Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We're delighted to have you here. This is wonderful to be able to see this kind of a turnout. I must say, Herr Minister, normally we don't see enthusiastic, excited crowds for German ministers right after lunch. People are usually sleeping rather peacefully in the audience. This will be a rare, pleasant surprise for all of us. Thank you for coming. I'm John Hamery. I'm the president here at CSS. It's we're delighted to welcome and co-host this event. We're pleased that we're here, and I'm going to turn over the formalities to my friend Ulf Gardski. I was going to introduce the minister. Thank you for coming. Oh, turn off, turn your phones to silent stun, okay?  So, okay. Ulf, come on up here. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Hamery, for your kind introduction. On behalf of the Hans Seidel Foundation, I would like to welcome all of you here this afternoon. Again, a big thank you to Dr. Hamery and his team for hosting us here today. And judged by the audience, this is a very important and timely discussion. It is a great pleasure and privilege to introduce today's keynote speaker, Germany's defense minister, Karl-Gio Dotzigutenberg. The good news, of course, for me is that the minister doesn't really need any introduction, but to take an expression I used earlier this year when I introduced him as a new German economics minister to a DC audience, I would say that the best way to describe him is to say that he is a troubleshooter. And of course, I'm kind of digressing a little bit from my script here, but the best way to translate troubleshooter into German, for those of you who speak it, is Krisenbewältiger, which is more abbreviated as Karthe, but this is within the CSU orbit only, I guess. Karl-Gio Dotzigutenberg was first elected to the Bundestag in 2002. And when I say troubleshooter, you can see that he focused early on rebuilding transatlantic relations and German-American relations in the wake of the Iraq war. He has come to Washington more than any other German politician, and I venture to say more than any other European politician in recent years. Last fall after the CSU suffered its first major electoral defeat in 46 years, Karl-Gio Dotzigutenberg was appointed the CSU Secretary General to get the party back on track. This February, he was named Germany's new economics minister in the midst of the biggest financial and economic crisis in decades. Three weeks ago, Karl-Gio Dotzigutenberg was appointed Germany's new defense minister. One of the toughest jobs out there, given the security challenges we face, we Germans, but also our allies, of course, face in Afghanistan and elsewhere. At the same time, of course, this latest important assignment marks a return to the minister's original passion, I should add, namely foreign security and defense policy. We are delighted and truly honored that you are here today. And so please join me in welcoming Germany's new defense minister, his Excellency, Dr. Karl-Gio Dotzigutenberg. Thank you very much, John Henry, and Wolf, thank you for much to kind words. I'm still struggling with the sentence of John about enthusiasm in German ministers. I may give that to colleagues, that very sentence, but it's great to be back, and it's good to see so many friends here, and thank you all for coming, and I hope that we find some time to discuss afterwards, and also to exchange a couple of views informally. And it won't be the last time for the next weeks and months, and probably hopefully years to come that I have the opportunity to travel a bit more often than during the last months, where I was a bit distracted by having the job of being the economic minister, and I changed from General Motors now to Generals and Real Motors, and I'm quite happy to, let's say, to have had the chance to hand over that very topic to an esteemed colleague, Brutale, who seems to be quite happy to have that very issue on his hands. But thank you very much CSIS for giving me the chance to address such a distinguished group of colleagues, friends, and guests today, and also a remarkable group of German journalists. I'm happy to have them with me today, and some of them who are in Washington, and good to see many, many here as well. And as it has already been pointed out by Wolf, it's really getting back to the roots and getting back to a passion of security policy and foreign policy, and I've had a rather busy morning already, or busy day, we flew in quite late this morning, there was fog in Paris, not politically, but there was real fog in Paris this morning, and so we came in late and we had a meeting this morning, a first meeting with Secretary Gates, and then we talked to Jim Jones and now to Jim Steinberg to get also an impression of the coherence of the three houses here, and to get also their views on common challenges we are facing right now, and challenges we need to tackle together. It's the year 2009, ladies and gentlemen, is a specific year and a very important year for Germany. We have celebrated 60 years of the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany. We have celebrated maybe a bit too silent 60 years of our constitution, a bit of a footnote character during the last months, and I think 60 years of our constitution is also reason to celebrate, and just a couple of days ago we celebrated together 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I think that was a remarkable moment, seeing our friends and partners walking through the Brandenburg Gate from the east to the west. I also recall in that respect seeing the Russian President walking through the Brandenburg Gate from the east to the west, and it was an emotional moment with rainy that day, but also good and remarkable speeches by the President via video, but also by the Secretary of State, highly appreciated by the German public and also by all of us. It was a very, very moment, a very specific moment, and I just would like to underline that this reunification in freedom of Germany now 19 to 20 years ago would not have been possible without the generous and continuous support of the United States, and we will, and we shall never forget this. And this is also, I wouldn't call it a task, but this is certainly a responsibility for me and for others to again and again remind, also to remind the younger generation in Germany, it's, for me it was, it's like yesterday, and I'm not, I'm quite still quite young fellow in this, in this business, but we have, we have now 20 year old young people already studying that haven't, haven't been born at the time of the fall of the wall, and for many of us it seems like yesterday, and to explain our gratitude and to explain who deserves all, not only respect but also this gratefulness from our side is certainly a responsibility for German politicians specifically. Looking at Germany from the outside, despite the financial crisis right now, one might see a powerful country, fourth biggest economic power in the world, and still, there's a bit of a, a bit of a fight going on, leading export nation, we are, we are in, in, in a clinch with China in that regard, quotation marks, and in security terms and in terms of foreign affairs, Germany has gone a long way in a comparably short time, and this sentence is not an excuse but an explanation also for a couple of things I may say in, in the next, within the next minutes. In the meanwhile we are also active members of numerous international organizations, and we have soldiers deployed in 10 operations across the world, 10 operations. We need to remind also the German public again and again that this spectrum we already fulfill in the meanwhile, and, and as many of you know there will be the first steps now in this, in this new post for me means to explain five of those mandates and those operations already in the first weeks of, in, in, in the ministry now because we have to prolong the mandates, now already in November and December of this year, the mandates of a couple of those operations. I will come back to one or two of them, but we are in Germany also as we all are probably still in the process of learning. One thing for example that many of us still have not acknowledged is that with this new found, can we call it normality after the fall of the Berlin Wall comes that, within this new found normality comes responsibility. Some of us unfortunately mistake the German responsibility to act with a responsibility to warn against action, and their perceived moral high ground from which they lightheartedly criticize the actions of others easily forgets that also the absence of action can be morally wrong. A functioning relationship means being frank, but it certainly does not mean to establish a culture of mutual finger pointing. I'm talking here about the relationship between the both of our countries with the transatlantic relationship as, as such and during the last years we have seen moments where this mutual finger pointing occurred above the surface and there were many characters who worked against this, this culture in quotation marks and would like to praise in that regard our ambassador Klaus Schariot and others who are doing a remarkable job over here of not having this culture established as such. You may think that these are just simple maybe trivial aspects or basics maybe, but for us it is something that we still have to get used to in terms of security policy. For many decades Germany was able to slipstream the United States. However, as as I have referred to a reticence reunification we have tried to live up to our challenges and to our tasks. Despite all achievements more steps remain to be made. What is now still exceptional, German military deployments needs to become more common and needs to become thus more widely accepted and this was one of the reasons why I, to the surprise of some in Germany, tried to find a new language a couple of weeks ago when it came to the explanation and the descriptions. For our military deployments to find a language which is blunt, which is clear and which tries to describe what I think is a reality and we have had a tendency in German politics all over the party lines to somehow let's call it euphemistically out balance our language when it came for instance to Afghanistan and what we're doing there and why we're doing it and what's actually happening there and somewhere startled and very surprised that's the term war or that's the term actually term war suddenly played a role in public discussion now in Germany but I think it is necessary that we leave that discussion it is necessary that we also keep in mind what reactions that may cause may be on the legal level it's a sub discussion we are having and may it be on the emotional level as for decades the risk to the safety of our country has been so very real for us Germans tangible most but the change towards the risk management of today's security policy is not easy we all faced with new and increasingly complex threats and challenges we have discussed them very often also at CSIS and in today's security environment and this is a truism threats no longer respect borders or geographical distances what happens hundreds and thousands of miles away in a different country may have direct effect on our own existence we have to be careful not to use this few as an excuse both sides of the Atlantic but we all have to be aware of the asymmetries that have been inflationary cited quoted during the last couple of years but also still to know that we sometimes tend to act and react rather symmetrical towards the asymmetries we are facing right now but this is not odd analysis of future trends such as the 2008 National Intelligence Council study indicate that the yes is faced with a relative decline in power for Europe things look even gloomier it is said to lose much of its influence and current status what a lovely perspective ladies and gentlemen on the other hand new powers emerge China and India are