Artificial Intelligence: Germany's youngest AI professor dispels the biggest myths
At just 30 years old, Alicia von Schenk has established the chair of "Economics of AI" at the University of Würzburg. She advises looking beyond the current hype surrounding the technology.
Alicia von Schenk has always been ahead of her time. At the age of four, she was enrolled in school, at 15 she earned a 1.0 high school diploma. She studied Mathematics and Economics at Frankfurt and Heidelberg, earned a doctorate in Economics with a summa cum laude, and became a professor at the age of 30, which is far below the average age for taking up a career in Germany.
She currently heads the Chair for "Economics of AI and Human Behavior" at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität in Würzburg – one of the few in Germany focusing explicitly on the economic and behavioral effects of AI. Von Schenk, one of the youngest professors in the country, is considered a prodigy. How did von Schenk manage to achieve such success at such a young age? And how does she view the current AI boom?
1. Von Schenk emphasizes that there is not just one AI. Despite the tremendous hype, there is no single AI. Rather, AI is a collective term for various technologies – ranging from relatively simple statistical tools to large generative language models like ChatGPT and complex neural networks for machine learning. "That's what we call AI," she says. "I find that too undifferentiated."
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