"We will have more time for creativity"

Dear Arne, dear Leon, you are the experts: What does AI mean to you?

Leon
To put it simply, AI for me is maths that is used to do "cool stuff".

Arne
I'm a big film fan - and I used to see AI as either something incredibly dangerous that would wipe out humanity, or as something incredibly good. I now work with AI and have realised that it is actually mostly mathematics and can be used for many things.

What are your links to AI in your work?

Leon
I used to programme AI services myself at 3pc; now I take care of integrating the results of an AI into a web app for further use. Very exciting!

Arne
And we in the Innovation Unit at 3pc deal with AI technologies in the context of our research.

You seem to be quite enthusiastic about AI - what is exciting about your work?

Leon
As a front-end developer, I find it particularly interesting to present AI-generated data correctly for users in an interface. It is important that users somehow realise that it is AI data. Even the best AI models can generate incorrect data, which was also a learning process for me.

Arne
There are so many surprises possible when working with AI technologies! For example, if you don't achieve a goal straight away and can still solve the problem - that feels all the better, of course.

Leon
Of course, the result is always exciting: we feed in data and write services. But we're never quite sure beforehand what the AI will do with it. Then we work with the AI until it does what we want - always a new adventure.

It sounds like there could be some real surprises ...

Leon
Yes, and some of them are positive, such as when something works really well right from the start - as happened with an image similarity service we wrote: from a huge pool of data, we got very good results that a human wouldn't have achieved, even if it had taken an extremely long time.

That's one of the advantages of AI that our customers could also benefit from.

Leon
Yes, AI applications always have a specific purpose. The more specific this purpose is, the better the AI can deliver results for it. That's why it's good when customers approach us with specific use cases.
AI can provide great support in the area of storytelling, for example: recognising objects in images, finding similar images, matching audio to text - this allows a large pool of content to be catalogued and made searchable.
Or for indexing large amounts of content, as is the case with image agencies on a daily basis, for example. We can say: Here's a service that will do it for you in three seconds.

Arne
We can also use AI applications to support our customers with accessibility: Marking up texts, discovering proper names and abbreviations or resolving ambiguities and automatically linking terms to a glossary ...

Sounds super exciting ... In which projects has 3pc used AI applications?

Arne
In recent years, the Innovation Unit has developed AI prototypes in several research projects. One such application is the Story Editor: An intuitive web application that enables users to create complex stories, e.g. for sales. An intelligent content pool is linked to the Story Editor, which uses AI to automatically enrich a wide variety of files with additional information such as topics. And we are currently working on xCurator together with the Badisches Landesmuseum and the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam.

xCurator?

Leon
Put simply, it's about making museums a digital experience.

Arne
With xCurator, we process extremely large digitised museum catalogues and find links. The objects can then be put together in a web story - you can explore the collection, select objects and discover stories - and then of course tell and share these stories. Ultimately, the aim is to create a network of additional information about the collection.

Are there any introductory offers for people interested in AI without specific use cases?

Arne
Yes, as an introduction, we can work with interested customers to investigate what their specific problems are, what potential they harbour and where we can create solutions with artificial intelligence.
We identify possible areas of application via a workshop and a proof of value. This is a technical prototype that we realise together with the customer in a one-week sprint. The aim is to demonstrate the feasibility and potential in an initial test. In order to use artificial intelligence sensibly, it must be known exactly what problem is to be solved - an AI can only be as good as the task it is given.

Leon
With interested customers, we look at how they work, what their daily hurdles are and what their vision is. And then we consider together where AI applications can be helpful.

Keyword helpful: In your opinion, will AI change the world of work?

Leon
AI will of course change the world of work, just as the internet has done, for example.
I see AI as a supporting factor that enables tasks to be completed more quickly, not as an absolute job killer, as some people fear. Of course, it will also have an impact on some professions - but there have always been developments like this.

Arne
I also believe that AI will continue to promote the potential of humans because it can solve many uncreative, repetitive tasks wonderfully. And I don't really believe in the spectre that we will all soon be unemployed. Looking to the future, AI will probably act as an assistant and take over tasks that tie up large parts of our capacities.
In fact, every technological revolution to date has actually always created more jobs and benefited society's prosperity.

Leon
I could also imagine AI as a source of inspiration, for example for designers. The AI could be given customer requests, key points on style or colour, etc., and thus provide guidance. Something similar would also be conceivable for the creation of icons, images or texts. There will be lots of cool gadgets, such as image generation, which can then be integrated into the work.
In other words: inspiration - yes. Taking work away completely - no.
But we will also need new technologies to recognise fakes. In any case, it will be an incredibly exciting journey.

That sounds like a very wide range of different applications for AI ...

Leon
Yes, the trend is already moving towards multi-purpose AI. This means that AI is not only suitable for one specific task, but is becoming more and more universally applicable.

Arne
AI also makes perfect sense when it comes to analysing the ever-increasing amounts of data that are piling up day by day. The training models for AI are also constantly being adapted and improved.
In principle, I believe that the cat is now out of the bag: society must come to terms with AI and have the advantages and disadvantages on its radar.
Generative AI is the big buzzword at the moment, i.e. AI that can create texts, images and more. Only if we also understand what is happening can we recognise abuse more quickly, for example, in order to counter it.

You just mentioned it: What are the pitfalls with applications such as ChatGPT or Dall-E2 that you have to be aware of when using them?

Arne
You should always bear in mind that these new models work with huge amounts of data, most of which comes from the internet. And, of course, social prejudices and stereotypes are reflected there - which the AI is then trained with and may also reproduce.
Efforts are already being made to combat this. But this should never be forgotten.

Leon
Particularly with applications that have a general purpose, such as ChatGPT, you have to be very careful to keep checking the results. Otherwise, a lot of false information can be generated that is nevertheless presented as correct by the AI.

Arne
And, of course, some of the training data is also protected by copyright. This is currently noticeable in image generation with Stable Diffusion, for example: The AI trains with images that were created by artists. This is a big discussion right now.

Many new fields are opening up! - If people are a bit scared of AI now, what advice would you give them?

Leon
I can totally understand if people are a bit scared! The less you know about it, the more various films and horror scenarios weigh.
Maybe it makes sense to look back at a revolutionary development that we've already gone through: When electric current was a new thing, there was also a countermovement. There would be power lines everywhere, and people would get tangled up in them and die ...

Arne
... and electricity was also seen as something magical at the time, giving life to things in a Frankenstein-like way.

Leon
We now have exactly the same magical feeling with AI! You don't really know what it is, what it does, how it works. But in the end, I simply believe that AI will support and advance us as a society.

Arne
Yes, I don't think we need to be afraid that AI will replace creative work. The creative spark is something deeply human. At the end of the day, we will have more time to be creative.
So I see it more positively, to be honest. I would say: relax, enjoy the ride! It's something that's never happened before. And you're part of something new.

Now for your AI workshop!

Story editor

Story editor