KI-Festival: Where else, if not in Heilbronn?

Summer and sun, music and hanging out, cool drinks and... AI! We are looking forward to the coming weekend with great anticipation: our second Heilbronn AI Festival starts on Saturday in the Wohlgelegen Future Park. We promise nothing less than a Europe-wide - heck, worldwide (!) - unique event all about artificial intelligence. Sounds presumptuous, but it's not.

Usually, parties on the one hand and tech talks and workshops on the other are two different worlds - often organized for clearly defined target groups. In complete contrast: our AI festival! We celebrate the creativity and spirit of optimism of this new, fast-growing technology. Hundreds of guests move around the site as they please. One moment they are attending a lecture on AI and gender equality, the next they are switching to the ChatGPT workshop and then playing volleyball, bobbing to the DJ's music or choosing their favorite food at the food truck.

This combination, together with the top level of the speakers, workshop leaders and exhibitors, makes the AI Festival unique. It is also aimed at all interested parties, such as families, IT enthusiasts and students. Agalya Jebens, Managing Director of SkySpirit: “The event is ideal for taking away people's fear of AI and introducing them to the possibilities of the technology.” With this in mind, she will be giving a talk on the first day of the festival on the topic of “Daring the unknown!” She is not naive: “AI is fascinating and can produce wonderful things. But the technology can also be misused. And that is down to people, not AI. We need to discuss this area of tension broadly, and the festival is ideal for this.” Agalya Jebens will also be exhibiting a flower installation and a swarm of AI robots on both days. The flowers in the installation react to music and visitors can create flower choreographies using an app. The swarm of robots can also be controlled at will via an app. Agalya Jebens: “We fascinate with our aesthetic and didactic high-tech installations. I'm really looking forward to seeing people. When I see the enthusiasm and amazement on their faces, it makes me a little bit happy.”

Manuel Hoffmann, AI Engineer at CAMAO TEC, also soaked up experiences of this kind at the AI Festival 2022: “It's an incredible atmosphere. Everything is open and free. You go from stand to stand and it's extremely easy to talk to all kinds of people.” At the same time, AI is made tangible as a highly complex technology. He is thrilled to be there this year with the entire AI Engineers team, which has developed the AIWIN pong machine exclusively for the festival. Pong was a virtual tennis game in the 1970s and 80s. For example, you sat in front of the TV, controlled a bar vertically and tried to get a ball past the other player. Great cinema! AIWIN combines this retro charm with AI - and is available to everyone as a game partner at the festival. A colleague explains how the machine works in an easy-to-understand and accessible lecture. Manuel Hoffmann: “AIWIN is a wonderful way to show what the technology can do. There are exciting new applications for industrial companies in particular!” Manuel Hoffmann sees the festival as a unique stage in the right place. He refers to the Ipai. CAMAO TEC is a permanent member of the project, with which Heilbronn is currently developing into the largest AI location in Europe: “Where, if not in Heilbronn, would the AI festival be in a better place?”

And it is well received. We are expecting 4,000 guests, to whom around 100 experts from science, media and culture, the start-up scene and industry will offer unique insights. In addition to Agalya Jebens and Manuel Hoffmann, for example, Daniel Jung, who helps millions of people with his math tutorials on YouTube, and the current Grimme Award winner Jacob Beautemps, who will be offering a live coding session at the festival. Where, in the big wide world, should there be anything comparable?