The official opening of the new academic year took place with the matriculation ceremony on October 1 - at least as far as the "Education" section of our university is concerned.

The researchers at Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences celebrated this on October 9, as a fine tradition, with their own event: the "Opening of the Year of Science". Like the Year of Science 2019 itself, the theme of this event was "Artificial Intelligence". It was therefore a natural choice to organize this topic together with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering/Computer Science. In addition to the scientists, we were also able to welcome interested students and representatives from politics, business and society. A well-filled lecture hall spoke for the interest in the topic.

In specialist presentations, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lässig (HSZG) gave the introduction and moderation, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ringwelski (HSZG) and Mr. Löffler (BTU Cottbus/Senftenberg) specifically on constraint programming, provided insights into the history, current status, applications and prospects of artificial intelligence.
Dr. Felix Burkhardt (audEERING GmbH) built a bridge from pure mathematical algorithms to everyday experience in dealing with Siri, Alexa and co. with his research on the automated recognition of emotions in the human voice. He emphasized that there is currently no real artificial intelligence, but that science is actually still in the field of machine learning.
Finally, media artist Klemens Czurda from KIT read a welcoming address and invited the audience to the KI Science Film Festival on tour of KIT at 7 pm.

This was followed by a lively discussion of the possibilities of AI over a light snack, with practical examples on display. The Institute of Process Automation, Process Engineering and Metrology(IPM) presented its work using the example of an image processing system for checking reed sheets in the textile industry and the use of an artificial neural network to recognize objects.
Martin Herling, a graduate of the HSZG, presented a video of his idea for a garden maintenance robot, which won a prize in the "Artificial Intelligence - Show Your Research" competition.

The short films "CC", "The Gallery of Forgotten Professions" and "ZOE", which were shown in the lecture hall from 7 p.m., dealt in particular with the fears in society that are also associated with the theme of the evening: "Man, Machine!". What will it be like when robots have to look after children, create works of art or decide on death and life?
The final documentary "AlphaGo" showed very impressively how machine learning works and how completely new moves in a millennia-old game suddenly come to light when humans feed a computer with the right algorithms.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the participating employees from Görlitz and Zittau for their support in preparing the event, the friendly team from "Zur alten Freundschaft" for the catering, the speakers for their insights into an exciting topic and the Centre for Applied Cultural Studies and Studium Generale at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology for organizing the AI Science Film Festival on tour.

Text: Kristin Sprechert, Martin Kunack