In the future, qual­ity, a sense of respon­si­bil­ity and data secu­rity should be recog­nis­able in the field of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence through its own seal of qual­ity. As the first Thuringian soft­ware com­pany on the AI Association’s list of mem­bers, ifesca GmbH in Ilme­nau was now pleased to be awarded the seal.
The still young asso­ci­a­tion was founded in the spring of this year by around 50 Ger­man com­pa­nies and advo­cates a com­mon seal of qual­ity for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence: the seal of qual­ity of the Ger­man AI Asso­ci­a­tion is based on the secure and data-pro­tec­tion-com­pli­ant han­dling of data as well as com­pli­ance with basic eth­i­cal val­ues. In addi­tion, accord­ing to the asso­ci­a­tion, an impar­tial­ity of the data basis used as well as a trans­par­ent approach in AI devel­op­ment are to be ensured.

„With the seal of qual­ity, com­pa­nies com­mit to putting the inter­ests of peo­ple at the cen­tre of the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of AI and to ori­ent­ing them­selves to the Euro­pean fun­da­men­tal val­ues of human dig­nity, free­dom, democ­racy, equal­ity and the rule of law,” informs Jörg Bienert, board mem­ber of the Ger­man AI Asso­ci­a­tion. The seal thus stands as a trade­mark for the respon­si­ble devel­op­ment of the technology.
Sebas­t­ian Rit­ter, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of ifesca GmbH in Ilme­nau wel­comes the ini­tia­tive: “Since arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is a tech­nol­ogy that is quite dif­fi­cult to define and delimit, the seal can not only pro­vide ori­en­ta­tion, but also edu­cate and pro­mote.” Thus, the asso­ci­a­tion also sees itself as a con­tact for pol­i­tics, soci­ety and busi­ness that wants to con­tribute to coop­er­a­tive net­work­ing and sup­port for edu­ca­tion and science.

With another soft­ware com­pany from Jena, the sec­ond Thuringian mem­ber has recently joined the fed­eral asso­ci­a­tion. “As far as the devel­op­ment of this tech­nol­ogy is con­cerned, we don’t need to hide at all in Thuringia. Quite the oppo­site: the net­works are close and well estab­lished, the employ­ees highly spe­cialised,” reports Rit­ter, not with­out pride. His team of for­mer sci­en­tists is reg­u­larly requested for eco­nomic as well as sci­en­tific lec­tures at home and abroad.
The AI Bun­desver­band is now already made up of more than 160 inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies, SMEs, start-ups and experts for whom the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of tech­nolo­gies based on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is a cen­tral busi­ness pur­pose. Above all, they want legal cer­tainty in the areas of civil law, tax law, reg­u­la­tory law and data law in order to estab­lish Ger­many as an attrac­tive and inno­va­tion-friendly busi­ness loca­tion for the AI ecosys­tem and to strengthen its com­pet­i­tive­ness in inter­na­tional comparison.