“Future Dialogue” on “AI and Digital Sovereignty” with Minister Brandes

NRW’s Minister of Science Ina Brandes and, on behalf of the Ruhr Innovation Lab, by Manfred Bayer, President of TU Dortmund University, welcomed around 80 guests in the “Brauturm” event space at the Dortmunder U.

The Ruhr Innovation Lab is a great example of how excellence can be achieved when the old parochial mentality of the Ruhr area is overcome and shared strengths are identified.

— Ina Brandes

Science Minister Ina Brandes said: „The Ruhr Innovation Lab is a great example of how excellence can be achieved when the old parochial mentality of the Ruhr area is overcome and shared strengths are identified. Consequently, TU Dortmund University and Ruhr University Bochum are applying for the status of a University Consortium of Excellence with a cross-university experimental space dedicated to cutting-edge research, transfer and social commitment. The challenges of our time require both inter-university cooperations and strong partnerships with the economy in order to open up new fields of research and to make scientific findings economically usable quickly.”

We have come together to cooperate permanently with each other.

— Manfred Bayer

President Prof. Manfred Bayer emphasized that the Ruhr Innovation Lab is not a one-hit-wonder for the application in the Excellence Strategy: “We have come together to cooperate permanently with each other. Today’s Future Dialogue as an exchange format is a start, more events will follow – sometimes in Dortmund, sometimes in Bochum, but always on the strong foundation of our cohesion and together with our partners.”

Afterwards, Bayer himself contributed an input on the technical conditions and challenges of the evening’s topic, while Prof. Karola Marky, Head of the Digital Sovereignty Lab at Ruhr University Bochum, focused on the individual and the daily behavior of everyone in the digital world in her keynote speech. A lively fishbowl discussion was originally intended to conclude the evening earlier and lead to the get-together, but it “positively overflowed”, as moderator Prof. Christina Elmer put it, because there was so much to say about AI and digital sovereignty – with these participants:

• Professor Karola Marky
• Professor Alice Kirchheim, TU Dortmund University and head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML
• Professor Nicole Krämer, University of Duisburg-Essen, Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security of the University Alliance Ruhr
• Carla Hustedt, Head of the Digitalized Society Department of the Stiftung Mercator
• Götz Erhardt, Co-moderator of the Initiativkreis Ruhr
• State Secretary Dirk Günnewig, Ministry of Finance of North Rhine-Westphalia

The audience also participated in the discussion.

What were the takeaways from the first Future Dialogue? An impressive venue, many stimulating conversations and thought-provoking ideas —and, last but not least, the „Swiss Army knife for digital sovereignty“ that emerged from the many compelling arguments in the discussion, according to moderator Christina Elmer: “It contains experiments, tolerance for ambiguities and friction, as well as digital literacy, cooperations with research and the Ruhr Innovation Lab.” Götz Erhardt from the Initiativkreis Ruhr brought the essence of the Ruhr Innovation Lab to the point as vividly as aptly: “More experimentation!”