
Germany plans €3B in AI investments - jonbaer
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-intelligence/german-government-has-set-aside-around-3-billion-euros-for-artificial-intelligence-report-idUSKCN1NI1AP
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rsp1984
The problem is not a lack of funds. The problem is bureaucracy and a lack of
startup infrastructure. My feeling is that the people in charge have
absolutely no effing clue about how to most efficiently deploy this money so
they will do what sounds good on paper but will have 0 effect in reality.

If it goes how it usually goes the largest part of this money will likely to
to universities and other research institutions where it will be spent
financing open-ended research projects that, in virtually all cases, go
exactly nowhere, due to lack of proper incentives to produce something that
works.

The rest of the money will be "up for grabs" by companies who have perfected
the crafts and arts of getting grant money from the German or EU government.
The bureaucratic hurdles and time frames are typically way too large for most
capital constrained nimble startups who need to move fast. So it's mostly
established and/or zombie companies that take advantage of this.

~~~
bitL
A typical Berlin startup:

\- hires devs with extremely low salaries

\- gives 0.004% equity at best

\- is run by people that are "better than anybody else"

\- expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability

\- has managers with issues saying "thank you"

\- hires friends/family to higher echelons of company

Does this sound like a recipe for success?

~~~
SilasX
>expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability

Doesn't that conflict with German labor law?

Edit: Definitely agree about credentialism ("people that are better than
anyone else"). Germany takes that to the extreme. Career change in your 30s?
Not possible.

~~~
sveme
I actually changed careers three times in my 30s. No issues whatsoever. Sounds
like the proverbial Germans downtalking Germany And all the Germans agreeing.

Then again, why would a society change for the better if there would not be
all the internet and Stammtisch complaining and moaning about all that could
be better?

~~~
jcbrand
As a foreigner living in Germany, this was one of the first things that I
noticed and was a bit of a culture shock.

Germans love to complain and seem to think that this is how you improve
things. I believe there's some truth to that, and it seems to work for them,
but it can cause chronic dissatisfaction and can cause intercultural issues
when living or traveling abroad (where people aren't used to fielding so many
complaints about poor service).

------
Grumbledour
One could call it cute or funny, if it was not to the detriment of actually
needed digital technology in the country, like broadband or support of IT
startups.

But I am sure Deutsche Telekom will be quite happy about more state money,
which is probably why they whispered this AI nonsense into the politicians
ears. We can just write it up as another German success story, IT made in
Germany. When has that ever not worked out in our favor?

~~~
_match
>> When has that ever not worked out in our favor?

Would you explain a little more?

I'm ignorant about the history of German government investment in IT. But here
in America, federal investment has helped ignite new industries.

And as a data science engineer, I'd love to see more German code.

~~~
outside1234
German firms (like Deutsche Telekom) have a ton of redundant jobs because of
their inability to make needed structural changes because of the work councils
and labor laws.

This is why firms like Google are hiring in Switzerland and the United Kingdom
instead of France and Germany.

~~~
mrdodge
> have a ton of redundant jobs because of their inability to make needed
> structural changes because of the work councils and labor laws.

How will they able to adapt to truly focus on electric cars then? Especially
when that means many of their suppliers become redundant.

~~~
usrusr
Labor protection laws limit options with direct employees, they do not
interfere at all with a company's relation to suppliers. That's why
subcontracting exists, it's employer-side redundancy insurance.

------
friedsdeirf
A lot of you are dissing German industry --- because they don't have FAANGs or
other unicorns?

They still have a large high-tech industrial base and many world-recognized
brand names. These German exporters must spend a good deal on R&D, and now
they'll have another grant to apply for - even if a large chunk of this goes
to BMW or Siemens, is that any different from NYC granding amazon 1 billion
dollars to build an office in Queens?

And they do produce good research (and good researchers), some of whom don't
go to work for US companies / institutes --- and this gives them another
potential grant too...

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raphman
Here's the offical strategy (in German):
[https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Downloads/...](https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Downloads/Digitalisierung/2018-11-15-Strategie-
zur-Kuenstlichen-Intelligenz.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2)

While I'm very skeptical of this initiative for a number of reasons, I
appreciate that they explicitly mention the need for Open Data and seem to
commit to improving accessibility of governmental data sources.

~~~
ccozan
Indeed. The way they describe what they want, it looks like all the money will
be spent on endless meetings or conferences and producing policy and strategy
documents.

Maybe 1% will flow into a real research project which will generate some
value.

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baxtr
I have read the basis of this provided in (1). Unfortunately, like many other
“strategies”, this so called AI strategy is completely missing a good (root
cause) analysis. It jumps to conclusions and “activity areas”.

With no good analysis, there can’t be a good strategy (2). This money won’t
change anything.

(1)
[https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Downloads/...](https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Downloads/Digitalisierung/2018-11-15-Strategie-
zur-Kuenstlichen-Intelligenz.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2)

(2) [https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-
Matters/...](https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-
Matters/dp/0307886239)

~~~
zeroname
At least it's not blockchain.

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stakhanov
Why is everyone talking about startups? It sounds to me like this is talking
about research. The problem with publicly funded science projects in Europe:
Salaries/Hourly Rates are set at very low levels and the rulebooks make zero
allowance for being able to pay better people more money.

