User Group: Journalist

In 2016, important actors from science, industry, and politics founded the Cyber Valley Consortium, which became the first Innovation Campus in Baden-Württemberg. Ten years on in 2026, we’re revisiting the most significant milestones from the last decade. Each month, we’ll focus on a particular year since Cyber Valley’s beginning. 

This month, we’re looking back to 2022, when the Hector Foundation announced that it would support the establishment of the ELLIS Institute Tübingen with 100 million euros. The Institute was created to attract the world’s best machine learning talent to Baden-Württemberg by offering them outstanding conditions for undertaking pioneering AI research. Celestine Mendler-Dünner was among the first group leaders recruited to join the ELLIS Institute. In the following interview, she explains what it was like to play a crucial role at the ELLIS Institute from its beginning and how it has advanced her research and career.

Why did you want to join the ELLIS Institute? What advantages did you see it offering?

As the first institute of its kind, the ELLIS Institute Tübingen promised to be something very special and I did not want to miss the opportunity of being part of it. And this turned out to be an incredible journey. The ELLIS Institute offers a unique environment for research with full academic freedom and the financial means to pursue impactful research. This is hard to find elsewhere. Centered within the striving Tübingen AI ecosystem, it offered a strong reason for me personally to continue my research career in Europe.

How would you describe the experience of being among the first PIs (group leaders) shaping the Institute in its formative phase?

It was an exciting opportunity to help shape a new institute as one of the first PIs. Many things still had to be built, from office space, to outreach, to internal processes which was very enjoyable with a team that was committed to making things possible as efficiently as possible. I am very proud of how the institute has grown and the visibility it has gained globally.

ELLIS places strong emphasis on building AI that is aligned with social values. How does the institute support this mission?

The institute and the Tübingen AI community play a leading role in building the technical foundations for addressing social questions in AI. With the flexibility we have here to pursue research that does not immediately create economic value we can center objectives, such as social values and the common good, in our core efforts, which I am very thankful for.

How has the ELLIS Institute supported your career and what are the next steps?

It allowed me to push the frontiers of research with minimal distraction, and benefit from close collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, as well as the Tübingen AI Center and the ELLIS Network more broadly. This was an invaluable asset at a pivotal stage of my career. This fall I will move on to take up a professorship at ETH Zurich and I am very excited about the next chapter. I will deeply miss Tübingen and I look forward to staying connected with the wonderful people I have met here.

To celebrate Cyber Valley’s ten-year anniversary, we’ll be sharing a variety of content across our website and social media channels reflecting on milestones from the last decade. Stay tuned for the next installments!

In 2016, important actors from science, industry, and politics founded the Cyber Valley Consortium, which became the first Innovation Campus in Baden-Württemberg. Ten years on in 2026, we’re revisiting the most important milestones from the last decade. Each month, we’ll focus on a particular year since Cyber Valley’s beginning. 

This month, we’re looking back to 2021, when the Cyber Valley initiative transitioned into being a GmbH (a registered German company). Cyber Valley GmbH’s Managing Director, Florian Mayer, had already been deeply involved in the initiative since the beginning and has continued to play a vital role for the company. In the following interview, he reflects on what it was like to work for Cyber Valley at the beginning and how it continues to fulfill its mission of transforming AI and robotics research into a sustainable future for all.  

What was it like when you started working for the Cyber Valley initiative? What was its original mission? 

When I started at Cyber Valley, there was a real sense of excitement in the air. You felt like you were part of something new and special. That enthusiasm was contagious; many people wanted to play an active role in building one of Europe’s leading centers for artificial intelligence and robotics. 

Cyber Valley’s mission was—and still is—to create an attractive and internationally visible ecosystem for AI and robotics. Researchers should not only be able to conduct excellent basic research but also have better opportunities to translate their findings into concrete applications and innovations. Silicon Valley has been and remains an important model in this regard: a place where cutting-edge research, entrepreneurship, and social progress are closely intertwined. 

What were the biggest challenges during the transition from initiative to GmbH?  

The biggest challenge during the transition from an initiative to a GmbH was undoubtedly the discussions about the appropriate legal form and the future governance structure. Various models, such as a GmbH, a gGmbH, or an association, were thoroughly examined and discussed. Such decisions set the course for the future and therefore had to be carefully weighed. 

