The STUDIUM GENERALE

Ralf Otte is a professor of industrial automation and artificial intelligence at Ulm University of Applied Sciences Photo: Serdar Dogan / QREATE Creative Agency

Dr. Ralf Otte is an engineer and has been a professor of Industrial Automation and Artificial Intelligence at Ulm University of Applied Sciences since 2015. He has been working in the field of AI for more than three decades, having first become fascinated by neural networks in the early 1990s. From 1992 to 2004, he worked in the Data Mining Center and Business Intelligence division of an international corporation; subsequently, from 2005 to 2015, he served as managing director of a medium-sized Swiss company. Otte is the author of numerous technical and non-fiction books on artificial intelligence. His textbook “AI for Dummies” will be published in its third edition in 2026 and is one of the best-selling AI introductions in the German-speaking world. In addition to his teaching activities, he is deeply involved in research. A key focus of his work is on so-called “fourth-wave AI,” particularly on the implementation of energy-efficient AI architectures on photonic computers.

A Double Historical Turning Point – How Geopolitics Influences the Economy
 

Europe is in the midst of a double epochal shift that is shaking the historical foundations of the Western order. On the one hand, the eight-decade-long phase of declining trade barriers, increasingly open markets, and multilateral institutions is coming to an end. On the other hand, the withdrawal of the U.S. as an organizing hegemon—driven by Donald Trump but already underway for some time—represents an attack on the unity of the transatlantic West and thus on the global significance of European modernity. This tectonic shift is hitting Europe, and the German business model in particular, with full force. Freedom, the rule of law, and economic liberalism were long embedded in a stable international framework, while Europe benefited from a strong transatlantic military alliance. All of this, however, is increasingly coming under geopolitical pressure. Trade, investment, and technological dependencies are once again being defined in terms of power politics, and the costs of the security architecture are rising. In other words, geopolitics is dominating geoeconomics.

Against this backdrop, key economic policy questions are gaining in importance: What framework conditions does Europe need to successfully implement the triad of decarbonization, resilience, and competitiveness? How can the geopolitical and technological pressures for adaptation be managed without abandoning the model of open markets? And what industrial policy guidelines ensure both economic strength and political cohesion?