If anything's possible with AI, then what do we value?

The Optimist - conversations with leaders and industries shaping Europe's future, exploring the ideas and innovations driving progress across the continent. AI is changing the world as we know it and it's doing it at a pace that's completely unprecedented. Never before have we had the ability to analyse a picture, extract findings from a PhD this whole writer report literally at the click of a button. Yet is it actually leading to better outcomes? Is AI's lightning speed helping us understand the world more deeply? Make better decisions or even write better reports? To unravel this complex whereby I've brought a company and a leader, the really leading the world at optimising how people and machines can work together. Jochen Diccher, Senior Partner at Rollinburg, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Thanks for having me and looking forward to the conversation. Yeah and look before we dive in you know I have the privilege of speaking to so many experts in different fields as part of this podcast and you know I have a feeling like I'm actually it's like speaking to elite sports stars or elite musicians because you know you've you've focused in your careers on different areas of expertise and I guess the other thing I notice is that many of these professionals they have their habits their ways of of going about their lives. What's a day in the life of Jochen Diccher like? What's what's your routine? How do you get up in the morning? You know do you have breakfast with your kids? Do you work out at the gym? What are your habits? Maybe let's start with the morning and then then I'll give you some some things that I try to do avoid during the day. So actually when I when I start the day it's around six o'clock in the morning each day and then I go for walk with my dog. It actually takes me one hour normally so if I'm not travelling so I'll have my first one hour download of nature without anything else. I mean there is there are certain times where I also have breakfast with my daughter and also with my wife but most of the times I just spend time outside and I'm telling you this because it's it's something that also is a habit in my life right now so I try to avoid everything digital outside of my of what I need to do work related or conversation related or so forth so there's basically there are old school books in my life there is basically I don't watch any movies I just try to be as in a digital detox mode as much as possible just to be able to process the things that I want to do and to achieve without this this current influence of things and topics I'm flowing around in all of the channels. You know it's I want to go a bit deeper there because it's actually it's an epidemic I would say of our current era that we're constantly being one battered by input you know it's you wake up in the morning the first thing you do is you check your news feeds you see what's happening around you at work alone you know I I have a rule before a podcast because I need to be focused I switch off all channels teams emails everything has to go away because you need that space to focus but it's inevitable once you get to work that you have to be engaged on those channels because those are also the inputs how do you balance that how do you deal with it are you engaging with you know agents that help structure your day and and prioritize your emails is it's artificial intelligence involved in your personal planning and workflows actually it isn't it is not right so if when I'm interacting in my professional life there isn't involvement in structuring the day structuring the processes and trying to also get the channels under control I mean we can we can get into this rabbit hole if you want you to get just to get the messaging under control right if if I'm switching over to my private life so I used to be some sort of a second screen third screen junkie and I try to fully avoid this right now so if you would come to my house you would see that I do the weekly planning with my wife actually on a whiteboard writing down what what's happening each day we do this each Sunday so basically yes we have a shared calendar if I'm traveling blah blah blah but we try to do everything else offline so it's it's a little bit it starts to get a little bit nerdish yeah because we also try to avoid for instance our daughter to be in this political world which is we need to balance that to not make her outsider but being offline in your in your normal life that's that's one of the key elements and in the in professional life it's let's try let's let's call it like BS as much as automatized as possible just to get time for yourself to be able to answer the to answer the important questions or to ask the right ones and that's basically where I need to spend lots of focus on you know I think it's interesting as well because in in the digital workspace that we all live in I mean I have team members in Hamburg in Munich in Düsseldorf and Berlin and so there's there's this this kind of it's always a challenge to find that mixture of presence you're talking about presence being aware being in the physical world you you have the you know the digital tools as well how much anyway if you would look at your day how much time is with humans sitting down talking face to face because you know that was the that was the whole mark of consulting was about the relationship so if if I just look at the amount of work that I need to handle you know my daily business I would just say it's mostly virtual right and that's that's something if I would give you a number maybe per week it's 80% is virtual however if something