AI nation Germany? “We are only living at the beginning of the dystopia”

From the 19th floor of the Axel Springer House you can see the whole of Digital Berlin: In the immediate vicinity is the “Rocket Tower” at Checkpoint Charlie, where the Samwer brothers’ company has its headquarters. In the shadow of the television tower on Alexanderplatz, the Voltaire Building, there sits N26. In the stream tower at the Warsaw Bridge in the east: Zalando. In addition, the EDGE East Side high-rise, which will be completed in summer 2025, towers above all others. Tenant of Berlin's tallest office building? Amazon.

With this perspective, we want to talk about the situation of the “AI nation” Germany. Want to know whether you can – and want to – call the Federal Republic that way. Theory and practice come together: Fabian Westerheide is a founder, investor and one of Germany's AI thought leaders. In 2015, he and his wife Veronika founded Rise of AI, an annual conference and network that brings together AI researchers and entrepreneurs. In 2023 he founded the AI.Fund together with partners and in 2024 he published his book “The AI ​​Nation. Between Dystopia and Utopia”. Westerheide works on AI practically all day long.

Thomas Jarzombek has been Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Digital and State Modernization since 2025. His task is – among many others – to bring AI into practical implementation and to implement digitalization in the German economy, in companies and also in authorities. For him, good thoughts about AI in general are just the beginning – he is much more concerned with what is necessary – but also because – so that AI can achieve something.

They know each other, like each other, but still don't agree

The two men have known each other for ten years. Jarzombek, in the Bundestag since 2009, was the then Federal Ministry of Economics's representative for the digital economy and startups from 2019 to 2021, and he also founded and built up an IT company in Düsseldorf in the late 1990s.

In his current role, and also at this time, AI is an important topic for him – but at least Fabian Westerheide thinks that politics is not yet addressing it well enough.

We invited the two men, who think about and tackle the same problem from different positions, to a discussion.

Is Germany an “AI nation”? This is a word that you, Fabian, chose as the title for your book, which will be published in 2024 – and it is a term that is also in the coalition agreement of the current government: “We are establishing Germany as an AI nation,” it says there. Where are we on this project, Thomas? Is it already done?