just two of them in recent years we have allowed the transatlantic partnership and NATO it's most important forum to drift at least to a certain extent and there's quite some discussion going on right now in Germany whether the transatlantic partnership and the transatlantic ties still have the same or even higher relevance than for instance the trans-pacific times I'm not occurring through a trip that is taking place right now definitely not but we all have to be aware that at least those ties are getting stronger and from a European from a German perspective we not only need to discuss it but also see it as a reason to foster and to strengthen the transatlantic ties not to follow them only with romantic or nostalgic fuse entity-driven eyes in Europe during the last couple of years as you all have followed to a certain extent anti-americanism grew accusing the US of being responsible for many crises around the world of doing too much of not doing enough or of not doing it right it's what we've heard the whole spectrum again and again and brought us to the point where the public diplomacy works yes or no again on both sides of the Atlantic to America in turn Europe seemed to have outlived itself of being slow being backward bureaucratic and with little strategic vision I have heard that again and again the only thing I agree with is the bureaucratic aspect so can we really afford all this certainly not none of us is able to tackle the challenges we face alone we have heard that very often but the only way to success is through cooperation shared goals but also shared emotions again and again and also shared burdens with our transatlantic alliance we have we actually have proven tested and mutually planned structures working through such partnerships leads to much better results than working in ad hoc coalitions of the willing but the tree on which the cherries to pick grow is still existent and we need to take that into account as well so contributing to peace and stability especially in Afghanistan is our top priority my first trip abroad let me brought me to Afghanistan last week was a let's call it try to find a mildest phrase it was an interesting trip showed many many different facets and it was important for me to visit and I hope that it's not being misunderstood to visit the troops before the partners to explain the sentence to my wife as well but it was a necessary visit and the necessary visit again to explain what we are doing that is the first operation that followed an attack on one of the alliance members for nature this mission is unprecedented in scope in breadth and complexity both in civil and the military terms and this is why visiting Afghanistan was priority to me I wanted to gain another firsthand inside and talk to various actress involved their countless pictures of Kabul and Kunduz in my mind now pictures of a difficult situation for both our soldiers and the Afghan people and to be very honest Kabul at the moment is more fortress than a lively village or city and our soldiers are in combat unfortunately far from stabilization a pretty familiar situation for American forces as I recall it however still challenging again so it's also reason to use more of a clear language and because of the extremely volatile security situation in Kunduz I ordered an increase in troops to reinforce a quick reaction force another hundred and twenty and here in Washington when talking about Afghanistan I'm being asked also now new position will Germany take on a greater role in Afghanistan my answer is all of us who are engaged in Afghanistan have to continuously rethink their commitment to make Afghanistan a success and Germany in general is willing and prepared to contribute adequately if the fundaments are set in the right way and some of the fundaments we are waiting for the next weeks to come how will we get there I envisage has three step approach first we need an updated strategy with a clear aim and clear benchmarks and I underline the word clear aim and clear benchmarks and not just phrases and not just vague impressions but benchmarks that deserve the name because we have to struggle in Germany as in many other countries and partner nations as well with the inflationary use of the term exit strategy and the question is how we use the word exit strategy or whether we use it is exit strategy just often away or does it actually mean handover in responsibility and does it then follow a clear structure and does it follow a clear strategy as such the first one secondly once this is agreed upon about clear aims and clear benchmarks we have to ensure that all relevant actors assume their roles and certainly against the background of the decisions of the international community Germany will adjust its engagement that means precisely that we will prolong our mandate this December unchanged first of all with our 4500 troops we have sent to Afghanistan we were still at the third biggest troop supplier but that we all eagerly waiting for the announcement the president has to make over here because that probably will be around the time when we have to prolong the mandate in Germany and that we have already started a discussion about our impulses for a strategy a renewed strategy for Afghanistan and that those impulses will be impulses also for the Afghanistan conference that will seemingly take place at the end of January next year and in the light of this Afghanistan conference in the light of the impulses we would also like to see in coherence not only with European partners but also with our transatlantic partners a reassessment of the German commitment towards Afghanistan is possible I cannot say today to what direction but I will say that we will certainly rethink our mandate that we are prolonging now this December but for us we need the Fundament and the Fundament will be one pillar certainly the American announcement and on the other hand secondly which is let's say one of the most interesting parts as well is what we can expect from the Afghan government we know that there has been specific meeting today in Kabul and we certainly need more than just a continuous smile of a president and repeatedly promises and promises and promises again more than just words we need the Afghan government to act and we need also clear benchmarks in respect of how the Afghan government could be measured if you want to withdraw internationally our forces from Afghanistan at some point in the not too distant future through a handover in responsibility as we call it in both sides in the of the Atlantic and specifically as we try to call it in Germany as well we need those clear benchmarks meaning criteria for success as well as understandable and responsible timelines our priorities are very similar to those I hear and sense over here security good governance and institution building this armament where it's necessary reconciliation and reintegration economic development and Afghanistan's regional role and also an understanding of the regional partners of the of the of the neighbors and those in the region which does not only mean Pakistan but certainly Pakistan but also India India is frequently forgotten when it comes to the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan in our German discussion if I may say so and also the Central Asian States and certainly also Iran exchange a couple of views about Iran this morning as well from another context so looking at the variety and complexity of the task in here in these fields it becomes clear that we need different actors to engage experts who have the knowledge and the resources which are needed so far unfortunately there's been a tendency to focus on the military for much of this further I strongly object to voices and I was one of those voices a couple of years ago that call Afghanistan a litmus test for the Alliance to me it is rather a litmus test to the whole of the international community and you may we should rethink what kind of pressure put on the shoulders of the institutions we are having and what results this may and can cause conflict conflict resolution in Afghanistan cannot be done with military means only but an unbelievably boring sentence but how unbelievable true hence besides formulating a clear strategy for success we need to agree on a pragmatic and binding work share every actor involved at the national as well as international level needs to perform and show full commitment and I clearly underlined very positively what I hear over here what I've heard from gentlemen crystal last week in Kabul that the term regionalization is gaining more and more grounds and that the regional aspects of the forthcoming hopefully of the forthcoming strategy of playing a significant role and this is the experience we have had within our comprehensive approach that this might be made maybe key for any excess I've talked about the Afghan government of about the promises we've heard so far may it be countering corruption may it be countering the crime and the work on good governance and other things they need to act as I've said and our expectations are high Germany and the international community are not willing to help now will be continue sending our soldiers and civilian workers indefinitely if the Afghans don't take over their share in building up their country now I come to the third step Germany and our commitment and I have already stressed what our plans are and how we will try to form our commitment for the next week and months is to come but then also for the next years to come the I know that the part of that's the speech I have to have to have to hold here is also on NATO's new strategic concept but I also know what it means to speak longer than 15 to 20 minutes before such an audience and of not allowing a clear discussion and other things I just would like to to make two points one is I think that we have a common and a significant chance next year when it comes to formulate also this time we are in the reflection phase right now to formulate the new strategic concept of NATO to bridge certain elements of frustration we have seen to overcome certain deficits in in in in consensus building and other things to be aware and to be sure that we need probably creativity to find a structure that works on both sides and that brings us to the core of NATO as such the relevance of article 5 is more than just high also the discussion that is linked to article 5 and to the new challenges that may be that may be linked to article 5 we have had the discussions for years now ready may the energy question one that could be linked to article 5 cyber war and other things but this is a necessary discussion one of utmost importance and also again and again how political can and may the discussions be with the NATO I think we haven't found common grounds here yet but this is one of the discussions we are leading at the moment as well just the footnotes because I have pages and pages and pages here but a particular long term point of concern again and again is the NATO EU relationship and I remember many many discussions we have had on that and if I talk about the relationship I also talk about the lack the lack thereof and we all know that these two organizations can be found in nearly every major theater of operation furthermore they have almost identical men members and what is this if not a living proof of the importance of these organizations working together and the aim of complementarity remains to be one of the main goals and of the most important of the most important aims and the question to avoid duplications but also to be able and capable to act and to react remains really within our discussion as well last point because I've been asked here again some of you have read the coalition treaty of the CDOC is your an FTP a remarkable piece of paper and there was one sentence that led to let's call it mildly disturbances over here and that was the question of how we handle possible because it's still