super important or you need really to have some quality time creating something then it's I try to make it physical right because I think if something something is important and that's maybe something where we disconnect already to gen Z because they they see it as some sort of a into like intruding your boundaries their boundaries right but for me it's if if it's something is important you come in person and you you you you you give your counterpart your presence and your time has how things change in the last three years because I mean this is where gen a eyes really taken off has your job changed has your the structure I mean you you in the past you know the task that I used to get interns to do they don't exist anymore I think it let me just not talk about the last three years but more like the last five years right so it started off from the switch of being in presence to something super virtual right with all the efficiency gains that you had and and then it started to become like so easy to do the things in parallel then you could then you could automate it right and then with the start off off of AI or the new AI tools for me personally there was the need to to not get carried away by all these possibilities right so you you were able to have five to ten different training of thoughts that you would normally have an accommodation with a consultant or a whomesoever right but right now you could talk to to the AI here and you just get carried away but by all these possibilities and it's some sort of for me start to get a stack overflow because of all of that you were and you you started to lose your own presence by just being able to to explore so many topics so I tried also to restrict it now to to to being more simply also in how I interact with with the tools anyhow I think that change that we see right now and it's basically may along the lines that are just described is yes there is the need of all these tools but if something is important and it needs to be real let's go like this or authentic then it is again in person it's so easy to to to be carried away by maybe something that's just generated on while we are talking right and I mean it would be super hard for you they now to to judge if an automated AI just in parallel runs here and generates my answers and I'm reading that out loud right and and to just avoid this and and and and give you my full my full my full presence it would need to be in person and that's also the core belief of if you think of you machine interaction in the future also the hybrid hybrid models there's going to be all in my perspective perspective always something in person because that's that's that's going to have a high a super high value. Yeah, it's so fascinating actually is you go deeper into it because there's so many aspects of the embodied experience, you know, as being a human in a physical space. And look, you know, I'm the CEO of an events company. So, you know, I believe in physical interaction. It's my it's kind of my holy grail, but there's something about it, you know, when we walk into a room physically together, we look each other in the eyes and there's a physical present with shake hands, there's skin on skin, it's haptic, it's it's experiential and it's that gives you a stronger bond than, you know, than just a, you know, a call or, you know, something via screens. And I think it's something we need to remember is that actually maybe the values increased of these things in a world where there's endless options for information because is does information have value anymore in a world where knowledge is free, you know, exactly. And I mean, this is exactly the point, right sort of the information or personal or the combination of information with personal interaction in a world. I would not say free, but in a world where you where you really need to be spot on with collecting the right information to get the right results in the right time with the right persons, the interaction of people will have a key role, right. So, as you as you, I mean, if you now would go, we had to, if we had to begin with the channels, right. If you, if you would go from from from X to YouTube to whatsoever, you can simply get any information that you want in every in any tonality or quality that you like. But the difference of us using this then in a productive way is Dale and myself talking about what we really want to do with that, right. And this is this is going to have a high value in this in this future world where you's where you don't maybe even on this, maybe in two years from now, you will, you will not be able to even judge if something that you're talking to is an is an avatar or a virtual person. Yeah. You know, it reminds me of something as well, you're talking about this availability of information and also because you started your whole story about your hour long walk without any digital directions without any screens is about distraction management. I think maybe in your industry, is this something you're noticing with this huge uptick where everybody has a consultant literally at their fingertips that being able to properly evaluate and really score and understand what's useful and put context around that makes consultants like Roland Berger even more important than ever in this era of of abundant information. I think I this is my core belief and and I give you I give you I give you my my visualization of that right so maybe you know the movie inception right so this story about people building up dreams to just extract information out of out of spy so whatsoever right. And and these these these realities created by by in the in the movie by people right but these realities for