Furthermore, it is inherently challenging to reconcile the interests and expectations of a large number of diverse stakeholders. In Cyber Valley, universities, research institutions, companies, and public partners work closely together. However, it is precisely this diversity that makes the collaboration particularly exciting and is ultimately one of the ecosystem’s greatest strengths. 

What has personally surprised you the most in the journey since becoming a GmbH? 

What surprised me most was how well-known and respected the name Cyber Valley had already become in its early years, even before the GmbH was founded. In a relatively short time, Cyber Valley had made a name for itself both nationally and internationally. 

I was also impressed by how successfully the partners have managed to attract outstanding scientists from all over the world to the region. This concentration of talent is extraordinary and has played a major role in establishing Cyber Valley’s reputation today as one of Europe’s leading AI ecosystems. 

Cyber Valley aims to turn AI and robotics research into a more sustainable future for everyone. What does that mean to you?  

This means a great deal to me because I see enormous potential in AI and robotics for Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and Europe. Our region boasts excellent basic research and numerous internationally recognized research institutions. At the same time, there remains great potential to translate scientific findings even more effectively into innovative products, services, and business models. 

This is precisely where ecosystems like Cyber Valley can make an important contribution. They bring together science, business, and society and create the conditions that allow innovations to find their way into practical application more quickly. In doing so, they make an important contribution to the future viability of our business location and to shaping technological progress in a sustainable way. 

What responsibility do organizations like Cyber Valley have in shaping how AI affects society? 

In my opinion, organizations like Cyber Valley GmbH bear a very great responsibility. Technological innovation alone is not enough: just as important is the question of how these technologies are used in society and what impact they have on people and institutions. Cyber Valley GmbH has therefore made promoting societal acceptance of new technologies a core part of its mission. Those who fail to adequately consider the ethical, social, and societal implications of AI run the risk of losing public trust. An important step in this direction was the establishment of the Public Advisory Board back in 2019. This created a framework early on to incorporate societal perspectives and critical questions into the further development of the ecosystem. 

What makes the Cyber Valley ecosystem unique compared to other AI hubs? 

Cyber Valley is unique because it is not limited to a single location. The ecosystem spans the various locations of its partners, thereby bringing together diverse areas of expertise and perspectives. The participating universities and research institutions have a wide range of scientific focuses, ensuring that a particularly broad spectrum of AI and robotics research is covered. 

Added to this is its strong integration into one of the world’s most innovative economic regions. Baden-Württemberg boasts a high concentration of technology-oriented companies, global market leaders, and industrial expertise. This combination of excellent research, international talent development, and a strong industrial base creates ideal conditions for the successful transfer of research findings into practical applications and sets Cyber Valley apart from many other AI hubs worldwide. 

To celebrate Cyber Valley’s ten-year anniversary, we’ll be sharing a variety of content across our website and social media channels reflecting on milestones from the last decade. Stay tuned for the next installments! 

In 2016, important actors from science, industry, and politics founded the Cyber Valley Consortium, which became the first Innovation Campus in Baden-Württemberg. Ten years on in 2026, we’re revisiting the most important milestones from the last decade. Each month, we’ll focus on a particular year since Cyber Valley’s beginning.

This month, we’re looking back to 2021, when the Interchange Forum of Reflecting on Intelligent Systems (IRIS) was founded at the University of Stuttgart. IRIS aims to bring researchers together to critically reflect on the foundations, mechanisms, implications, and effects of intelligent systems in research, teaching, and society.

Steffen Staab and Maria Wirzberger have led the project since its beginning. In the following interview, they reflect on key moments since the project’s founding and why IRIS’s work is critical for ensuring AI is used responsibly.

What was the original motivation behind starting IRIS? What problems did it seek to address?

The University of Stuttgart is a technically oriented university. Many of our colleagues, including ourselves, develop and investigate intelligent systems. By intelligent systems, we do not only refer to artificial intelligence systems, though these are included and are at the heart of what we do personally. We also refer to, for example, urban, traffic, or biological systems that exhibit beneficial or detrimental emergent properties resulting from perception, intelligent processing, and (re-)action, including system resilience or failure, among others.

Specifying the desired behavior of such intelligent systems is notoriously difficult and requires reflecting on the implications for individuals, groups, or society at large. This is a transdisciplinary challenge that must include not only technical disciplines but also the humanities and the social sciences, as well as society at large. IRIS serves as a forum for people within and beyond our university to gather and address these challenges.