a secret as we all know possible nukes on German grounds and to give you one answer because I've been asked here again and as well this is not a question we would like to see in treated unilaterally or just bilaterally but it has to be treated if at all within the coalition and it has to be treated within nature as such and we have to keep in mind what any step means as a consequence and what the consequence could be is for instance the three these three nays within nature it could have partners in mind who probably be glad to offer their grounds and their soil for any weapons but the question is whether that makes sense then for the security structures within Europe nevertheless was just important for me to to a repeat my colleague Ido Westerwelle who exactly said that when he was here I just would like to underline that because there was some misperception specifically in Germany and also one of the discussions that could have been avoided and as we are in a phase right now that some struggle with the fact that they are still in power in Germany and other struggle with the fact that they are after 11 years finally in power I think we will come together and we come to the conclusion despite all of those things that this is a government which is clearly committed to transatlantic structures transatlantic friendship and for me it is an honor and pleasure to be here and to be here more often than during the last couple of months thank you very much thank you Mr. Minister thank you very very much for those very comprehensive remarks this afternoon you you answered all the questions that the speech title held and we are indeed very grateful for that good afternoon my name is Heather Conley I have the great privilege of directing the Europe program here at CSIS and I'm delighted to be able to moderate the next half an hour or so of question and answer period and dialogue just as a one good housekeeping note if you do have a question for the minister please raise your hand I will point to you and there will be a microphone that is passed to you and please provide your name and affiliation before you pose the question to the minister I have only two roles as moderator one is to make sure the minister is not late for his next appointment so I'm going to make sure we have a timely discussion and secondly to use a an American baseball analogy I get to throw out the first pitch to the minister to get the conversation going I promise it's not going to be a fastball or a curveball Mr. Minister but I'm going to start the discussion and then certainly open to the floor for for a great conversation Mr. Minister you talked about the use of exit strategy and certainly when you were in when you were in Kabul last week you you said you shouldn't be shy about using it but I'd be grateful to have your what's your vision of a successful exit from Afghanistan what does it look like yesterday Foreign Minister Vestivelli noted that the the German government would seek a framework for the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan to become visible during this particular parliament which as we know ends in 2013 so obviously we're we're interested in that vision and the second part of seeking your vision is that you have been as many others have critical of President Karzai and his lack of focus on corruption is it a smart tactical strategy to publicly point these issues out while you need the Karzai government to be successful if we are to turn over greater responsibility so that's the fastball Mr. Minister thank you very much is always a challenge for German to understand baseball analogies but on first of all in your last question I think being silent is is even is an even worse option and of not addressing things everybody actually knows the president knows the government knows to that they have the obligation to handle that it in a proper way and I think we are now in a phase where we have to make clear what our goals are and what the goals for the Afghan governments are and on the on the question of a successful handover in responsibility I'm deliberately not using the word exit strategy right now I think one well-known point is successful training and training and in that regard giving the the Afghan the Afghan security that's called a person maybe the Afghan National Army made the police forces and others the possibility and the option to take care for their security itself and themselves and and in that regard that's part of a successful handover in in responsibility the other one is we have to we have to make clear what is what is the goal is is the overall goal to still have the dream of a well established democracy Western style or of a somehow stable Afghanistan that still can comply to its traditions and to its culture and to the experiences others and we have had with Afghanistan as I think we have reached a couple of limits here and and so stability may be defined from one or the other a bit differently and in Germany the debate is quite clear that the goal of the expectation that Afghanistan will function like a put it now in quotation marks like a Western democracy could be at least difficult and and and and his difficulty we have to keep in mind and and so the question at the end of the day will be can we avoid endlessly any any occurrences or any any any any any also also and internal fights in the future in Afghanistan is that our goal yes or no is that the principle that we stay there indefinitely and so this is my my point Dennis we have to make when I'm talking about benchmarks I mean benchmarks which that don't reach that far because otherwise we will never reach any result thank you Mike please and we'll make sure get a microphone coming to you oh no no right I'm sorry over here sorry come in thank you I'm Mike also from Johns Hopkins size and McClarty Association's consulting welcome minister you said that you're eagerly awaiting President Obama's decision on basically what sort of surge we should do in Afghanistan my question very simple as the Obama administration has gone through this lengthy process of analysis has it solicited Germany's opinion in a systematic and in-depth way certainly today and also doing the last couple of weeks but we have to keep in mind that it's a we have been in a in an interesting position in Germany during the last couple of months as well there was as you all know our campaigning period and and sometimes one or the other may have been distracted from such questions as well so and but looking at the face of the ambassador I think there has been a very close contact and and also the repeated attempt to hear our opinion and and to get known to our structural thinking and also to get our impressions what we are doing in our region in in Afghanistan and see north and and and there I don't see any any deficits in that regard where we have to work on also for the future is that we optimize communication lines in Afghanistan that we that we try our best to to combine the civil and the military efforts there but as a very positive result of our consultations and of our constant rethinking of the respective strategies I see a remarkable amount of aspects in this in in the strategy we have we have we have heard at I think it was in April this year or May this year that come very close to what we have called at the beginning the comprehensive approach and I certainly recall the one or the other smile in faces of American friends over here as well what the hell are they meaning with the comprehensive approach what a typical German idea how could you dare to combine civil and military aspects and so on and so on and I think there was a fruitful discussion afterwards and that some of those ideas have fallen fruit for grants bill the microphone over here I'm Bill Grozniak president of the American Council on Germany Mr. Minister welcome as you know one of the biggest complaints about German forces in Afghanistan is that they have operated under caveats tight restrictions in their deployment so are you after your next last trip prepared to recommend to the new German government that you lift some of these caveats and enable them the commanders to have more flexibility in deploying German forces and second point on police training which has been largely the responsibility of German and European forces in the past is considered to be one of the biggest failures of the Afghanistan policy in the last few years what are the lessons learned what can we do better in terms of training the police forces in Afghanistan thank you very much Bill on the letter I think the police training is more and more a success story now but we need to we need to match the goals and and we are still too far away from the 400 trainers we need to see in Afghanistan I think that's not only a matter of the Germans but also some European partners who could be a bit faster and and so to really get to that point nevertheless wherever this police training is taking place it is functioning and is working we have also in this regard a coordination challenge to combine the different philosophies of police training let's say very mildly that the American philosophy of police training is a bit distinct from the one Germans for instance offer and although I understand the criticism that a police the future police officer in Afghanistan and that's not first-handedly need the experience how to how to conduct the traffic in his village but there may be other options that he needs to he needs to do and but this is it's it's a footnote with a smile in the face and I think it's but what we need to do is to coordinate a bit more clearer and the different styles of training and both make sense and both have I think both have have have have clear have clear goals in that regard on the caveats and the complaints to be very honest I had Frank and very open talks during the last couple of weeks with responsible and specifically gentlemen in in Kabul with with those in with those having responsibility for ISAP and other things and I haven't heard the complaints any longer we have heard for a while and that is because I think because we have we have made clear that the German soldiers are not any longer in the north only to dig holes for water and to wave to to Afghan children and it's it's more and more that we are also in in in in in in combat situations we we have our casualties there as well we have and we have learned that the spectrum is definitely wider then we offered it to the public in Germany for one and there was probably also a reason that many of our partners thought that's what the Germans are doing and we have certainly done much more than just the civil aspect of sending our soldiers down there and I think it's well known that we have that that we have for instance a responsibility for the quick reaction force in in the DC north and the troops I'm sending down there now that the additional troops are additional troops specifically also for those security elements and so the caveat discussion is probably still a to a certain extent not only an academic one we can lead this caveat discussion more or less with any single partner within NATO at one time we have also looked for caveats within the American strategy as such and we surprisingly found some and I think it's it's but this is one of those things where we what I stress before with mutual finger pointing I think we should be much clearer about the substance we are offering and I think the Germans are offering quite a lot of substance in specifically in the in the RC and maybe just at one point the question why are you not part of the southern part of Afghanistan has really not played a role any longer during the last weeks I'm not in the position yes the gentleman right there thank you very much my name is Taitzafar Hashemi from Voice of America Afghanistan service I had two questions first of all regarding future commitments of Germany in Afghanistan after you're going to deploy more troops in Afghanistan