On 17 March, the KIRA Center and Bertelsmann Stiftung together hosted a panel discussion in Berlin on the topic: How can the German public sector recruit top technical AI talent – and what can it learn from the UK in this regard?

Thanks to its AI Security Institute (AISI), the UK arguably has the world's best-informed government on AI and its strategic implications. AISI hosts world-leading researchers, whose in-house technical work directly informs policy across the entire UK government and No. 10. Setting it up required a targeted effort and lots of political will, as the public sector competes with the salaries and flexible working conditions of tech companies. 

Does Germany need a similar institution – and could it replicate UK AISI’s success? KIRA’s Daniel Privitera discussed this question with our panelists Prof. Monika Schnitzer (LMU Munich), Carla Hustedt (Stiftung Mercator) and Konstantin Sietzy (UK AISI).

Key takeaways:

• Our panelists agreed that Germany needs more technical AI capacity in government. Open questions remained on the institutional embedding, the focus areas and how the work should relate to the EU AI Office.

• UK AISI is able to recruit exceptional technical staff only because it had extremely strong first hires.

• Salaries matter, but aren't decisive: Technical staff at UK AISI earn more than civil servants, but what really matters are the working conditions – opportunities for actual impact, excellent peers, the ability to publish, not spending 30% of one’s time on paperwork.

• Recruiting at AISI’s level of technical excellence is hard. It only works because AISI is exempted from many rules and conventions and has top-level political cover to sidestep bureaucracy. For some of AISI’s initial hires, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke to candidates personally.

• UK AISI's starting budget was £100 million, which was key to its success: It sent a credible signal to potential founding members – including senior early hires Geoffrey Irving and Jade Leung – that the government was serious about this.

We are very grateful to the team of Bertelsmann Stiftung for co-hosting this event with us.