The Etengo Symposium

Artificial intelligence

This packed event offered ample space and opportunity for exciting and varied networking, plus exclusive insights, suggestions, findings and food for thought in the keynote speeches by proven AI experts including Prof. Jürgen Schmidhuber and Dr Sven Körner. For the first time, there was also the opportunity to work on the topic in smaller groups, in three parallel use case tracks. The three experts who led the use cases on the three major fields of application for AI – voice, text and images – offered workshop participants the chance to experience using artificial intelligence directly, perhaps for the first time.

In addition to newfound knowledge and some exciting inspiration, at the end of the day, many participants went away with specific ideas for and sensible approaches to using AI within their own companies. The Etengo Symposium was thus able to serve not only as a successful starting point and source of inspiration, but also as a platform for exchange and discussion enabling us to think about the future together.

Big data vs data protection. Squaring the circle?

Many groundbreaking business models and new technological approaches, and virtually all innovative products and services are based on the collection, storage and analysis of large volumes of data. The aim is to derive valuable knowledge and, in turn, generate added value from the data. This normally means the data is stored permanently, frequently linked to other existing external or internal data sources, and, as a result, increasingly enhanced and refined over time. The data produces patterns, which in turn generate customer typologies or predictions on the likelihood of different future behaviours, for example. These developments logically result in more transparent customers, employees and citizens.

Machine learning, artificial intelligence, the IoT, driverless cars and Industry 4.0 are just a few of the key topics in IT. However, all these approaches essentially rely on data as the hard currency of the future. By contrast, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been made much stricter, and ever more customers and consumers are taking an increasingly dim view of habitual data collection and want to regain control of their data. This conflict of interests presents great opportunities and also considerable challenges.

Digital Workplace: What will the workplace of the future look like?

Digitisation is changing entire industries by raising question marks over traditional business models or even destroying them overnight. The way we live, communicate and interact socially is changing markedly and ever more rapidly. Our work and especially our workplaces are also affected by these changes. Not only when it comes to the ‘how’ and ‘with what’, but also the ‘where’.

Digitised network companies are no longer a utopian dream. Changed requirements are coming face to face with the possibilities offered by new technologies. This applies both to business interests and to people’s changing requirements. So it is only logical that there will be fundamental changes in the workplace, which may even need to reinvent itself completely! If properly implemented, making work much more flexible could represent a major gain in terms of personal freedom.

But how do you design, implement and manage the digital workplace to provide added value? One thing is certain: IT is both a driver and an enabler that has a significant effect on the sustainability of a company.

IT as a driver and enabler of structural change in and out of the workplace.

The future of work will be significantly affected by digitisation. The change already apparent today is a precursor to a fundamental structural change in the way we will work and live in the future. Changes include aspects of the ‘company that breathes’ with agile, project-based value creation and the use of technological innovations, such as in the areas of virtual reality, collaboration and knowledge management, to name just a few.

One thing is certain: the role of IT is critical to the success of this transformation. As a driver and enabler, IT must ensure that adequate solutions are available both intra-departmentally and for external and internal customers. Thus, IT is at the heart of this wave of change ‘in and out of work’ both because it is also affected by and because it is also responsible for the productivity and usability of the new tools and opportunities from the user perspective.