on the continent, you have to be fully awake: “In a revolution, you don’t notice anything until you suddenly say: Pardon me! Say it and see what has changed.”
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