where they will be stationed and will they be doing combat or not or only training and the second question is what's what's your thoughts on general McChrystal's recent report on Afghanistan and especially when it comes to increasing troops in Afghanistan thanks the first question was wisely set and please don't expect an answer because the decision has not been made yet and and the decision specifically the second part of your question where exactly will German troops be in the future is can only be part of answering the first one and the first one as I said before will be answered yes or no after the Afghanistan conference so that's where we are right now but I said that we are willing and probably also capable to reassess our existing mandate but it depends on the substance we see then and we get we have delivered at this time on McChrystal's concept I clearly understand his concept not only as one that focuses on numbers of troops but that gives also an indication that there's much more to cover and this is why I welcome specifically his is the civilian means he's offering in his concept and I am very much in favor of of the clear perspective on regional on regional topics and and and and and regional ties he wants to build and build up what respect of the numbers he is he is offering now getting to the troop numbers and getting to those numbers he wants to see trained in the future let's call it ambitious it's quite a number thank you there is a gentleman way in the back you guys Christopher Marshall from the German daily the target spiel I would like to come back to the German influence on the decision making on the future strategy in Afghanistan of course I understand one side which you already elaborated on we are all partners in the Alliance equal terms so everybody has a say in it on the other hand the ratio of the burden is shifting to the not to the not to Europe side at the beginning of this year we had a ratio of soldiers one to one US on one side all other NATO partners together at the moment we are at two-thirds to one-third next year we were probably around 70 to 75% American troops only one-quarter European troops and in Germany we have the pro-werep we had such have done same in in the United States who pays the bills has a little bit more say than the other guys and how does this shift of burden sharing influences the decision making thank you for Marsha there is certainly let's say an earlier decision of the future strategy by the yes that for instance by some European partners and specifically by Germany one of the reasons may be the timelines we are in and that the new government has just fought the question whether and how how to handle this and and what it could also mean for the institutions that are that that that from the rooftop over this over this operations there is I think still unresolved because we have no clue yet under under which kind of missions the Americans will deploy more troops yes or no what will be part of ISAP what will be part of OEF for instance and and and and the decision within NATO is one that has to be linked to ISAP clearly and and that and then we will probably have a intense and hopefully substantive discussion at the beginning of December within the NATO Council which is taken place I think that force a third of force of December and and there's I think there's a good chance I don't know it yet but there's a good chance that we may see a decision of the US before so this has to be taken into account and and and and the willingness and the ability of of any troop numbers is is I think not only guided by the principle who is sending the most is the one who is who can who can put endless pressure on others on others to cohere on the same level then I think it's a question whether a partner partner state is exceptionally able and capable to do so and that we find our our that we find it in coherence with all principles and the things we need to manage that up to this time so the discussion will be one one part of the discussion will be starting within the NATO within the NATO structures at the beginning of December and this would also be one of the cornerstones for any of the decisions that have to be made afterwards thank you there's a gentleman right here I'm Jerry Livingston from the German Historical Institute Mr. Minister may thank you for your straightforwardness in your talk and in answer to your question the questions at least so far let me take you away from Afghanistan and ask you something about the EU-NATO relationship when President Obama abandoned the missile proposed missile defense shield in Poland in Czechoslovakia he rushed Vice President Biden off to Poland in Czechoslovakia to reassure them what would you say if the US government came to you as a EU state and said primary responsibility for the defense and security policy of Eastern Europe should be in the hands of the EU after all that's your front yard that's your bailiwick and that's where the EU should live up the responsibility to which you referred in your talk thank you very much think the EU is taking over more and more responsibility in different structures and with different structures and and nevertheless nevertheless we should not we should not we should not be too we should not minimize the existing structures of NATO and those those countries you have just talked about are member states of NATO and if we understand the NATO structures correctly defense and deterrence are still main pillars within NATO so it could be seen at least equally as as a platform to act and to react nevertheless I think the decision has was a understandable and also wise decision because the discussion debate about about missile defense under the under the under the last administration here in the US has caused let's call it disturbances within Europe and and also within those countries involved in it and if I now look at the new missile defense strategy I see a responsible and I think also understandable path we are we are marching together and if we find a way and this will be also part of the discussions for next year to tie to NATO structures this new missile defense issue then it could be a benefit for all of us and and and the European Union again is is is trying to find and and to formulate and also to act in defense structures that show growing responsibility but that should that are showing still also certain certain deficits of course and and and again the relationship between a NATO and EU still needs to find stable grounds it's we all recall the Berlin plus arrangement and we all recall how difficult it can be from time to time if in both in in both areas NATO and EU there's still some partners like Greek Greece like Cyprus and like Turkey for instance and to try to find their playing grounds within the responsibilities that we should see in another dimension thank you Reggie hello I'm Reggie Dale yes my question actually follows almost directly on from what you just said the EU is at this very moment I don't know if the dinner is still going on in Brussels but they are in the process of implementing the institutional changes agreed under the Lisbon Treaty and once they've done that and there is a president of the European Council and a high representative for foreign and security policy in the security field will that help to have a more increased cooperation inside the EU will it help to have a voice to talk to the United States which is perhaps expresses a more coherent EU policy and will it help in resolving this question of our relations between EU and NATO the matter of coherence is one that depends on the willingness of 27 member states and and and in that in that regard everyone who is who has the the instruments to coordinate properly will be highly welcome and I don't have to stress the again again quoted incited sentence of of of the phone number in Europe again and again as well and the person who is tied to that sentence denies that he has ever said that but there could be one of those and I think it could be seen as being helpful I've just attended a couple of days ago within the last gasps of these structures a a defense and foreign ministers meeting or foreign defense ministers meeting to say it correctly in Brussels where we had introductory remarks by by Anders Rasmussen by by Javier Solana and by Benita Ferreiro what an interesting scenery and how interesting the substance of those introductory remarks everybody very cautious not to undermine or just to undermine the respective part and and if those structures could be a bit more effective I think it would be of the benefit for all of us that the rumors I've just heard on I think it was it was the last the last on the Blackberry of the ambassador but it was just rumors was that Mrs. Ashton is being seen as the next as the next foreign or the first foreign minister of of of the EU I cannot I cannot I cannot clarify it yet but also quite a surprise and I still try to understand the last tactical moves of the Brits during the last couple of days but but I think it's okay but I think it's it's good news and and they should be seen as a chance Mr. Minister I think we have to have one more question because I won't do the first part of my job which is keeping you on time if we take much more them I'll have you had the last question there are not only shared values but also shared interests that we all have to look at. Still coming from the western Balkans, the Montenegro, transit relationships are the most important for us and we see them as a framework of security in a near and medium-term future. How do you see, could you be so kind and elaborate, how do you see the expansion of NATO and the collective security and burial for Europe in the near term. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I do emphasize again the the importance of of the transit relationship also in respect of what I've said to the Trans-Pacific sphere we're talking about. On expansion of NATO we have had the discussions we have had in respect of Georgia and Ukraine. We have the results we have found and let's say an interesting way of handling some of, yeah, let's say the accession structures of NATO. When it comes to other to other expansion or expansive next steps within NATO there is an ongoing discussion on whether to offer map for instance to Montenegro and also to Bosnia-Herzegovina. I do have the expectation that at least one of of those two countries has a certain chance to have map offered. Maybe also in the next meeting we are going to have. Nevertheless, I see on one hand very hopeful and very good signals in the western Balkans in different parts of the western Balkans I also see a certain amount of stagnation. And some let's say some hopes we have had so far have not been fulfilled yet and specifically when it comes to constitution building, when it comes to police building and other things and to the question whether for instance in Bosnia we need to keep the OHR yes or no. And this will be one of the discussions for instance for the next weeks and months to come. The expansion of NATO is one that has to be clearly bound to criteria and we have to meet those criteria and those who seek membership in NATO need to fulfill those criteria. Again, this is a very boring answer to a very difficult question. And I certainly recall the difficulties we have had on both sides of the Atlantic when it came to explain how euphoric we need to be specifically with Georgia and Ukraine. And it's probably not the last discussion we have led in that way. But it certainly was one of the discussions I have enjoyed today in this very specific round here. Thank you. Mr. Minister, thank you so much for your candid conversation. And we so appreciated having you here on a very quick trip to Washington. We look forward to welcoming you back many times. If I can just ask that everyone remain seated until the minister and the delegation depart and then we thank you all for coming and being with us here at CSIS today. Would you please join me in giving a round of applause to the minister.


