MS Wissenschaft Ahoy: ZEW Exhibit on Artificial Intelligence Goes on Tour
Dates and News
The MS Wissenschaft hoisted its anchor in Berlin on 16 May 2019. In the Science Year 2019, the exhibition ship will travel the world of artificial intelligence. The interactive touch-screen exhibit “Wie Künstliche Intelligenz Sprache und die Welt verstehen lernt” (“How Artificial Intelligence Learns to Understand Language and the World”) of the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, is on board the exhibition ship this year, and will travel 27 German cities until October 2019 before continuing its journey in Austria.
To what extent can intelligent machines support us? How do neural networks learn? What do scientists investigate using artificial intelligence? These are some of the issues addressed in the interactive exhibit developed by the ZEW Research Department “Economics of Innovation and Industrial Dynamics”, which will be on board the exhibition ship MS Wissenschaft in the context of the Science Year 2019 focusing on artificial intelligence. The interactive screen shows visitors to the exhibition how neural networks learn to understand language and the world.
Tool with great potential for the future
Whether in industry, medicine or our day-to-day lives – artificial intelligence is clearly on the rise. Its areas of application are diverse and its possibilities are far-reaching. For instance, innovation economists at ZEW analyse how the ability of neural networks to autonomously derive information from texts can be used to support economic research. Much of the information relevant to economic research is available online, often in the form of unstructured texts. In order to browse these enormous quantities of text, researchers rely on the help of intelligent machines. “If AI works properly, it can help us to read and interpret texts. And it is able to process this vast amount of data much faster than humans ever could. However, before it can be put to work, AI has to learn the correct meaning of the words. This is not always easy. We use AI, for instance, to scan and automatically categorise the websites of thousands of companies,” explains ZEW economist Jan Kinne. Visitors who wish to learn more about how artificial intelligence works in this particular field and what opportunities and risks it entails can gain insights from the interactive ZEW exhibit on board the MS Wissenschaft.
All aboard! MS Wissenschaft at anchor in Mannheim
The MS Wissenschaft will be anchored in Mannheim on the Rhine Promenade in Lindenhof from 2 to 5 September 2019. The floating exhibition is the centrepiece of the “Science Year 2019 – Artificial Intelligence”, an initiative launched by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and Wissenschaft im Dialog (Science in Dialogue, WiD). The exhibition on board the MS Wissenschaft offers a fun and interactive way for guests to gain insights into this fascinating topic through various exhibits, providing an overview of where research is conducted in Germany on and with artificial intelligence. The exhibition is aimed in particular at schools, young people and families. Entry to the exhibition is free. The exhibition is open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
