00:00Heavy equipment is being deployed in southern Germany's Hauri quarry.
00:06The stone is ground up and used, for example, as additives for the cement industry.
00:11The mineral materials company was almost on the verge of bankruptcy with its outdated plant.
00:17The reason? High electricity costs.
00:20The company was under pressure and costs had to come down.
00:24The solution? Artificial intelligence.
00:28We have relatively small plants, so I have to be more efficient than everyone else.
00:33Then I have a chance. If I just use the oldest systems and controls, I can't get there.
00:40For weeks, huge amounts of data from the system were collected and stored using motion sensors.
00:46AI software used this data pool to develop a new electronic control system.
00:51The result? Energy savings of around 20%.
00:56Management is satisfied. The system is now centrally controlled.
01:00The AI software calculates exactly how the system should be run in order to work effectively and with the least amount of energy.
01:08The AI control system replaces several highly paid skilled workers in one fell swoop, but no one has been laid off yet.
01:17Because the system runs much more smoothly and better and tracks all the process parameters,
01:22I can free people to do other tasks that are much harder to automate or can't be automated at all.
01:29That also makes AI worthwhile.
01:35Next to Hanover, the process is called retrofit.
01:39Here, a completely outdated press from 1989 is being technically refurbished.
01:45Development engineer Nils DĂĽde knows his way around.
01:49Previously, only well-trained, skilled workers were able to run the press,
01:53a control system that today looks like something from the stone age of automation.
01:58What was important back then was that people were at the center and that they contributed their experience.
02:04For example, you can set the energy and it's set according to the worker's experience.
02:12Thanks to the AI software he developed, this expertise in running the press is no longer needed.
02:18The engineer spent weeks collecting all kinds of data from the press with the help of sensors.
02:27The AI software sorts this knowledge and is then able to control the press independently.
02:37Once the system is working properly and has been trained,
02:40you can assign workers to the system who are not experts in this area.
02:44This lets you reduce the number of those who are specifically trained for this and in so doing cut costs.
02:55This AI software will soon be ready to market.
02:58It's feared that many skilled workers in the metal industry will then lose their jobs.
03:07Next to Berlin.
03:09Here, software programmer Nina Grabke is working on an AI solution for laboratories.
03:15She uses her intelligent software and robots to transfer toxic substances into different containers.
03:21In labs, this is time-consuming and expensive routine work.
03:25Large pharma firms want to use this AI soon to deploy expensive lab staff more effectively.
03:32If there are monotonous tasks where the same processes are constantly carried out,
03:38then this is a very good aid.
03:40I don't believe that jobs will be lost as a result.
03:44I believe that on the whole it can be a support.
03:50Artificial intelligence – a threat or an opportunity?
03:53The German Economic Institute in Cologne has calculated in a study
03:57that AI has the potential to boost the German economy by 330 billion euros over the next few years.
04:06We have only had minimal productivity growth in Germany in recent years.
04:10AI can help to reverse this trend and ensure additional productivity.
04:15That's why I see this as a great opportunity,
04:18especially with the skilled worker shortage that we're already seeing,
04:22which will get worse in the coming years.
04:25AI is one way to counteract this.
04:32As a useful tool, German companies are finding more and more applications for AI.
04:38But the big innovations are coming from global tech giants Google, Apple, Intel and NVIDIA.
04:45German companies simply can't keep up with them.
04:49With the basic systems, the competition is very, very difficult to win.
04:57With the big tech giants in the US,
05:00who invest unimaginable amounts of money every year in developing basic software,
05:05my personal assessment is that there will probably continue to be a dependency.
05:10Programmers will soon have much faster computer chips at their disposal,
05:14which will give even more impetus to the use of artificial intelligence.
05:21To stay competitive on the global market, German industry has to seize this opportunity.
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