Axel Springer
- German minister Karsten Wildberger wants fewer restrictions on the country’s tech industry.
- Wildberger addressed a room full of technologists and regulators at the WELT AI Summit in Berlin.
- He emphasized Germany’s potential in AI, advocating for optimism and strategic focus.
Berlin’s digital elite packed into the Welt AI Summit on Thursday for a glimpse of Sam Altman. They got something else, too: a full-throated gospel from Federal Minister Karsten Wildberger, calling for fewer shackles on Germany’s tech scene.
Minutes after Altman exited, Wildberger told the packed room at the Axel Springer headquarters: “We have to start to open up the gates and allow our companies to innovate much, much faster.”
Wildberger isn’t a career politician, but a former tech executive. In May, he was sworn in as Germany’s first-ever federal minister for digital transformation and government modernization, heading a new group that seeks to cut red tape.
It was not too long ago that Elon Musk staked a similar post in the Trump administration. Wildberger is Germany’s slightly more tactful version. As Axel Springer journalist Tatjana Ohm noted in her intro, he once said, “I’m not the one with the chainsaw but with a toolbox.”
Wildberger cast himself as a regulatory pragmatist, railing against what he sees as Europe’s habit of legislating AI to death before it has even taken root.
In 2021, the European Union unveiled the AI Act, a risk-based rulebook meant to safeguard its citizens’ rights and safety — banning practices like social-scoring, strictly policing “high-risk” uses in health, policing, or hiring, and demanding transparency from everything else.
The intent was to make Europe the first bloc with comprehensive guardrails for AI. In Wildberger’s view, the effect has been the opposite: startups saddled with costs and paperwork while the real innovation migrates abroad.
“You should regulate when you have a market, when you have products,” Wildberger told the room, warning that otherwise “companies develop elsewhere, and the products come to us.”
At Welt’s AI Summit, Wildberger tried to jolt the country out of its self-pity and into a future of looser rules and faster growth. He pointed to the country’s density of universities, research institutes, and industrial giants that breed technical talent.
He brushed aside the familiar refrain that Germany has already missed the boat, insisting the country still has the resources and time to matter in artificial intelligence.
“We know we have challenges on investment, on financing, on how to scale things,” Wildberger said, “but we need to enter the race.”
Wilberger admitted that competing on the foundation models is a long shot. He tried to redirect the ambition toward what you do with them. Germany, he suggested, should focus on building products and services on top of base models and then get those systems into wide use.
The minister’s address ended with a pep talk. He called for optimism in Germany.
“My final hope,” he said, “is that this country that has so much more potential finds a way to talk differently about itself.” From where he sits, Germans don’t give themselves enough credit.
“If you always start from the negative when you get out of bed in the morning,” he said, “it’s going to be a tough day. I just hope that as part of the process, we rediscover the faith, the belief in the strength of what this country is capable of.”
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