Jürgen Schmidhuber – Can All-Purpose Robots Fuel a Comeback?

Wow, given his attitudes to unemployed immigrants I can't imagine he'll have much sympathy for the people whose jobs the robots will replace. Nonetheless good article, I think he is right that it is an opportunity for Germany.

The issue in Germany is that most companies don't take software seriously. They often outsource their software to freelancers or establish offshore offices in EU countries that pay less for software engineers compared to Germany or simply hire agencies. For instance, consider Volkswagen’s struggles with its EV transition. Despite this, they ultimately decided to invest in Rivian to leverage their software.

To create all-purpose robots, we must prioritize both mechanical expertise and software development. However, this mindset problem exists at the top level of management, where senior executives fail to recognize the significance of software, despite the presence of highly skilled software engineers in the country.

Notably, SAP stands out as the only German company that takes software seriously, and it holds the distinction as the largest public company in Germany.

German software is SAP. Every other software from them is made in Poland, Romania, Belarus, and Russia.

The right-wing narrative scattered throughout this article is irritating.

It's also a bit laughable that Germany could stand a realistic chance to top the world's intelligent robot production - as long as we're talking about general-purpose and hence likely humanoid robots. As far as I'm aware, Germany has no history in building such robots while companies from other countries, both Asian and US, have a big head-start.

This article reads more like a more or less desperate sounding attempt to somehow save Germany's former manufacturing glory in the 21st century. Alas, without first class AI software, this isn't going to happen, and in that respect, Germany is more or less irrelevant.

His description of how German politicians have time and again failed to recognize realities and act accordingly seems spot-on, however.

Year old (March 2024) article about small numbers of paint scratch, storage mold, and other minor issues in a large number of deliveries from a rapidly expand manufacturer concludes:

   But it’s too early to gauge if these quality problems are false alarms or something BYD needs to take very seriously.

(also The unlinked primary source for much of that material was the WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/having-overtaken-tesla-by... )