Köpfe und Ideen 2023

These days we are deluged by headlines on artificial intelligence, which is now available to anyone who might like to try their hand at ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and related platforms. In German the phrase “artificial intelligence” (AI) translates as Künstliche Intelligenz (KI), but for the past eighteen years here at the Wissenschaftskolleg the abbreviation KI has stood for our magazine Köpfe und Ideen (Minds and Ideas), in some ways the antithesis to AI because Köpfe und Ideen is about thoughtful human scholars and scientists. That’s what our Fellows at the Wissenschaftskolleg do: they wrestle with their thoughts, arrive at certain insights and – if all goes well – may end up by generating new ideas. This brand of cerebration cannot (yet?) be replicated by technology since it transcends the mere evaluation of data. It requires experience, mental strength and creativity or simply a chance conversation with another perspicacious brain that can help to reorient one’s thought – which is not to say that in the future Fellows might not avail themselves of the latest products of artificial intelligence, to whatever extent.