me stand for the reality is created by a right so. You are you are it's perfectly created yeah you're standing on on an edge of a mountain you look into the value you cannot distinguish it from from from being from from being artificial right but. And if you step into this world there always needs to be as in the in the movie someone if he takes the right perspective he understands that it that this is a fake reality right so there's this there's this scene where they are standing in the streets and all of a sudden they look and at the sky and they see that there's this mirrored that there's this mirrored upside down city version of their own right. And someone telling you come on look up and this is fake right this is going to be the role of a consultant in the future to maybe this is this is a simple. The thing now right just look ahead but imagine something more complex something more complex where it's not so easy to find the right the right perspective on understanding if something's fake or not right and this is going to be. The future role of humans and in particular of consultants to have this perspective to to tell you look this is not real this is this is made up and and the the possibilities of just creating this the cities and this street this street sceneries giving by an AI are infinite in the future right but who but what's not infinite is people being able to understand this. The need perspective to being able to judge that right and and the perspective in the future in my opinion is coming from from your. Sectorial functional industry know how that you bring to the table as an expert because then you are able to understand if this is wrong or right. You know it's also I mean in some ways a consultant there's so many aspects you know you need to be an analyst you need to be you know a psychologist sometimes you know to understand the how things are working in the teams you need to be you know a teacher as well and and actually it reminds me something because I teach at University of Amsterdam. Amsterdam Business School and I've noticed since generative AI and this is what you're talking about in many ways in terms of the endless possibilities you know the the mirror world that we get trapped into imagining is real. My students get lost you know in the past a master's thesis if it was quantitative had to have a statistical modeling component and the theories and possibilities they come up with when they're proposing a thesis are just completely out of this world. You know not even possible and the PhD but this is and I notice now that this reality check is what's the human who can say yes all of those things are theoretically possible but you know what the outcome you want is you want to get to hear and this is the shortest path and that's how you're going to get there. Exactly I mean it's it's like I mean if you look at how it how most of the current architectures in in in out there are build up then it's like a you're navigating in a probabilistic world right it's like. Something made out of of of distributions of mathematical statistical distributions right and and even by that it's it's an endless it's an endless endless universe is created by this kind of. Way functions whatever you call it right but to make set to make it to to ground it in reality you need to have this this probabilistic functions collapse into something that's meaningful even for the real life right and I think as you said or you used the teacher being a teacher I think we need to teach not even as a consultant but even. Now handing over to next generation need to teach our children and the society on how to how to be able to collapse this kind of. Endless possibilities of way function whatsoever into something that's meaningful and it comes from experience right so you need to trade still train people to have this experience but it's a tremendous shift in. In the way how we structure our our society from childhood to experience worker as information is always there on at our fingertips but you need to you need to be able to to use it in the right way and that's that's going to be a huge huge challenge and for most of the people and I guess also for your students. Super difficult to navigate and and create something that's not completely nonsense. I think you know the core of what you're talking about here is this difference between possibility and this is the way function you're talking probabilistic way function versus you know collapsing that down to a singularity a reality something we can work with now. Let's talk about some realities that we have to work with at every point now we've talked about teacher now I mentioned before psychologist now when you come into teams there's always a mix you know if you're working with big teams with the new technology integrations. You're dealing with some people who are going to be reticent they don't want it they're afraid of it they're scared of it taking their jobs. How do you deal with that going into a new environment where there's a you know project a pilot to bring AI to automate processes. I think there is a so interestingly there are two two two main themes here right so there is a there's this I would say 70% of people that you talk to in the in in this first contact phase let's call it like this they are excited on on the on the possibilities to get rid of all the of all the topics that all the task that they really that they really hate right so and imagine being someone who just compiles compiles numbers. for reports that maybe are not read in the boardroom, but you need to create them and send them around. And even sometimes you test it by just copying white pages into it and you notice no one is reading that there. So all of a sudden you have this vision that this can be completely automated and maybe on the other, on the receiving and someone the machine also reads the report. So it's basically up in the void and no one cares. So that's, and that's creates an excitement, right? Being able to handle emails, blah, blah, blah, everything, that's creates an excitement. But if we, and this is also something, and maybe we can talk about this later, but this is not an AI first mindset. This is something super incremental. