20260520 Wie weiter mit KI oder besser anders?

Bicycles instead of Rockets

... is what journalist Karen Hao recommends in her opening speech at the currently ongoing re:publica. With her book “Empire of AI,” published in 2025, she has become one of the most prominent critics of major tech corporations and their AI empires. In doing so, she criticized not only the Big Tech corporations in the U.S. but also the EU’s indecisiveness and subservience. Instead of following in the U.S.’s footsteps and copying their models, we should finally give alternatives and open source a chance.

The consequences of current digitalization policies will be more data centers, higher water and resource consumption, and consequently rising prices. We don’t need the “more” that prevails in the U.S. Before pursuing a particular course of action, we should ask "what for" and "at what cost". "Build bicycles rather than rockets", is Hao’s recommendation, as netzpolitik.org writes.

What matters are specialized solutions for specific pressing problems, rather than the pursuit of “ever better” and “faster.” Her demands remind us of those of physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, whom we discussed in our AI series (Part 3). The conclusion back then: AI must be regulated, and not every piece of nonsense (deep fakes and cute cat pictures) should be allowed.

To even begin thinking about alternatives, we must first cut our dependence on Big Tech. Lobbyists from Microsoft, Meta, and Google must no longer be allowed to come and go as they please in Brussels. We need a discussion that is open-ended and focused on the problems of the future, followed by democratic decision-making bodies instead of the current haggling over the EU’s budget billions.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)