Artificial Intelligence Center Hamburg: we have a lot to learn from Estonia
The management of the Artificial Intelligence Center Hamburg (ARIC) will visit Estonia to meet with several local technology companies, attend the Latitude59 conference and participate in a round-table meeting on the topic of artificial intelligence with Marten Kaevats.
“In Germany, the main topics related to economic and welfare development are the Industry 4.0 technologies and digitalisation of the public sector,” said Enterprise Estonia’s Investor Consultant in Germany Riina Leminsky. “Estonia’s digital success story and smart solutions have attracted positive attention. However, Estonia also has a lot to learn from the Germans, mainly in relation to artificial intelligence. To put it mildly, they have many more research opportunities and financial resources for developing technologies.”
“Estonia is the hub of information technology and entrepreneurship,” said CEO of ARIC Hamburg Alois Krtil. “It’s very important for Germany to establish a connection to our innovative ecosystem in order to lead its digital transformation. We have a lot to learn about the agile development of critical IT infrastructure and the use of future key technologies, such as artificial intelligence, but also the entrepreneurial mindset of the society as a whole.”
“Our cooperation with ARIC has begun and has been very productive,” said board member of the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications Juhan Pukk. “The Germans are very interested in our operations and two Estonian IT companies are planning to visit Hamburg in spring.”
In February, Enterprise Estonia signed a memorandum of cooperation with ARIC, which unites all significant technology companies and research institutions in Northern Germany. This provides excellent opportunities for developing and sharing knowledge and skills related to artificial intelligence. Despite the restrictions related to coronavirus, cooperation has continued in full force after the memorandum was signed. We have already agreed on introducing our smart technologies related to Hamburg Smart City at the 2021 Global ITS conference.
“This will definitely help attract high-value foreign investments and export the smart solutions developed by Estonian companies in the future,” said Leminsky. “Enterprise Estonia will help coordinate cooperation with various organisations and enterprises.”
With the help of ARIC, the heads of innovation, business development and technology or incubators of Philips, Airbus and Ströer have already visited Estonia. A bigger business delegation was expected to visit Estonia, but due to coronavirus travel restrictions, a number of flight connections were stopped and the representatives of Airbus and Ströer had to cancel their trips last minute. However, these meetings will be held virtually. The aim of the visit is to complete the follow-up activities of the memorandum, attend the Latitude59 technology conference and meet with local IT companies.
The members of ARIC are technology enterprises mainly from Northern Germany, e.g. Lufthansa, Airbus, Otto, Ströer, Nexperia, as well as some smaller companies, research institutions and the city of Hamburg. The main focus of the centre is artificial intelligence, but also digitalisation in general.
The project is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.