The Aleph Alpha KI-System should relieve administration
F13 is a AI system designed to process requests automatically and analyze documents faster. Baden-Württemberg is the first German state to use this offering from startup Aleph Alpha - the performance of the company has recently been questioned.
Baden-Württemberg will be the first German state to use an AI system to significantly relieve its employees. In addition, the use of administrative services for citizens is expected to be simplified.
The F13 system was primarily developed by the Heidelberg AI startup Aleph Alpha. It is expected to be used by other public administrations in Germany from September, according to the association GovTech Campus Germany. Baden-Württemberg's Interior Minister Thomas Strobl said that with F13, documents can be analyzed faster, requests can be processed automatically, and complex data can be efficiently evaluated. It is important that the used AI technologies adhere to ethical principles. "We are not relying on China or America, but we are finding our own European way."
The offer is operated on computers in Germany to prevent sensitive data from flowing overseas but instead be processed domestically. The hosting service provider is the company STACKIT, which belongs to the retail and IT conglomerate Schwarz-Gruppe (Lidl, Kaufland). The Schwarz-Gruppe announced a 500 million Euro investment in Aleph Alpha together with risk capital investor Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (IPAI) and the Bosch Group in November last year.
Jonas Andrulis, CEO and founder of Aleph Alpha, said that F13 fulfills the promise of sovereign AI consistently. "Citizens can rely on fulfillment of the highest data protection standards and experts in the public sector can achieve clear results bundesweit, which efficiently complements their expertise and thus saves more time for the concerns of the people." The system was initially trained with publicly accessible data such as parliamentary proceedings and press releases. In the future, F13 is expected to learn from internal documents from the administration.
Euphoria has cooled down
State Minister Florian Stegmann, head of the Baden-Württemberg State Chancellery, emphasized that the system offers concrete added value for administrative staff. "F13 was a wake-up call. After the hype around the chatbot ChatGPT from OpenAI, we have shown: AI technology can be adapted to the administration." The euphoria around Aleph Alpha had recently subsided significantly, also because it became known that the promised financing round had not gone smoothly, but initially only 100 million Euro of the 500 million Euro had flowed in. Andrulis said in Heilbronn that these details of the financing had been communicated. "Can we explain it better? Yes, we can always explain it better. Just like our technology is complex, so is our financing."
The implementation of F13 in Baden-Württemberg's administration is expected to boost start-ups in the field of Artificial Intelligence, as Aleph Alpha, the developer of F13, is a start-up based in Heidelberg. This partnership between the state and start-ups also demonstrates Baden-Württemberg's commitment to fostering innovation within its economy. Additionally, the use of F13 is expected to enhance the efficiency of administrative services, as it can process requests automatically and analyze documents faster, thereby providing better service to its citizens.