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not the leapfrogging impact on the daily life that we are going to see, right? But this, anyhow, it creates excitement and people are willing to, to work with it and don't, and are not, not afraid. Yeah, and then you have, and then you have a second theme and that's the theme on, on people that, that really think about, okay, how, how is it going to work out? Because my, my job is meaningful. My job is, or my task is meaningful. My, the, I, I really like what I'm doing. I'm not bored by it, yeah. And then most of the times, even this is found within minigurial functions, and then they are afraid of getting stripped by that, either because they, they don't understand how the, the expertise that they have is going to transfer in a meaningful way into, into a system. Or they reflect on maybe also, as you started it, on the day, in, day in their work life, and understand that, that they really like their, their, their work day, but they fear that this is going to not exist from a, from a cultural behavior anymore. And then these people are really, really afraid and are blocking, are blocking the, the advance, right? And, and I would say the problem of implementing AI comes then from this smaller group of people, the 20 to, I don't know, 30% of people that are afraid. And, and this is, this is where you, where you really need to work. And where you really, really need to, to, to help them, to help them see the possibilities. And if, if I would reflect on myself, then for me, it's, it's, I don't see any, anything negative in this, in this whole thing. If you, so, if you are able to focus on your core task and to structure it in the right way, then the possibilities of AI is something super positive for us all. And that's, that's how I also try to transfer it in the conversation to them, to those, to the people that are afraid of it. - You know, I guess that in any change, there's going to be winners and losers. I mean, you can go back through history and there's the, you know, in England in the 16, 1700s, the Luddites who were, the framebreakers who were smashing up the factories because they were terrified of, of automated weaving machines. You know, this is, this has been the process throughout history. But the key is how you manage the change. So what, with, if you're going to be a, let's say an AI loser that you're going to, you're going to, your position is under, under pressure, under crunch. Firstly, what would those kinds of job, or tasks be that are going to be automated? And then the second part of the question is, what would you suggest for people in those spaces? What are the areas where they can increase their skills and make themselves, I guess, robust in being valuable for the future automated world? - So I think it's a super, it's a, it's a difficult question, right? And if you, if you, not because I, I don't have a view on what's going to be automated or not, but just, just because I think that, and most, if you, if you bring something to the table in your work life that is rooted in deep, deep expertise or maybe special empathy or something, something that you really, that you are really, let's call it Champions League, you have a Champions League skill on something. Then, then you, I, my personal belief is that you don't need to be afraid that this is going to get away, that this is going to be lost in this AI transformation because you will be able, you know, you will be able to use AI to even outperform everyone else in this skill, right? So, you know, if you, and that this is, this is how I would think about it, right? So we as humans, we tend also in how we work on feedback, let me just elaborate on this example. So we give feedback on things that other people are not good at, right? And we don't focus, focus on what they are good at and we give them most of the time, so we give feedback on how I, your own ditcher, would envision someone else to do the task, how I would do it because I'm really, really good at it. And if it's not to the standard, I say, "Listen, you are not good at this, right?" But that's the problem. So if other people then take this feedback and say, "Okay, I'm not good at this blah, blah, blah." Then it might also be that they are not able to transfer this skill set into a valuable contribution in the AI world, right? But if they are really good at something and they use AI to boost this even further, also being able to take this perspective that we talked about, then they are going to create something meaningful even in the AI world. So I think coming back to your question, you should ask yourself, "Is this what I'm doing? Am I really good at that?" Or "Am I just doing it because of the money or because I don't know, I'm happy that the job ends at three o'clock. And then I can go swimming or something like this." Or if you find something that you're really good at, you don't need to be scared of that this is going to get away because you find a way to use AI to get even better and better and better. But if you're just doing something because you're doing something, then there's going to be a problem. And that's