Berlin hosts digital summit with AI focus

The German and British defense ministers are also expected to focus on artificial intelligence as a field for enhanced military cooperation at talks on Monday.

“By jointly testing, developing and, finally, introducing AI in our armed forces, we want to deepen our cooperation and keep pace with those who want to hurt us,” UK Defense Minister Wes Streeting wrote in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ahead of talks with his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius.

“Our opponents’ readiness to harm us is not new. What is new is their abilities to do so. This demands an answer from all of us in Europe,” he wrote.

Representatives from government and industry from both countries are to meet in the spring of next year to push ahead with the implementation of these plans, he wrote.

Two years ago, Germany and the United Kingdom agreed to cooperate more closely on military matters in the so-called Trinity House Agreement.

A year later, both countries announced that they would be focusing more on cyber defense as part of this cooperation.

A two-day conference in Berlin that will look at ways of enhancing Germany’s digital infrastructure, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), is to be opened by the minister for digital affairs, Karsten Wildberger, on Monday morning.

More than 1,000 guests, including digital ministers from Europe and Canada, are expected to attend the summit, which this year will focus largely on the uses and safety of AI and new developments in the field.  

Chancellor Friedrich Merz is scheduled to hold a speech in the afternoon and to meet with a robot from the German company Neura Robotics.

The company develops robots that can see, hear and feel and are potentially utilizable in both industries and households.

The event is being held for the 19th time since its inception in 2006 as the National IT Summit. It did not take place in 2021, an election year in Germany.

Guten Morgen from DW’s newsroom in Bonn as the first, chilly week of November gets underway.

That wintry cold makes a report that gas storage levels are well below what they should be at the start of the heating season sobering reading.

Meanwhile, an annual digital summit in Berlin that will look at ways of boosting the field of artificial intelligence (AI) in Germany and Europe is also kicking off.

It is set to bring a hopefully friendly encounter between Chancellor Merz and a humanoid robot from the German company Neura Robotics.

AI will also be on the agenda at afternoon talks between Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and his UK counterpart Wes Streeting, as the two discuss enhancing German-British military cooperation.

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