What role will we as human beings play in the digital world? A world in which robots perform monotonous physical labor faster and with fewer errors than humans. A world in which artificial intelligence masters tasks that – just a short time ago – human beings alone could perform. Algorithms can now make more accurate diagnoses than doctors. And neural networks provide more accurate information about the maintenance status of trains and wind turbines than the engineers who developed and built them. Well-trained people now find themselves outperformed by intelligent systems. And many wonder: what will be our role as human beings in the future?
Much that was considered science fiction at the start of my career a good 20 years ago has long since become everyday reality. In itself, technological change is nothing new. What’s new is the speed at which the world is being transformed. Technology is now progressing at an exponential – that is, geometric – rate:
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 and so on.
A prime example: the iPhone has been around for only a little over ten years. In 2007, many people didn’t think smartphones could change our world so radically. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO at the time, said in an interview that he saw “no chance” that the iPhone would “get any significant market share.” The sales figures show just how wrong he was. Apple sold over 200 million smartphones in 2017 alone. Today, we can no longer imagine life without such digital companions.
In hindsight, predictions like Ballmer’s make us grin. But they also show just how hard it is to tell what the future holds in store. Worldwide trends like the digital transformation and ever-increasing globalization are radically changing our surroundings. We see this in our private lives, but also in the world economy: day-to-day life is moving faster, our surroundings are more unstable and interconnections are harder to understand. It’s reached the point that business models are changing fundamentally, global power relationships are shifting and entire markets are disappearing. All this poses a huge challenge for us. What will my company look like, what will my job look like in the future? What competencies will be needed going forward? And do I have the skills to keep up?
Change always creates stress and uncertainty for us as human beings. In my day-to-day work at Siemens, I often notice, however, that many people are generally open to change as such. In fact, employees often want things to change. As a rule, the difficulties arise as soon as they have to try out new things and implement concrete changes themselves. Then I often hear statements like: “I don’t even know where to begin.” Or: “I have so much to do and no time for anything else.” And that’s exactly where the problem is: we have to understand that change isn’t “deferrable,” let alone a phase that ends at some point.
We can’t cut ourselves off from new developments, nor can we reduce the speed at which changes occur. To keep pace, we’ve got to adapt and move faster – as people, as a company and as a society. We’ve got to be open for new things and leverage digitalization and its opportunities in such a way that they help us increase the quality of life and benefit companies as a whole.
