How artificial intelligence is changing our world?

Today's changes have a new driver that played a subordinate role a few years ago: artificial intelligence. The question of how this will affect the future world can be summed up in a single sentence:

Machines get their own consciousness.

This technological change will change and affect our entire world. And I would like to summarize this in five theses:

1. The age of the digital universe is just beginning: each of us and everything will be intelligently networked with each other.
2. There are no limitations: Intelligent AI systems will invade all areas of this world. The age of machines with their own consciousness begins.
3. Under these framework conditions, a new type of human is emerging with a completely new understanding of the relationships between humans and machines.
4. These novel interactions from digital shadows and intelligent agents to humans and machines is the beginning of the age of hybrid intelligence.
5. 
   In order to manage and shape this dimension of digital transformation, turbulence-capable design principles are required. Agility, mindfulness and trust are required.

A historical comparison

In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg began dealing with the subject of book printing. It only took him 10 years to go from a so-called reliquary mirror to mass book printing, and another 10 years later the whole of Europe was littered with printers. At the time of 1450 nothing was there. Neither paper printing nor rotary printing machines existed. The movable letter was not yet known. And only 10 years of development must have been a real innovation shock for the time.

What were Gutenberg's success factors? He was a man who lived against the zeitgeist. He was a real stubborn person and he invested an incredible amount of capital in order to achieve his goals. He also took a lot of risks: For example, he pledged almost all of his own life insurance policies. The idea was more important to him than his own profit. He was a real production engineer. He also knew how to invent the basic innovation - the reproducible letter - and to use it for his own purposes - mass book printing. The tragic - and that should be a warning to us: his own hometown Mainz was destroyed 20 years later by a war in which mass-printed leaflets were used for the first time.

he age of the digital universe

Today we are facing a similarly fundamental disruptive innovation: Everything and everything is being networked with each other. The development in this direction has been underway for some time, but with the advent of human-independent intelligence in these networked systems, we are entering a new dimension. The items and objects of everyday life, but also the vehicles and buildings, are given their own consciousness on the basis of huge so-called "Big Data Lakes". It starts with future smartphones, which will become intelligent "personal agents".

A new dimension is that we are surrounded by digital agents, digital twins and digital shadows. It starts with future smartphones, which will become intelligent "personal agents".

But there will also be many agents around us who are closely connected to our personal way of life. For example, we are about to have our own interactive media center that takes care of the refrigerator, controls the entire energy supply and reminds us to eat breakfast. The thinking bumper of the car, on the other hand, is a little further away. But it is also foreseeable that we will be able to build intelligence into polymer materials that can, for example, lead to the bumper noticing when a pedestrian is nearby and adopting soft material properties. Implanted cardiovascular pumps are also no longer a dream of the future. Likewise, clothing with computers built into it will become commonplace. Maybe we'll even have a rule that our children have to wear smart clothes on their way to school. There could also be cooperative building structures in which people communicate intensively with each other: virtually open structures between the rental apartments. To this end, the TU Chemnitz is currently experimenting with 200 older people in a large so-called prefabricated building in Leipzig, among other things with the aim of developing a kind of “driver’s license 4.0” that enables us to deal appropriately with the “4.0 environment” around us.

The age of machines with their own consciousness

Artificial intelligence has no limits and will conquer all areas of this world. The age of machines with their own consciousness begins now. But first of all: What is the core of artificial intelligence? Why does this now mean that really all areas are influenced by it? And why is so-called "deep learning" - which is nothing more than feedback neural networks - the decisive breakthrough tool for artificial intelligence, even though the theory was invented more than 30 years ago?

The decisive reason is the availability of data due to the extreme networking and the digital infrastructures, which are the prerequisite for the feedback neural networks to be able to develop effectively. The combination of speed in handling vast amounts of data, a relatively simple learning algorithm and very little necessary "a priori" knowledge describes the core of the performance of modern artificial intelligence.

I would like to give you an example of the "intelligent shoe" that is given an identity at the time it is ordered. He knows who he is and he also knows who his customer is. He knows what the customer wants from him, for example whether he should monitor the customer's parameters. And he also knows what his condition and his path will be like: He will have to work his way through the production facilities, in which there is no longer any classic central control. All of this could be done "democratically" according to the political principle of the separation and entanglement of powers, a method for which there is already a first application for textile weaving machines.

When the intelligent shoe is finished in this way, an automatic transport container will take care of everything else in the near future. Such fully automatic trucks are nothing new - we drove more than 5,000 km fully automatically in flowing traffic on German autobahns with a consortium from RWTH Aachen University and industrial partners as part of the KONVOI project in 2009.

Let's be clear: products will act as super agents in the future. They plan their production and transport themselves. They have requirements for other agents, for example a production facility, and they negotiate resources with other agents - on the road or in production.

Age of Global-Regional Homo Zappiens

A new type of human is emerging with a completely new understanding of the relationships between humans and machines. What will be new about Homo Zappiens? He can multitask, right from the start. He can think non-linearly. To put it a bit exaggerated: The six-year-old child can do 20 things at the same time, but not one thing for five minutes. And that's not bad.

All of these developments have already led to a new type of human being in the last few decades, which the Dutch scientist Win Veen calls Homo Zappiens. A new type of human is emerging with a completely new understanding of the relationships between humans and machines. Win Veen presented these thoughts for the first time in 2006 - at that time they still seemed a bit visionary, but they struck me "like lightning".

It is already part of everyday life that we have new forms of networking and daily routines are organized over great distances, sometimes around the world. It has also become normal for us to be in virtual working and living environments distributed around the world. But what will be new about Homo Zappiens? He can multitask, right from the start. He can think non-linearly. To put it a bit exaggerated: The six-year-old child can do 20 things at the same time, but not one thing for five minutes. And that's not bad, it's good, because this generation is already adapted to the new conditions of information overload. It already has selection criteria and it is already highly parallel.