going to be the universal truth for all this, for all that we're seeing going for further. I would make the only exception right now and I think we will talk about this later. I think in terms of physical work, so things where you really do something in a physical world, this is going to be a little bit different. But except of that, I think the principle that I just described is going to hold. There's actually, as a famous quote, I think the goes along those lines, which is, don't be afraid of AI taking a job. Be afraid of the guy or girl who knows how to use AI because this is the human machine interface to the co-creation. Great, look, I'd say, really, I guess on this issue, you're talking about how you manage your skills in the workforce. Now, this is on the individual level. What about social change? What social change do you anticipate coming off the back of this huge AI revolution that's, I guess, taking place around the world? And how do business prepare for that? It's a big question, right? So it's the fundamental question on how we are going to evolve going forward. And I would not try to talk about what's going to happen if we hit singularity and there's a general universal intelligence because this is then a completely different conversation. So let's just look at it from the next two years perspective. And I think if you look at this and I connect now directly to society with business, then we come from maybe 100 years or longer belief that you can atomize work in a tailoristic way and then generate rolls out of it, like so on, this is the belief how you atomized work task and then you aggregate it in a meaningful way and all of a sudden there's a roll called sales. There's a roll called branding. There's a roll called, so all this stuff, right? And it completely makes sense to give it then to people and create organizations and businesses and so forth. But if you, I don't know how it is with you Dale, but if you're, I mean, I mean, I have studied math, right? So when I came from university and stepped into my career, for me, it was not fully clear why there should be a sales department. Yeah, so, you know, that's, and it's not fully clear why you need a brand department. So it's something super fundamental that I would not, what was not used to, right? So for me, it's like, okay, I don't know why this should exist, okay? And if you, if you, if you were, you could now say, okay, this was naive, but if you would now step into a world of AI, you could say, if there is not, if you don't need to associate tasks to humans because it can be automatized, yeah? Then maybe there's a different form of aggregation of this work task that, that are so completely different that we all don't really understand how to really associate to people, right? So maybe this different role that I, that we talked about, Okay, finding the reality, but it's a fundamental change if you take this. thought, right? If you think about this, then you would say, okay, if you are, for instance, a founder, one person founder coming from university as I did, and you want to create a business, all of a sudden, it's not necessary to think about creating roles like sales anymore because an AI is able to do it for you if it makes sense. And you know, the floor, and this is that you cannot change from today to tomorrow, large organizations like General Motors or whatsoever because they are, they are built brownfield on this other idea. Yeah. But we need to, we need to think about how to now combine this two, this two new approaches of how would the business look like if it would be created by an AI first approach, and how do you move from what's already existing to into this AI first, into this AI first picture. And that's an interesting change that's posed on the whole society, right? Because if you, if you think about this, coming back also to this champion sleek, champion sleek thought, if you, there, there's still, there, there's always going to be a role in a physical world like sales, branding, controlling, da-da-da, but you need to, you need to be super brilliant in that. And it, it's like you stepping into this world and this is your role in the round, there can be all of these AI agents. And this is a, this is the, the change that we are going to see in society, right? So do we really need to have first graders to, to, to, to university organizations built on this step-by-step approach on teaching, teaching children to be something that is maybe not meaningful or, or does it need to be something different, something more directly connected to this, yeah, champion sleek approach, right? So understanding what your children are really good at and, and just focusing on helping them to grow in this direction and not posing them to, or not telling them to be also good in Greek history or whatsoever. And, and I don't want to also value it against each other, it's just like finding the right, the right topics in your life. And that, that's going to be translate, that's going to be read, radiated into the society. You know, I think it's, it, it questions I, I mean, I have two children in, in German education systems and you look at the things with their learning, I think this fundamental knowledge is important because it gives you perspective and it builds the world view, you know, but at the same time as I think some of the things that aren't necessarily proactively chased or, you know, prioritized in our education systems, wherever it is in the world, they're the things that may, maybe are most important in a world where they will be changed. You know, if we know that the, the world that we had, I was educated in, in the world, I was educated in, not even