Der Kleine Kreis is a business association based in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, which is committed to actively promoting the region through projects, events, funding, foundations and the annual presentation of the Oldenburg Business Award. As a sponsor, it showcases AAI, the endowed professorship and the chair of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oldenburg, on its website.

The chair of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oldenburg has been filled since November 2020: Prof. Dr Daniel Sonntag has taken up the endowed professorship in ‘Applied Artificial Intelligence’ in the Department of Computing Science. The professorship is funded by KLEINER KREIS, CEWE Stiftung & Co. KGaA, EWE AG, BÜFA GmbH & Co. KG, the OLB Foundation, Dr Caroline Neumüller, Alexander Neumüller and the North-West Metal Industry Foundation. In his research at the AAI, Professor Daniel Sonntag focuses on interactive machine learning. In this approach, computers receive human feedback on their actions whilst simultaneously collecting data automatically, for example through eye-tracking or image recognition. The aim is to further optimise this process – with the goal of enabling machines to learn from humans more smoothly and quickly.