Prof. Dr. Klaus Kaiser has the data insight

Prof. Dr. Klaus Kaiser: I immediately thought of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - although it is better known as a book, there is a film and a TV series: one part of the story is about a computer that was built to find the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything else. After a long computing time, it gives 42 as the answer - completely surprisingly.

I always find it fascinating what information is contained in data, so that after a long training period, a machine learning model has learned something completely surprising that was not previously expected. This can then be the start of a completely new investigation or new experiments.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Kaiser: If I had to make a choice, I would have to say the extent to which graphics cards can accelerate the development or training of data models and the initial application of this approach. In this way, neural networks could be learned much faster and thus really applied.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Kaiser: There are many big questions in humanity or research questions in my field that I think about from time to time. But at the moment I want to have a suitable and satisfactory answer to every question from my son (2) so that he can build his own picture of the world.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Kaiser: In addition to the development of new, ever better data science methods, the question of the trustworthiness of statistical models based on data will be of increasing interest. Particularly in view of political and social developments, the question arises as to what extent we can trust AI decisions and how AI actually comes to this decision.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Kaiser: Sounds stupid, but my cell phone - so that I can always get a photo of my children when I'm out and about all day and can't be with you.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Kaiser: When I think of reading, I always think of a particular book: "City of Thieves" by David Benioff. Although it's been a long time since I last read the book, roughly speaking it's a curious story about how two prisoners in Stalingrad have to find eggs for a wedding cake.

For a read more suited to my area of expertise, I can't help but think of "How to lie with statistics" by Darell Huff. The book is about how mistakes in compiling statistics can lead to false conclusions.