The Ghost of German Angst: Are We Too Skeptical for AI Development?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most powerful future technologies of our time. Many AI discussions about ethics and innovation speed are based on the assumption that the fear of overpowering AI in general and of mass unemployment in particular paralyzes AI development. In this article, we argue that this “German Angst” is rather a fictional construct that has its home in the fictional representations of AI, but does not occur in social reality. People do not fear AI, but the power of the people who could abuse it. Therefore, organizations and politics should take into account the fundamental openness of the workers and create framework conditions that bring advanced digitization and human into an innovation-friendly, productive interaction.