Germany’s falling behind on tech, and Merkel knows it

One of the first things Angela Merkel told a group of experts in artificial intelligence during a closed-door meeting in late May was that they should be frank with her.

“I’m used to bad news,” Merkel said, according to a participant’s recollection.

The German chancellor had just returned from China, where she spent a day in the Shenzhen tech hub visiting companies like ICarbonX, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup focused on disease detection.

A trained physicist, Merkel had been impressed by what she saw. The money and manpower China poured into AI left the 64-year-old with little doubt that the country viewed the technology as its key to becoming a global superpower. Continue