From 05.02 to 14.02 the Po­pup La­bo­ra­to­ry Ba­den-Würt­tem­berg will take place at the DHBW in Bad Mer­gen­theim.
On 9 days, en­tre­pre­neurs, em­ployees, stu­dents and trai­nees get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­ti­ci­pa­te in va­rious work­shops from dif­fe­rent fields.  

In this re­gard, I, Den­nis, vi­si­ted two of the work­shops whe­re the to­pic of ar­ti­fi­ci­al in­tel­li­gence (AI) was dis­cus­sed. The first work­shop had the to­pic “Ar­ti­fi­ci­al In­tel­li­gence and Pro­to­ty­p­ing – we cha­se (lo­gi­stic) swarms th­rough the cast­le” and took place in the mor­ning at the DHBW in Bad Mer­gen­theim. The work­shop first ex­plai­ned in ge­ne­ral terms what ar­ti­fi­ci­al in­tel­li­gence is all about and what op­por­tu­ni­ties and th­re­ats we will have in the co­ming ye­ars.  

Among the pos­si­ble dan­gers are the ethi­cal but also the safe­ty aspects which would be con­side­red when using ar­ti­fi­ci­al in­tel­li­gence. As pos­si­bi­li­ties for AI in this work­shop main­ly the use of swarm in­tel­li­gence was dis­cus­sed. It was ex­plai­ned in de­tail what swarm in­tel­li­gence is and how a lo­gi­stics cent­re could be op­ti­mi­sed with swarm in­tel­li­gence. Also shown were soft­ware pro­grammed by stu­dents, in which swarm in­tel­li­gence was dis­cus­sed. Sin­ce the work­shop lea­der was also my lec­tu­rer in the last year of my stu­dies, the pro­grams see­med very fa­mi­li­ar to me. ? 

The se­cond work­shop with the to­pic “Ar­ti­fi­ci­al In­tel­li­gence and Pro­to­ty­p­ing – Get­ting to know AI playful­ly” took place in the af­ter­noon. The work­shop lea­der and his team came to Bad Mer­gen­theim from the Fraun­ho­fer In­sti­tu­te in Stutt­gart espe­ci­al­ly for this work­shop. This work­shop was held ra­ther from a busi­ness per­spec­ti­ve. At the be­gin­ning, each par­ti­ci­pant had to brief­ly ex­plain what AI is from his or her own per­spec­ti­ve. The rest of the time we were split into small teams and had the task to work out pos­si­ble are­as of appli­ca­ti­on of AI in a pro­to­ty­pe. The tasks ran­ged from brain­stor­ming on the to­pic, to con­cept de­ve­lo­p­ment, to pro­to­ty­pi­cal im­ple­men­ta­ti­on with Lego or other ma­te­ri­als. The tech­ni­cal im­ple­men­ta­ti­on of the AI in the pro­to­ty­pes was only car­ri­ed out on a li­mi­t­ed le­vel by the work­shop team, ho­we­ver. 

On this day I lear­ned a lot of new and in­te­res­t­ing things about ar­ti­fi­ci­al in­tel­li­gence and part­ly work­ed on it mys­elf. As I might want to work on a to­pic in this di­rec­tion in my ba­che­lor the­sis, I am glad that I got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tend the two work­shops.