What needs to change is the educational process.

This is also what we as managers are radically confronted with. We're getting a different generation of people into our companies. We have to offer something to them. They tick differently and they want to work differently because the old structures seem outdated to them. It is therefore inevitable that learning processes will have to be designed in a completely different way. Learning through experience, through events, through fun will have to be the trend if the university and school systems don't want to end up in a dead end. Learning must continue to be fun. For example, the children and young people move intensively in social media of various kinds - in channels such as freekickerz, Gronkh, BibisBeautyPlace, LeFloid, Emrah, Mr Wissens2go or above all TheSimpleClub. From the student's point of view, the latter is better than any textbook.

The change in the world of work will be much more serious.

Learning through experience, through events, through joy will have to be the trend. Learning must continue to be fun. From the student's point of view, this is better than any textbook.

With the systems of artificial intelligence, human work will be replaced or changed. This applies to white-collar jobs as well as highly qualified work. IBM Watson AI computers can already take over certain areas of controlling today. Decentralized platforms will make massive inroads and will also take on administrative tasks. This development will result in an enormous rationalization effect - not to mention the autonomous systems in the air and on the road.

But the fully automatic car will not just “just” drive fully automatically. For example, it will become the central digital twin for mobile nursing staff and will take over the entire scheduling, documentation, traffic jam monitoring, route optimization, etc. in swarm intelligence with its colleague vehicles. The nurse can then simply get into the vehicle and start a conversation directly with the next patient they are visiting, for example via Skype. In this case, the vehicle becomes part of our everyday life as a social robot.

The age of hybrid intelligence

In summary, one can say that human-machine interaction 4.0 creates a completely new dimension of cooperation between humans and intelligent objects. The age of hybrid intelligence between humans, machines and the respective digital shadows has begun.

The social robot becomes part of our everyday life.

The time of man's supremacy over the objects he creates is coming to an end. Of course, human-to-human interaction will continue to be of fundamental importance in the future – perhaps even more so than it is today. There will be no getting around it. For example, more and more often we get together much too late to talk to each other about the important things. And it is certainly one of the biggest "uncultures" of the last 20 years that people believe that human-to-human interaction can be achieved via e-mails. Rather, some e-mail traffic should be banned and people forced to meet face to face - or at least via Skype - to resolve a dispute objects created for him comes to an end.

The human-machine interaction will also remain on the different levels, whether on the screen or with the digital agent of the machine or the real machine does not matter. However, there will have to be an increasing “partnership on an equal footing”. The thought of the “supremacy” of man over machine is no longer valid.

Machine-to-machine communication that runs without humans will increase rapidly, precisely because every machine is interspersed with its digital agents. For example, the weaving machine mentioned above contains around 200 software agents and no longer has any PLC controls. These agents even have the right to vote and select “their” coordinators or spokespersons. This is where digital shadow structures are created, with which one can interact, but which independently form something like a kind of "shadow economy" of machine-to-machine communication.

In the long term, all technical objects in the real world will become intelligent

This is the actual "lightning bolt" that has struck: In the long term, all technical objects in the real world will become intelligent and develop self-awareness and self-awareness. There will be a lifelong learning process of these objects.

The digital shadows, the "digital skin" will become a dominant part of technology and human identity, both in the communication between machines and machines, between people and people and between machines and people. A "dynamics of the digital shadows" develops, which runs parallel and can increasingly develop a high level of intelligence.

This is the actual "lightning bolt" that has struck: In the long term, all technical objects in the real world will become intelligent and develop self-awareness and self-awareness. There will be a lifelong learning process for these objects, learning from each other with their technical partners, but also from people. Driving schools for technical objects will also become a matter of course. This ubiquitous and unobtrusive interaction between the digital shadows of technology and people will dominate all aspects of communication.

This has an enormous impact on the digital system landscape with the dimensions that intelligence is everywhere, that the physical and digital world are coupled and that we need new types of infrastructure.

Success factors of human action: agility, trust and mindfulness

In our experience of consulting with P3 OSTO, agility, trust and mindfulness are the key success factors under these turbulent conditions. From my point of view, each factor is absolutely necessary for the success of this change - they are "KO factors". If one of these three factors fails, the whole thing fails.

What are the success factors for such a sustainable digital transformation? Agility, trust and mindfulness. This is a huge construction site.

Agility does not just mean the use of Scrum or a software development method, but means that the entire structure of a company, from product development to production, production changes, ramp-up processes and administrative structures, is carried out according to the principles of agility become. This is a huge construction site, where product development areas are usually more advanced than the rest of the company. And the central areas of administration, finance and controlling usually find it harder, although they often need it more.

It also needs a culture of trust - vertically and horizontally between departments. If you don't have this in your organization, forget the whole transformation! She will not succeed.

And if you don't have mindfulness - if you don't ask yourself: What is actually happening here? What is happening culturally? What tensions do we have? - if you do not perceive this in breadth and diversity, you will not be successful. Mindfulness is the art of perceiving the entire complexity and dynamics (dynaxity) and not repressing them. However, mindfulness is only an art when you have learned to endure these perceptions and not immediately fall into the reflex of rushing into something.

Each of these three characteristics must be fulfilled with high quality so that change can work. I would like to recommend two books to you: "The Ego Trap - 7 Ways to Ruin Your Business" (Renate Henning) and "The Art of the Small Solution - How People and Companies Master the Complexity" (Klaus Henning).

May we all succeed in actively shaping the new world of hybrid intelligence of humans and artificial intelligence in a value-oriented manner before others irresponsibly do so.