Wikimedia Foundation, where he conducts foundational research and develops new AI technologies, and the discussion will be led by Ellen Yelena Simpel, who is a professor of computer science at King's College London, and who is also the current president of the Semantic Web Science Association. So with that, Yelena, over to you. Thank you. I mean, those of you who have happened to attend a conference with me, maybe pre-COVID times, know that I'm a big fan of karaoke, so going back to singing, really be careful of what you wish for. Well, welcome also from my side. I guess we all agree that we do live in interesting times, and artificial intelligence, essentially, a set of technology that's been making in the last for more than 50 years has now reached what some people call its iPhone moment. So chat-Upt is almost a verb, and essentially people in all walks of life are becoming more and more aware of what this AI can and cannot do. Organizations and entire professions are reflecting what this disruption means to them and their futures, and governments are considering regulation. And since November last year, I hope you agree with me that we are once again moving really, really fast, and we're almost suddenly going to break some things along the way. By the way, Yelena Simpel, I'm a professor of computer science at King's College. I'm also the director of research at the Open Data Institute in the UK, and I am an AI scientist. He hopes to help build a better wiki data ecosystem, so that's my link to this community. And before I say a few words, my personal introductions to the panelists, let me just tell you, I started out as a researcher around the same time as Wikipedia was launched. And as someone working in AI, I really just wanted to do my bit to make sure that the technology will benefit the Wikipedia community and the society as large. So when I was asked to moderate this panel, I couldn't possibly say no. And I'm even happier and humbled to welcome our two fabulous guests, and they're fabulous for various reasons. For me, they're fabulous because they've worked across disciplines. I'm a fan of some of the things that they've done, like a real fan, and because they've contributed both of them to open source development. And say, you've heard the introduction, Thomas is a co-founder of Huggingface, where he's working in open source and science teams. You may have used the Transformers library. You may have also heard about the data sets library. For someone like me who works in data sets discovery and open data, those 33,000 data sets made me really excited. And then Isaac, a research scientist at the Wikimedia Foundation since 2018. Amazing credentials. I'm a big fan of your fact 2022 paper on data governance in AI and also the work on quantifying the value of Wikipedia. So very happy that you could make it. So I'm going to ask you to start with your opening systems statements. You can't take the engineer after the woman. So five minutes opening statements, with or without slides, as you please. And we start with Isaac, shall we do that? Sure. Pass me two. So yeah, I also enjoy karaoke, but I will I will save folks from having to hear all of that. Thank you, Elena. I'm very excited to be here. This may be a few things about my kind of personal interests and maybe some context to help set the stage. So personal interests, as you highlighted, have been developing kind of AI tools for Wikimedians for the past couple years been a research scientist with the Wikimedia Foundation, so that informs a lot of my thinking and going through those processes and learning about how to do that in a very wiki way. So I'm bringing that to the panel. And as you and actually any earlier in a breakout session earlier reminded me, I also have a research background around reuse of Wikimedia content. So understanding how Wikimedia content shows up outside the Wikimedia ecosystem and what impact that has, which obviously has a lot of overlap with a lot of the conversations that are going on around AI. And then I think more recently, too, I've been involved as part of this kind of inflection point of really focusing in on this ethical AI, what is our approach here, and really trying to think about what that should look like within the Wikimedia ecosystem. So I've been doing a lot of kind of thinking there. And so in that sense, I'm very excited to be on the panel to hear Thomas's perspectives to hear the questions from the audience to really get to talk through these things. That's always valuable. Two pieces of context, maybe, and then I'll pass on to Thomas. The first one, you said, as you pointed out, kind of an inflection point right now around AI. And the other piece I'll say is it's also part of a larger history. And I think that's really important to keep in mind internally. And this has come up within a number of sessions today already. There's been a long history of bots kind of constrain AI assisted editing on the platform around content translation, vandalism detection, a whole swat of things. And so that's exciting. There's a lot of things from that that we can learn from. And I think externally as well, there's a lot of similarities between the questions we're asking about the impact of AI and some of the discussions that went on around search engine usage of Wikipedia and what that meant for the Wikimedia projects. So in that sense, I'm going to try to be maximally boring in many ways. I'm like, okay, yeah, this isn't that new. So I think there's that piece of context. And the other thing I think that's important to bring up is that while we're still, I think, trying to figure out what Wikimedia's role will be in this kind of new AI ecosystem, it is a unique one, which is exciting. I think we stand at this interesting balance between an organization and community that thinks a lot and does a lot of really hard work around doing things ethically and having good process and doing things openly. But we're also a community that builds things and produces content. And so we don't, you know, we really have to put the rubber to the road, we have to build things and we have to progress. And so that's also an interesting kind of space that we feel that, you know, isn't necessarily true of others. So I think that's another interesting piece of context. But with that, I'll pass it off to Thomas. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Isaac. And I think I've heard stats that three percent of the data set for of chat GBT, the initial release was Wikimedia. Thomas, over to you. Yeah, thanks. I'm also very, very happy to be here today. So maybe at the difference of Isaac, I'm really here to learn a lot, I think. So I'll be very happy to hear your boring history, because obviously, I mean, I've been using Wikimedia like everyone, but I don't know all the history. And I hope you see there's a lot of things that are probably just repeating in a slightly different way, right today. So we also almost co-author with Isaac, because the data governance paper was kind of one of these things that spun out of the big science and the group project. And Yassin, in particular, had his face was really focused and did a really amazing work here. It would be much more relevant than me as a panelist, but maybe it's also nice that I bring a different perspective, slightly different from somebody a bit outside. I think just like the Wikimedia project, maybe one specificity of a big face on our work, if I compare to many, many other people developing AI is that we've tried to have a big sense of the community. And maybe the difference on some other, we are maybe more interested in the journey that we are taking towards, you know, these more powerful AI tools rather than just the end product. So what I personally would like to see is, well, it's quite exciting. It's also hard to deny that this new project, these new tools, they can do things that we would have never really thought possible, right, a couple of years ago, but I think would be really great if on the way to developing this tool, we keep having as many stakeholders as possible involved in this process. And we kind of keep building them as a community and not just a little bit like, you know, islands of people kind of isolated from each other, which is a bit what I'm worried is starting to happen here. So, yeah, I think I try to, or at least a heavy face, we try to navigate the same line between staying rather positive on the outcome of this technology and that's putting kind of a blanket ban on it and trying to see, okay, now how can we maybe nudge it in the direction that's the most responsible, how can we find the right incentives in the community to make them do things that we that we feel are more responsible. And today, really a lot of this gravitates around the data, the training data, or the data we send at inference, how do we use that? How do we, how do we find a way that, you know, we don't have this disconnect between like knowledge creators and knowledge users? I was actually here talking about that today as well with many other people. And I think this kind of like, I think this technology that's, that would be more like a link between people create knowledge and people who consume or read it rather than just this kind of wall that we have right now, you know, knowledge until they disappear and then we have someone at the other side who use that would be really, really amazing. Yeah, so we stand a bit on this position trying to both create collaborative projects and at the same time trying to also, you know, find a way to build things and not just kind of say you should not build any models. So that's basically where we try to be. Thank you. Say, and before I start asking some questions, Bob has asked me to do one thing and I have forgotten and that is to make you aware that there is a Google document which he has posted in the chat where you could add your questions. So we're going to start with some questions that we came up with and then we're going to move over to the questions you have. So I'm sure with such a topic there will be some. And while you do that, I'd like to ask both of you to unpack this relationship between AI, machine learning in particular as a set of technologies and as a community and ecosystem and Wikipedia. So how do you see that relationship? Where are potential tension points? Where are overlaps or commonalities or things to learn from each other? Who would want to go first? Thomas, would you like to go first? Yeah, I can go first because just like Wikipedia has a long history of having to deal with both and AI also has a very long history of relying on Wikipedia, in particular NLP. It has always been seen as the source of truth and if we need a source of knowledge it always turns to Wikipedia as the status sets. In every training of large language model, if there is one data set that people will reiterate and do like 10 epochs on each and it's instead of just half of an epoch, that's always Wikipedia. It's always upsampled in every training data set. Maybe a nice token of recognition. But also what I think we lose a lot. Well, Wikipedia is actually one source, but even the edits have been used a lot in terms of training model to correct mistakes. Every part of Wikipedia I think almost has been used in one way or another in an AI model. Something we lose, at least up to now we lose a lot, is all the interesting context that you see in the discussion pages, the top pages. In particular when some articles are maybe a bit more hot or debated, it's very interesting to go there and look at that. And that's definitely something you lose a lot. This is one aspect, all the discussion around this knowledge creation. Second aspect that we lose is obviously also kind of crediting in Wikipedia. You can look at who wrote which part and that's also something that we lose. So I would say up