Munich, May 16, 2024 - Exchange of ideas and experiences on the latest AI trends, their groundbreaking impact and the relevance of data in a digital atmosphere - that's the aim of the Munich Datageeks Meetups. This week, the community met at the Oerlikon Innovation Hub in Garching. Hosted by the Digital Hub this once again underlined the Hub's role as a key driver for digitalization, innovation and to foster valuable connections in the industry.
For Pit Vanhoefer, Team Lead Data Science at the Digital Hub, the case is clear: “The disruption in society and industry caused by artificial intelligence has only just begun. Companies are literally being overrun by the development speed of technologies, in particular in AI, which brings new challenges but also a lot of new opportunities. That's why it's so important that we keep up with the latest AI developments”, explains Pit.
The latest dynamics of AI were highlighted at the Munich Datageek Meetup, one of the largest analytics communities in Germany that get together once a month in the metropole region Munich. Over good snacks and cold drinks, the 90 researchers, software engineers, data scientists and digital enthusiasts quickly got talking before heading to the two speeches of the evening on GenAI, Chatbots, and LLMs. Together with Thomas Schmidt, representative of Munich Datageeks, Christian Huber, Head of the Digital Hub, welcomed the guests before giving a brief introduction on Oerlikon and the role of the Digital Hub.
To accelerate Oerlikon's digital tomorrow, one focus is on innovation scouting and the search for new ideas and solutions. A close exchange and open discussion within the digital community is crucial and acts as an accelerator of digitalization.
-Christian Huber, Head of the Digital Hub-
In his presentation on GenAI and smart knowledge management, Pit explained the aim of his Data Science team's work: identifying areas where Data Science can have a significant impact and to make data-driven decisions for an overall user experience.
To illustrate this, he highlighted three project examples:
GenAI opens up new ways to develop AI-based solutions. However, there are still some challenges, such as data security and, the question of how the authenticity of data can be verified. Despite the hurdles, the opportunities offered by GenAI are enormous. That's why the Digital Hub is currently working on a number of ideas for using GenAI, for example as a coding assistant or for an external document download center. Using the example of searching for suitable documents for a specific question, Pit explained the use of AI to achieve an optimal search result through the vector-based analysis of multi-word expressions (chunks).
Oerlikon has a broad end-to-end portfolio and big amounts of data, which the company now wants to increasingly use as a potential for higher productivity and greater customer satisfaction.
After a refreshing break, which was crowned with a delicious “Kaiserschmarren” from the food truck, the second presentation of the evening began. Dr. Till Siebenmorgen from Helmholtz Munich provided insights into the profound impact of large language models (LLMs) and presented MISATO (Molecular Interactions Structurally Optimized), a new approach in AI drug research to train AI models for the development of new drug molecules. In contrast to classical methods based on simplified spherical models, the MISATO dataset works with small molecules and their quantum chemical characterization, which provide a more realistic representation and offer the possibility to visualize their behavior over time. The research team hopes that this will lead to even greater accuracy in drug discovery. As the key is to provide curated, reliable training data, the researchers have made MISATO freely accessible. This is where the idea of digital networking comes to life, using AI and analyzing lots of high-quality data to achieve excellent results.
The successful Munich Datageek Meetup showed that networking in the digital community is crucial and working well. Listening to the presentations, discussions and questions from the participants, it quickly became clear that the field of GenAI, Chatbots and LLMs is a constant source of inspiration for new opportunities - not only for the community but also for Oerlikon.