kidding, things like a set of earphones were sold door to door still. So salesmen had to go face to face and knock on a door, you know, I was before the internet, you and me are probably old enough to, I know to know what that means. But the other side for our children in this generation, it's that, it seems like interest and inquisitiveness about the world around them, interest in technology, you know, interest in ideas. These are things that are really, if you look, if you want to take it to the bottom of the equation to factorize what's important, that's where I'd come to. And then we have to create a world, I guess, where those skills are nurtured so that whatever technology tools or aids, and of course we're pushing aside the whole idea that there's a mega race of AGI coming in the next 10 years. Let's push that aside and just say, where, what skills are invaluable, no matter who you are. And it's those things because, you know, you mentioned brand and sales, you know, I lecture at the school of marketing within the business school in Amsterdam. And we're talking about this in our discussions about marketing. If people are using chat to BT to choose which headphone to buy, is brand important anymore, or is it just getting the top of the algorithm on the web, on the web, you know, or is it, is it how you work with influences? You know, so this whole world is just, as we've talked about, it is changing. And then it's about having, it's not just for our children and education, it's about, you know, businesses. How do we think about those core functions in business? Which ones are essential? Which things can humans do less well than AGI? And there are any way, probably, the things that aren't very exciting and then we can quickly automate. And, you know, and actually, this is a good chance to really transition, because we've been talking about, you know, really deep philosophical questions about society and where we're going, but our podcast is called The Optimist. So, I want to get a bit optimistic with you now and tell me about what's getting you excited? What are you excited about in technology in the next five years? Um, exactly. So, I'm super excited about what's to come here, right? Because in particular, in this field of view, machine interaction and having some, so this augmented, so this vision of augmented possibilities using the global knowledge for something that I would like to do and I would like to achieve, be it in video, be it in, so in all the channels and all the things that I, that I really like, really love to do. And, and you know, the, for me, this is so, except besides all this dystopian things that you could also imagine for me, this is a super optimistic future, right? Because we all will be able to use AI and technology to, to do what we are really good at and to have the freedom to, to work on that. And, and now this, this whole notion of, I mean, if, maybe if, I think it was yesterday or last week of, okay, not only having this question, answer, interaction model with AI, but someone who's really also like in a human conversation stepping in and bringing new thoughts without waiting for my answer, that, that's, I'm super excited, I'm super excited about this. And, and although I, at the beginning, you remember, I told you of being super, super offline, I really enjoy right now to have very long conversation, super nerdish conversations with AI on topics that I'm interested in, right? Because it's now the first time that someone is really answering, really taking a conversation on this, on all this crazy thing that you want to talk about. And, and if, if, if this is going to also then propel into something more, not so mechanistic, I mean, come on, that's, that's going to be a super, super nice, nice world that we are going to live in. So people that love cat pictures on the internet are able to find someone to talk about cat, cat pictures on the internet. And this is a message of hope, yeah? And, and, and not something that, not, not something that we, that we should be afraid of. Because all of a sudden, all your obscure hobbies, all your obscure interests, you are able to find someone, if it's just an, but maybe also to find someone through the AI that's also interested in this topics and has also a super detailed, super nerdish, super sophisticated conversation on that, yeah? And one of my examples, I mean, my brother's also mathematician. He has, he has done his PhD thesis in a super, super, super specialized, math topic that's even specialized for mathematicians, right? So it's so abstract that some notions that he, he, he worked on is, is, is be, beyond comprehensiveness for, for, for me, being an also mathematician because it's so crazy. But now he's able to talk to an AI about this and this AI is going to have a conversation. Back in the days, there were just five people being interested in that. And now there's this, there are all these models you can talk to. And I mean, this is a, this is a, a super interesting, it's going to be a super interesting time going forward. Well, you can ditch a senior partner at Roland Berger, it's been such a pleasure talking to you today. And, and I love that vision of the world where we can become specialists and in themes that were interested in without having to spend, you know, eight years at university like many of us have had to do in the past. Thanks so much for being a part of the optimist podcast. Thanks for having me. It was super nice conversation. Thanks for listening to The Optimist. For more insights and updates about tech, visit us at techdescherop.org. The optimist is produced by tech by Handelsblatt. Music by Christian Heinemann. Stay curious.