to now AI has been kind of a small parasites on top of the big elephant Wikipedia. Which is interesting is that this kind of start to reverse. Now we have this huge elephant on the top of this small Wikipedia part. And how can we manage to make the two maybe unequal footing? As a part I'm most interesting. And obviously the second part that I think we go there later is in the creation of Wikipedia itself. Should you use AI? How to use it? Thank you. Isaac, how about you having been part of this ecosystem for so long? Where do you see those relationships? Thomas talked about source of data for AI and the balance of power and perhaps popularity and public awareness. How do you see this relationship? Yeah, building on what Thomas was saying and definitely it's a fluid relationship and one more still I think trying to figure out what the current state of it is. I do think Wikipedia, this like now that AI maybe is a little more salient or prominent, Wikipedia is still quite important in this world as a source of reliable knowledge. And so I don't think that Wikipedia is less important. But maybe an example to follow through on my commitment to bring lots of historical examples. An example around kind of how this relationship can be good or bad. And I think a good example of that is with the machine translation and its use on the projects a number of years ago. When that was kind of formalized into a tool content translation on the project, the state of kind of AI in that space was still relatively rough. So you had a lot of kind of rule-based systems. And there was some open source projects in that domain. But the performance wasn't great. And then I think, in the late 2010s, Google really brought kind of the neural machine translation. You saw this big advance in capabilities, which was it was good for the Wikimedia projects. They were able to set up partnerships to take advantage of those APIs, but it was kind of like a static relationship in some ways. The team was able to kind of set this up, was able to set it up so that the data that came out of these translations and the work that the editors were doing was publicly available, which is good. It allowed other kind of machine translation systems to learn from the work that Wikimedians were still doing. But these were tended to be kind of closed models for proprietary models. And I think it's only in the last year or two that we now see some really performative open models. The one that has been used at the Wikimedia Foundations, this no language left behind model from Meadow, which is an open source model. And now that's really exciting. That opens up a lot of possibilities on the projects. They're no longer constrained to just this like, well, help in like article editing, but you can imagine many more uses for machine translation. And because it's an open model, there's a lot more opportunities now for kind of building on that work and having kind of the work that Wikimedians are doing going back. So I think it's gone from this, you know, like the performance was maybe good, but the ecosystem and the relationships weren't great to now, you know, having this more open model were in a place where you can start to see, okay, now we can like, we have a better kind of structural ecosystem in place around this technology, where Wikimedians can contribute, other, you know, open source advocates can contribute. And so I think that's maybe a note of optimism around that. Great. Thank you so much. And I'm just looking at the time and I have seven questions. And I have, I think 15 minutes left. So I'm going to keep you on your toes and just change the order of the questions a little bit. So, so Thomas, you said that Wikipedia is very valuable for for for machine learning. So I'm going to ask you, what could AI and the AI community give back? What could they do for Wikipedia for their ecosystem? And for the community of editors and community managers and researchers who have helped build it and improve it in the last 20 or so years? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Honestly, I'm also here to to hear about what people think, because it's, I think it's really, we're in open territory, right, today. Like, I think nobody really has a very clear idea, but there is many interesting things. So it can start from like simple tools, maybe what, you know, other people are doing, which is start using maybe this this model as a way to aid to help for moderation or this kind of editing and kind of community part. But you can also imagine maybe interesting things, right? So, so let me just maybe draw one that we're thinking just now, which is like, when you're when you're on one article, you're reading your train to understand it, you could also have, you know, some kind of AI that that's that's kind of there that you can talk to, which is also, you know, reading the same articles of kind of dialogue. And if you have like enough reasoning, enough, you know, knowledge in this AI, that could be kind of a page specific tutor that would basically use the knowledge here and can help you maybe reformulate maybe one paragraph that I don't know, it's difficult to understand and you can say, can you explain this and this. So this type of thing where instead of having somehow static pages, Wikipedia page could be maybe the beginning of a dialogue or something where you can explain, you know, ask, ask a more question. I think a lot of Wikipedia is great around the dialogue for the data around data creation. I was talking the talk pages, but sometimes you also need to talk about pages to understand it. So that would be the type of thing I would see in the future where we have this if we start to have this AI things a bit everywhere, basically you could discuss in detail. That's very interesting. And I'm sure people here in the Zoom call, but also the rest of the community have many views around how having such a tool would change things, not just in terms of leadership and access, but also in terms perhaps of engagement with the content and editing and quality checks and all the practices that are available. So do comment on this or ask follow up questions if you want in the document. Leila has just posted the link again in the chat. So possibly ways to access and engage with Wikipedia content through AI. Isaac, Thomas said earlier that Wikipedia is the source of truth. You mentioned the world of reliable as well. Say, I'm going to ask you something perhaps a bit controversial. So there's lots of concerns in some parts of the community around the potential of generative AI models to create or cause a new wave of misinformation at the scale that we haven't potentially seen before. So does that mean that Wikipedia will soon be obsolete or outdated and not just Wikipedia, also other open source public good initiatives that we hold dear? What are your views on this? Definitely not absolutely. Maybe trying to pick apart pieces of that. So I think there's one piece and I think when people think about Wikipedia, we think a lot about kind of the content generation side. So like the articles and that's the piece that most readers see, but there's really a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. That is like the work that keeps Wikipedia reliable and also keeps it to expanding to kind of new knowledge areas or things like doing the fact-checking work and doing the maintenance of that content. But also like the discussions, as Thomas has been saying about the talk pages, these discussions around is this a reliable source? How do we want to talk about these sorts of issues that are things that AI is kind of a reflection of where we're already at, can't necessarily have these sorts of discussions? And then like, for instance, I was in a developer track earlier about OCR for WikiSource. I think that's a great example of that sources of knowledge that aren't accessible to AI right now. And so like, you know, the Wikipedia community is doing a lot of really hard work, though, to digitize those sorts of manuscripts and make them more accessible to folks and that's work that you can't really replace right now. And I think the other piece of that too is the like Wikipedia. And I think we often think about that as kind of an English Wikipedia thing. So I was just reading what the Google did their whole unveiling today and they were with Pong. And I think they're really saying right now it's like two to three languages and aiming for 40. And, you know, Wikipedia, we're working with over 300, right? And so like, yes, maybe there's places where AI can be pretty impactful on some of the project, but there's a lot of projects where it, you know, it's far, far behind in its ability to even kind of produce a facsimile of what's going on. And just as a follow up question also to you, Isaac, should Wikipedia and Wikipedia editors use more or less AI and what for? I think I'm pretty agnostic to that.   Things like, you know, increasing the diversity of the community. Or like just removing barriers to being able to contribute. And so where AI can help with those things, I think that's, that's a good thing. And I think the community reflects that in their own kind of discussions of, you know, these tools aren't inherently good or bad. It's just, you know, are they helping us to serve our goals that we've for a long time had or not? And that's really the kind of question that we should be asking. And I am going to mix things up a little bit, because I have seen a related question in the document. Say the question is from an anonymous member of the public. What implications do the new AI advances have for content creation Wikipedia? Specifically, the scenario where articles can be produced with just the prompt, how can Wikipedia address this? Who wants to take this? So shall we prompt models to write Wikipedia articles? Thomas, what do you think? That's a good question. Yeah. Well, I guess this will probably be, you know, just like, you know, just like in the past, probably where people were probably, I mean, there is like probably no one I would be happy to hear. Basically, I guess they have always been cases of people, you know, creating a lot of content and pushing a lot of content, you know, kind of simulated way. And so I think honestly, like using a prompt to do a first draft of an article that you want to spend time editing, that's totally fine, right? But what we probably want to avoid is this type of, you know, automated the non red content that's just uploaded there. And probably there is not so much difference with what I guess has already been the case in the past, right? And I'm going to ask both of you say, how advanced is our knowledge of prompting for the specific task of writing Wikipedia articles, which have a certain structure and they need to have references and so on. So are there, I know in some fields, there's entire websites selling prompts or sharing prompts. Are we this far with Wikipedia? Does any of you know? Just on this, we can maybe dive a little bit deeper, right? So what happens basically if you prompt a recent language model and you try to make it right, something. So so easily you get basically Wikipedia out from the training data, which the end is fine, but that's kind of circular. So probably there's just something that's there. Or you get some knowledge from other sources. And then there is this interesting thing that you that you will want to have like citation, we want to have links to these other sources. But at face value, that's still nice to bring more knowledge, I would say in Wikipedia, but you need to link this back, you know, to you have this problem of you cannot just write again, this like physics book, you will need to link to it at some point. Yeah. Oh, sorry, I didn't want to interrupt.  