Over the decades of doing this type of funding they've created a caste of
technology workers who wouldn't even have jobs in technology if it weren't for
the fact that they can go from one government-funded project to the next,
where the quality of your work means little and the willingness to work for
little money means everything. Every couple of years they slap a new label on
what kind of technology it is that they want created, but the people doing the
work stay the same people, and the output remains nonexistent because no one
is even asking for any in a meaningful way.

Plus 3B over 6 years for such a huge economy isn't really an impressive sum of
money at all.

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ccozan
The amount doesn't matter. If this money will exist, they will be distributed
in the most buerocratic way, making them irrelevant in a such a fast moving
field.

~~~
Isn0gud
You are right, but I was wondering how an alternative could look like.
Probably just giving it to universities to create more and better paid PhD
possitions?!

~~~
swift532
That, and maybe instead of giving the money to a big, inefficient corporation
that's going to spend it on low quality bullshit and snake oil, spreading the
money along multiple established companies and startups, seeding them all with
some money and offering additional incentives for achieving
milestones/whatever.

~~~
Mahn
Imagine if those 3B were used to seed 3000 startups with 1M each. Even if only
one third of these worked out, what an incredible golden age of productivity
would that mean for the country.

~~~
j_jochem
One third is next to impossible. Anecdotally, startup survival rate should be
around 5-10%. However, that should still yield better results than
distributing the money amongst SAP and Deutsche Telekom.

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dna_polymerase
Fraunhofer and MPI will get some of that, so at least some computer scientist
will see the money, most of it will end in the pockets of consulting firms and
of course surveillance tech.

IT Made in Germany is a disgrace to the brainpower in Germany.

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nradov
Oh great, more industrial policy. I'm sure the results of this program will be
just as spectacular as Japan's fifth-generation computer.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer)

~~~
Barrin92
It can work out well and it can fail. While experiments like Japan's fifth
generation computer may have failed to produce commercial results, it still
trained a generation of very able scientists. Without the significant spending
of the US government, the Silicon Valley would not exist in its current form
either.

During a time when software and hardware applications had no large market, the
military and the government where essentially the only large consumers of the
American businesses that are now hundreds of billions of dollars large.

Entrepreneurs in the US love this renegade story of somehow being less
dependent on government support than anyone else on the planet, but it's
revisionist history. A lot of American commercial success in IT has its roots
in government funded programs and consumption.

~~~
pgtan
> It can work out well and it can fail.

No, it will fail, as every German project of this kind failed. Someone will
get rich, the project will close after some years. The overrated Germany is
socialism 2.0.

~~~
Barrin92
I am German and I can definitely tell you that I am not living in socialism
right now.

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musha68k
Good initiative but unfortunately far too late to the game.

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cauldron
I don't know how this works in Germany, but in China, it usually goes this
way: doesn't matter if you are good at or even know it (officials won't care),
just scour the internet and produce a PPT, pull some strings to arrange a
fancy dinner with relevant local officials, deal done, once you got the money
hire someone to do a demo, profit.

One woman bragging about this was vacationing on the Palm Jumeirah island in
UAE last year, she was there pitching her block chain projects to Arabs.

~~~
rmetzler
I'm German and don't think there are fancy dinners needed, before you get the
funding money. It's much more bureaucracy. It can be so much overhead in
administrative work that companies which try to find a stable business model
may not want to invest into getting research funds and other companies may
have specialized in applying and getting research funding.

From what I hear it's not unusual to use the money for paying people who work
on other topics, produce a little output and write in the report "we did some
research, but more research is needed..."

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thwy12321
The people in these countries dont respect programmers, they pay them peanuts.
How are they going to innovate?

~~~
zwaps
Since only relative income count, you have to expand your comment by saying
that these countries

\- Do not respect Bankers and CEOs

\- Do not respect academics

\- Do not respect managers

\- Respect teachers too much

\- Respect waiters and delivery drivers too much

etc. It's all relative. It's all trade-offs. In the US, you can get actual
rich by working a normal dev job.

On the other hand, many of my US high school teachers literally had to work at
Wal-mart on the side. Unthinkable elsewhere. Result: Lots of innovation, but
only by importing top tier talent from Asia and Europe, since high school
education sucks maaajor balls compared to those countries.

So yeah, all trade-offs.

~~~
thwy12321
Not trying to start an argument about country wide wage compensation. But
relative to other 'competitive' professional careers, such as doctors,
lawyers, bankers, etc, Europe vastly underpays programmers, but also shows
them little respect in the workplace. It's not just about the money, the
social status of a software engineer in Europe is very low. This is making it
difficult for Europe to compete on an international basis to create powerful
tech companies. There are other reasons, such as fragmented markets, multiple
languages, and the conservatism of the VC industry.

~~~
TeMPOraL
In some European countries at least. Poland is next door from Germany, and we
have more "american" distribution of wages - programmers are high-earners,
teachers are low-earners.

From what I hear, Germany seems relatively unique in having its programmers a
part of the lower class.

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thomasjames
Eurocracy will not make that go very far.

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5_minutes
Germany is still not allowed to have an offensive army, so it makes a lot of
sense to at least stay first class in tech, and in AI, in order to stay
relevant as a world leader for the future.

~~~
blattimwind
The Kellog-Briand pact prohibits signatories (including the US) from offensive
wars anyway. Article 2 of the United Nations Charter states that members
shouldn't even use threats of offensive actions. And the Grundgesetz obviously
bans offensive wars as well.

Not sure what you're thinking, but you're waaaaaay out there.

~~~
anoncake
Technically, the GG only bans preparing an offensive war. But what kind of
German would improvise that kind of thing?