Addressing the outlined challenges, we focus on three core dimensions: research, teaching, and public engagement. In research, we address timely questions at disciplinary intersections, for example, how AI is shaping political opinion and public discourse, or how it changes workplace characteristics in safety-critical domains. In teaching, we offer students and educators opportunities to foster a critical and reflective mindset towards the potential ethical and social impacts of intelligent systems. In public engagement, we foster dialog with the public through various formats that explain our research to society and provide a platform for citizens to share their thoughts and concerns about technological advances.

Looking back over the past five years, which activities or initiatives from IRIS were a particular highlight for you and why do they stand out?

IRIS was started in early 2021, i.e., before the ChatGPT moment in November 2022. So one of the highlights in research was the hiring of junior research groups who started in 2023. They have all contributed significantly to studying the implications of chatbots and, later on, agentic AI: how AI may violate ethical constraints, can be deceptive, or be biased.

Other highlights included our joint online summer school with NoBias in the fall of 2021, which attracted more than 100 doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. Or the ACM Web Science Conference in summer 2024, which featured prominent keynotes from the US, China, and Europe from a variety of academic disciplines.

In teaching, our highlights include the implementation of course offerings for both schools and higher education, targeting the promotion of a critical mindset towards the unintended side effects of intelligent systems in personal and professional domains. Focusing on teaching at the University of Stuttgart alone, we have reached almost 3000 students so far and, due to their positive feedback, are currently expanding our offering, encouraged by the rectorate. On a related note, we were even successful in acquiring third-party funding for developing a digital learning offer for schools, focusing, among other things, on cyberbullying and algorithmic manipulation.

Finally, a particular highlight in public engagement constitutes our proposal “Questions to Colleague AI”, representing one of 26 projects funded by the former Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the Year of Science 2022. This project brought to life a variety of high-profile events, and featured, among others, a special concert with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra performing a novel AI-composed music piece, a debate series with leading panelists, and a virtual citizen’s council moderated by a specifically developed AI bot.

Why is it important to draw on expertise from different disciplines when critically reflecting on AI’s impact on society?

Different disciplines have memories of when past situations caused problems of a similar nature. We may, for example, unfortunately observe some transhumanists raising fascist-like talking points today, and there is a broad literature about the dangers that result from such points of view. Different disciplines have developed a range of methodologies to analyze and solve new problems and cultivated diverging portfolios that can be leveraged to build and refine reflective capacities among involved stakeholders. Hence, restricting ourselves to only a few technical disciplines would severely limit our ability to comprehensively address high-impact, newly emerging societal consequences.

In what ways has being part of Cyber Valley supported IRIS in achieving its aims?

Cyber Valley provides an ecosystem of like-minded people across both the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen, the Max Planck and Fraunhofer Institutes, and various companies and foundations, sparking regular opportunities for dialog and exchange. In addition to several local colleagues at our institution as part of cross-site initiatives like the Center for Bionic Intelligence Tübingen Stuttgart (BITS), we are also connected to colleagues located in Tübingen and, until recently, have benefited from recurring inputs from Professor Bob Williamson as a wise, encouraging, and incredibly motivating member of the IRIS International Advisory Board. Also, Dr. Ksenia Keplinger from the Stuttgart site of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems is actively involved in IRIS as an associated member.

Has anything about how we think about “responsible AI” changed since IRIS was founded, and if so, how?

When IRIS was founded, “responsible AI” was still a niche topic. Now, its importance has been globally recognized, particularly with the European AI Act as a visible and binding legal framework, which has been defined as a mandatory standard across member states. With the rapidly increasing capabilities of current AI, its challenges have become tremendously more severe and urgent. Even more so, if we consider emerging critical dynamics such as sycophancy and the resulting emotional addiction to conversational AI. These observations demonstrate the significant influence AI has on individuals and on interpersonal relationships. Related challenges cannot be tackled from a technical perspective alone, making IRIS’s contributions even more significant.

The University of Stuttgart has also been in conversation with Maria Wirzberger and Steffen Staab, asking them to reflect on how IRIS is shaping an AI future that supports society. Read the full interview here.

To celebrate Cyber Valley’s ten-year anniversary, we’ll be sharing a variety of content across our website and social media channels reflecting on milestones from the last decade. Stay tuned for the next installments!