So I was just about to ask Isaac for for his view. Yeah, I think Thomas is spot on. And just the addition of, you know, the model only can only produce like what sources it has access to. So right, like, you know, sources on the web, things like that. And so just going back to that point of, you know, that's going to largely right now mean English language sources. Obviously, it means purely digit, you know, already digitized sources. Whereas a lot of these articles really, you know, your folks are going into books, they're going into history archives, and finding this content and bring it up. So thank you. And I'm just going to take the opportunity because we're talking about this. And she asked a question that Pablo asked, or maybe Pablo, you want to ask it yourself. It was a question about circular content creation and knowledge integrity. Okay, I can try. I cannot. Okay, go ahead. I think it's very related to what we've just discussed. Yeah, I was just asking, like, if large language models are using Wikipedia for training data, and at the same time, these large language model, they will start at some point to be used to create content on Wikipedia. Is it possible that we will be under the risk in the space of knowledge integrity of suffering from circular reporting from AI? So that these models are trained by data that they also created that affect factual information in our knowledge spaces. So what are the implications, knowledge integrity, potentially something else? I think I'm going to start with you. Yeah, no, it's a good question. And I think, again, this is an AI scaling up things. These aren't new concerns for the community. And they have absolutely fascinating set of discussions around what sources are reliable. And I've even seen, I know, in recent months, discussions about, like, hey, FYI, was it? No, I shouldn't say it, because I'm going to get the publication wrong. But there's a publication that started using AI generated articles, and immediately the community caught on to that and said, hey, like, let's be aware, like this is no longer maybe a reliable source in this domain. And so I put a lot of trust in the community to kind of pay attention to these things and be able to update their guidelines for what they consider to be reliable and worth incorporating. Thomas, anything you'd want to add? Yeah, it's more of a meta meta comments. But I think one thing I find very interesting in Wikimedia Wikipedia is basically how the community that was created there is kind of healthy and thriving over a long time. And I think that's a very great example for community that we probably would like to build as well, maybe more in AI or like in the research or practitioner. So and it's a community that's able to discuss complex topic around moral values, ethics, you know, this kind of very complex topic that I would like to see discussed a lot more in AI, because this AI we put a lot of this question in there. And so if we can find a way to copy that, or like at least to take inspiration from the success here, that would be great. But here again, it's more like the AI field taking inspiration for Wikipedia. I'm trying to think more about the other the other directions. Thank you. Moving back to my questions that I was interested to ask. So the next one is for both of you. And the theme is, is this technology ready right now? Or could it do more harm than good? And what are some of the current risks? And how do we manage them? And in particular, there is an ongoing debate in Wikipedia community, Wikipedia community and elsewhere around implications. And, and for Wikipedia, specifically, we're talking about issues with copyright, we're talking about the ability to verify the automatically generated content, we're talking as in many areas about hallucinations, and specifically also here about the neutral point of view and editor engagement. So copyright, verifiability, hallucinations, neutral point of view, editor engagement, pick one or pick all. Isaac, should we start with you? Sure. Yeah, so when I think about kind of this question of do more harm than good, I think one of the big ones that's come up in a lot of discussions and I think about too is the kind of attribution piece. And this gets back to what you're saying around copyright. And then certainly the kind of first wave of like, oh, let's get these models out there. We're really bad at it. And we're seeing advances now as I think some of the developers are taking this more seriously of like, you know, making sure that when you build these tools around these large language models, there's an ability to reference your source material because, you know, that disintermediation otherwise, you know, you getting back to the question about like, what is the relationship with AI and community and Wikipedia, right? It disintermediates that. And so long term is not a sustainable place to be if you can't provide the attribution back. So folks are aware how this knowledge is getting created can go and, you know, edit it and those sorts of things. So I think that's one that I think about a lot. And I think the other thing this is a because it came up in the came up in the initial introductions, the big science piece that hugging face ran. And one of the things I really liked about that. So big science, this big consortium of folks who came together to try to build a large language model and do this carefully and do this with a lot of like, you know, ethical ethics in mind. And one of the things, and I was part of the data governance side of this, one of the things I really appreciated there was the care at which that group both tried to expand to more languages, but also didn't do this with, you know, whatever data they could get their hands on. And they thought a lot about kind of privacy and how do we ensure that, you know, we're maintaining privacy as we expand these data sets, the governance of that data, like, you know, making sure folks have the ability to, to contest what was in that data and things like that. And so I think the community when I think about harm or good, I think a lot of that depends on whether we see more things like big sciences careful expansion into other languages to ensure that, you know, where there is benefits, they reach more people. Thank you. Dallas, how about you say it was copyright, verifiability, hallucinations, neutral point of view and editor engagement as potential areas of concern? Yeah, yeah, and I think all these points make sense. Is that all, is that all aspect that you want to be careful about? I think it's great that there is a, that there is already a large language model guidance page around this. Yeah, yeah, perhaps around hallucinations, there was a question also in the document, thank you for that around the, the technical background for that. So, so many people share the views that hallucinations are our big concern. How technically feasible do you think it is that we will improve large language models to hallucinate less? And what do we need to do to get there? Yeah, that's very tricky. A lot of people are trying to do that. It's difficult in part because it's not only trained on text on the internet, that's always right. But it's also trained on all these parts, which where people are just creating stuff, you know, like stories that we write, blog posts where we invent stuff. And so basically the model has a lot of difficulty distinguishing what is, you know, just a story that's been written in a book and what is actually a real fact about the world. Just like we do, I think all along our entire life, we kind of build this kind of intuition of credibility of various sources and even late in our life, we're still somehow surprised that this actually is not credible at all. I thought it was kind of a good source. So, so the language model a bit like this and this, this is very difficult. So, one thing we rely a lot on in AI is actually labeling this as, as human as like possible sources or not. So, so here we have this dangerous circular references where if we label Wikipedia as stressful source, you should not use the assimilated content in it. But yeah, I think this question of citation looking right, that's a big problem. I think that's something people did not really anticipated for large language model. The fact that they produce text that really look very convincing is really challenging our intuition of what is good or not. We have kind of this very deep intuition of like, you know, if something is written in very good English, that's a good sign of like, trustability. Or if you have a nice citation with nice number, nicely permitted, you don't even need to click. And all these reflects that we've developed with the internet, I think we may have to, we may have to change them. This is a big problem. You've that in science, I mean, we've had that for some time, but not at this point. I do agree, yeah, with that, yeah, it's a big threat in particular with this citation. And that's question I have maybe for Wikipedia, when you have a citation to, you know, something that's not really accessible or like to book that's how to get hold on. I would be interested in diving on what are the ways that people kind of control and this type of contents. Does anyone want to comment on that? About accessibility of citations completely unrelated to LLM's and automatically found or sourced references. Thomas said he's here to learn. So we want to make sure that that happens as well. There was Bobby had an interesting question around hallucinations versus another evil. Would you like to ask it live? Yeah, sure. So I was kind of trying to play the devil's advocate a bit. We have a lot of trouble with human vandals on Wikipedia, people that don't behave well. How much worse is a language model that potentially behaves well, but was even trained to behave well? And then sometimes it doesn't. We can look into we can screw open the language model and probe it and look into its mind, if you will, we can't do that with a human. So I was curious about your reflections on that bad humans versus ill behaving language models. I'll say a few things. So there's like a common thing that many folks start out editing Wikipedia as a vandal. They vandalize it and they're kind of impressed with like, oh hey, the community like fix this very quickly and actually begin to learn more than and contribute in positive ways. So in that sense, I see maybe more hope in the vandal than in the language model where maybe you can kind of fix some of these things, but I don't know that it's ever going to become like a member of the community in the same way. So I think there's maybe that that aspect of things. And I think just what Thomas has said earlier about with a lot of vandalism, it's often very clear, it's vandalism, it doesn't make it easy to deal with necessarily. But it does, you know, the AI models, there's this like patina, right, over top of it, that can make it really hard to detect them. So in that way, I think it can create a lot more work for community members to constantly be able to work to it and be fact checking every little piece because yeah, just it's just a lot harder to use kind of basic heuristics to detect it. Thank you. Thomas, did you want to add anything? Yeah, maybe just one positive example as well could be that, you know, this model knowing how to write, you know, good looking and easy to read English could still kind of help on this aspect, maybe for like non-speaker, non-native speaker, trying to write a good article. And I think on this kind of tool editing, a bit like Grammarly, honestly, or like this type of tool editing and development of that, they could help making the contents more easy to ingest. So I could see some very practical use case where this will be nice. And if we can figure out in a very long term, like, you know, good LLM, that have kind of a positive and thoughtful mindset, you know, that participating discussion that that could be also very interesting. But a small future. That'd be interesting to understand the impact on editor engagement.  Thank you for your patience. Oh, sure. I just wanted to go back to the question Thomas had just before this conversation about how we can probably learn from Wikipedia or what can Wikimedia do. And that was inspired by Phoebe's question around hallucinated citations and references. I just want to call out that I think this is a place that, you know, Wikisource as a community and as a project can come to a good extent to rescue. Of course, there are many things that Wikisource is limited by, for example, there's so much that the project can do with regards to what is copyrighted material. However, Wikisource is a digital library. It's an open digital library. And it is it is a project in which editors and contributors to the project try to bring more digital content available. And that can help with some of the discussions around what we can do about hallucinated citations and references and things that are currently not on the web accessible to be automatically checked. But they will be if we support the Wikisource community more in their efforts. Thank you for that. Leila, I'm going to I'm going through a while. I'm trying to multitask. So I'm going through the questions. There is a question, which I think addresses something we haven't really touched upon. How might existing biases, including gender biases, race biases, and so on play out into large language models, given the connection between Wikipedia as a data source and the technology. And as a follow on, do you think human in the loop is a potential approach to avoid existing biases in the technology? Thomas, yeah, you seem. And just say, yeah, it's very interesting. That's that just raised a lot of ideas, a lot of questions. You know, you could imagine, you know, to that this large language model is instead of being this kind of huge black box, that could be a bit like Wikipedia. And when you have a debate on, you know, something they say, they have a discuss page on this topic and say, hey, actually, judge is saying that, but I don't agree. I don't think that's really and then you have this discuss page around and the content of the large language model should be able to be updated. And frustrating aspect of this, and that's a huge difference between this model and Wikipedia is that they are kind of static.  A lot of them have been trained like three years ago, they're still this long with this kind of version of the knowledge. And so I think a future where they would be kind of a witty GPT that you could edit would be would be interesting. And just brainstorming in the open right now from this question. Thank you. And obviously, some of these systems like chat GPT do learn as well from human feedback on the fly. But the data they've been trained off is a bit older. Isaac, any views from your end around biases and the ways to mitigate these biases, whether it's an algorithmic approach or a human in the loop one? Yeah, just like reframe a little bit what Thomas was saying. I think there's this this tendency to come with like the really flashy like seamless kind of AI model that can do everything. And I think, you know, what Thomas was saying is like, you don't need that to be super, you know, like, you can kind of open it up a little bit, right? Like you can show the different pieces of it, you can make it a little bit messier, a little bit more open to folks. And so not try to generate like the perfect response, but like showcase the different kind of potential responses and things like that. And I think that goes a long way to helping folks understand what's going on and pick what is actually valuable out of these models as opposed to, yeah, that. So I think there's that piece to it that I think a lot about.  So I'll leave it at that. All right, let me just ask my last question, which was for you, Isaac. And then if I may ask Tillman to ask their question for Thomas, because it is a long question, and I'm very jet-length. So first, Isaac, because of all these reasons, should Wikimedia build their own AI data sets and models? Yeah, we well, we already do. I think that's like the quick response to it. But yeah, I think what you're asking is not the because like vandalism infection, things like that, we've been doing it for many years and not really asking about that. I think you're asking like large language models. And there, you know, I think, well, first I'll say like, it's not a decided question, right? Like this, these are the sorts of discussions that we're having now in the community. I think one of the approaches that does feel very promising in this space are work like the big science project where, you know, in collaboration with folks who have, you know, much larger collaborations of folks who are dedicated to doing this in the open and doing it with ethics in mind. I think there's a lot of potential there to be building large, you know, models that do fit better to our principles and take some of these concerns to heart about biases and harms that these models can output. And so yeah, big science. I know they, you know, just went through big code, which was a code generation model that was in a similar vein. And we're excited about that because, for instance, I know like sparkle query generation is a big challenge for many wiki data folks. And there's hopes of maybe being able to take some of the big code stuff and buy it to that problem. Sparkling is beautiful. Beautifully messy, yes, so. Before I get too excited about it, Lydia is agreeing with me. That's nice. Tillman, would you want to ask your question for Thomas about frame-giving, creating a disconnect between, yeah, is that okay? Yeah, all the issues earlier, sir. So my question is about, so I liked your framing about just disconnect that AI creates right between the creators and consumers of knowledge. And that's obviously what we, we Europeans have been worrying about a lot as well. But the current frame is more like from, we see a lot of concern about copyright and said, right? So creators want to get paid or they want to opt out of training data, even though it's currently fair use, right, at least in the U.S. And so there's a worry that this, there'll be this AI backlash with new laws that actually expands copyright a lot, right, in the direction of corporate maximism. And that's like directly counter to the wiki media vision, right, where we want to make a lot of accessible and it's going the other direction, right, again, pay us for that. And this, I'm just curious how you're, no, you're talking face, got a lot of this discussion. So I'm just curious how you see it's developing. And especially if you see the consumers of knowledge also get a voice, not just the creators and the corporate industry. Yeah, it's a good question. And it's funny, because before creating hiding face, I was the Intel, intellectual property attorney. So I was actually very much in favor of copyright or at least protecting creators. And that's taking face. I'm really doing something very different pushing open source, which is very much the negation of this. I think in general, seeing an expansion of copyright would probably be be damaging, I think. And that we hopefully don't want to go there. Maybe the reason I'm talking about that is that behind beyond beyond just copyright, I think. But that's interesting, because maybe it's less the case for Wikipedia, but in many communities, and I see that credits is still something quite important. You don't really need or want monetary rewards for what you share. But when you spend a lot of time on creating something, you would like to have your name somewhere associated, or maybe even your anonymous name. And this idea of being still linked to your creation is quite an important incentive, I think, for people to share something that they spend time to work on. And so I'm kind of worried that if we lose these incentives, we have a lot less people sharing knowledge openly on the internet, basically. So that's kind of what I'm worried at the moment. But then you don't want to go in the full in direction where you can't reuse anything that people have been saying, or like you don't want an extension to crazy extension of copyright. So it's quite complex. And the problem with AI model is that they also often don't copy verbatim, but they change some steps. So it's never a direct copy. And so you're in this very blurry area where it's not verbatim copy, but it's still definitely inspired by the training data. But yeah, I don't have a really an answer. I think it's interesting that you're saying that, because that's a good point. And that would be also an unfortunate. I think with the development of AI system and this like, in just a matter of few months, this use transition from like this very kind of niche or still quite niche research area to something that everybody's using. We have a kind of a number of dangerous things that could arise. And one of them could be all this community kind of closing their doors basically and saying, we don't want to share stuff anymore. So that would be quite unfortunate, you know, just like after chat, every place like this, like Stack Overflow already, a place where people were really discussing would just close their door. It would be very, very bad. Another bad outcome could be indeed that like copyright become like a much larger as a reaction. So yeah, yeah, we'll see what's happened. I suppose there's a few ongoing cases that will give some insight into the direction of travel into that. We are reaching the end of the hour. So that means that sadly, I will have to ask our panelists to come to their closing statements. So I'm going to ask Isaac first and then someone's going to get back to you. Final statement, short. Yeah, I don't think I have anything particularly momentous to say at the end just to say that, you know, we're in a change of our time of a lot of change. And so these sorts of discussions, I think are incredibly important. And I'm hoping that we can continue to have them so we can be hearing folks concerns and questions and hearing the different points of view about what directions they should be going in. So I'm very thankful for this panel and hope to have more in this style or in other styles. It would be interesting to actually look at these questions and the answers that we have provided in three, six or 12 months and see how our knowledge has evolved. Thomas, how about your final statement? Yeah, I wanted to thank you. I will read all the document that was super interesting. I think all of these questions, they can raise new idea, new potential project, new things we could do in better direction. So I'm very thankful for everyone to participate in this debate. And yeah, just like as I said, I think it's important that people don't hesitate to voice their idea, their opinion, what they think could be done. And if you have some interesting project collaboration, you can reach out to me on the hugging face. We like to push these things. Wonderful. Say we had lots of interesting questions and discussions in the document and in the chat here as well. So thank you to everyone who has participated. And unfortunately, we couldn't answer all questions, but maybe I could ask our two panelists to have a look at the document and answer the remaining questions. And also perhaps go through the comments in the chat that we didn't have time to address in greater depth. It's been a pleasure. I'd love to watch this recording, as I said, in six or 12 months and see how our thinking has evolved, how naive or perhaps overly pessimistic we were. But I think we all agree that these two communities have changed the world in different ways. And any ways in which they could come closer and collaborate and learn from each other will benefit not just them directly, but also society at large. Thank you so much for the discussions, for your comments and for giving me the opportunity to moderate this panel. Thank you. And with that, I'm going to hand over to Bob. Thank you. Thanks also for my side. Really, really interesting discussion. Thanks a lot.