Wie plant man für eine unvorhersehbare Zukunft, Sofie Hvitved?

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:01][music] >> Künstliche Intelligenz Wo heute geopolitische Spannung herrscht, kann in wenigen Tagen ein Konflikt entstehen. Und was der US-Präsident morgen sagt, ist am Abend manchmal schon hinfällig. Und warum das wichtig ist, als Führungskraft stehen Sie vor einer quasi unlösbaren Aufgabe.

[00:00:20]Sie müssen für eine Zukunft planen, die unvorhersehbar ist, heute wohl mehr denn je. Und dabei steht viel auf dem Spiel.

[00:00:26]Geschäftsmodelle geraten unter Druck, unser gesamtes Wirtschaftssystem und unser Schicksal hängt massiv von den USA ab. Oder etwa nicht? Über diese Frage sprechen wir ab Sonntag bei der wichtigsten Handelsblatt-Konferenz des Jahres. Zur Tech 2026 kommen mehr als 1800 führende Köpfe aus Wirtschaft, Politik und Wissenschaft zusammen. Wir diskutieren, welche Technologien in den nächsten Jahren entscheidend werden und wie wir die Zukunft damit selbst gestalten. Mit dabei ist auch mein heutiger Gast. Die Futurist Sophie Witwill ist Expertin für Zukunftsszenarien und berät Führungskräfte, die mit Unsicherheiten umgehen müssen. Mit ihr habe ich darüber gesprochen, warum wir uns nicht auf eine, sondern auf viele Zukünfte vorbereiten müssen, warum es ratsam ist, darüber nachzudenken, wie wir uns selbst disruptieren und welche KI-Szenarien von Hirnchips bis zur sozialen Spaltung wir besser schon mal durchspielen sollten. Und damit herzlich willkommen zu Handelsblatt Disrupt. Ich bin Larissa Holtzki und ich freue mich, dass Sie zuhören.

[00:01:25]>> [music] >> Übrigens, auch wenn sich die Technologien ändern, eins bleibt gleich.

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[00:01:58]Und damit kommen wir direkt zu meinem Gespräch mit Sophie Witwill, Futurist und Leiterin für Media Futures and Innovation beim Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies. And today, we are going English for special conversation ahead of Tech 2026.

[00:02:13]>> [music] >> Sophie, welcome to Handelsblatt Disrupt.

[00:02:17]>> Thank you very much.

[00:02:19]>> Sophie, we are recording this right before Tech 2026, Handelsblatt central conference on the future of business.

[00:02:26]You'll be setting the tone on Sunday with a keynote titled how to prepare for an unknown future.

[00:02:32]With rapid technological change, geopolitical tensions in a highly interconnected world, and an unpredictable president in the White House, is the job of business leaders and policy makers harder than ever before?

[00:02:46]>> Yes.

[00:02:47]>> Was that a yes and no, or would you like me to elaborate?

[00:02:50]>> Please, go on.

[00:02:52]>> Yeah. Yeah, I think it's hard because this demands a mind shift. Um in times that are at least more certain, you know, with more certainty and a bit more understanding of what direction this is all taking, it is obviously easier to make decisions because you can easily get a certain amount of certainty. And now, in this time that we're in, uh the environment is simply so it's a such a changing environment, and we have no idea what's going to become 5, 10 years from now. So, leaning into that certainty and understand that you will not be able to have certainty before acting. So, you will need to have a prepared mindset in order to navigate all the uncertainty that will keep on coming. So, if you're waiting for certainty, then you'll definitely have a hard time navigating in these times.

[00:03:43]>> Mhm. And at the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, you work on future scenarios that help leaders and organizations to prepare. You and your colleagues call yourselves futurists.

[00:03:55]That's quite a fancy job title. For people who aren't familiar with the concept, what does it actually involve?

[00:04:02]>> So, being a futurist involves quite a few things, but I think mainly the um what can you say? The skill in the of understanding how to uh um work with the mindset shifts of um being able to re-perceive um the reality that we think, you know, question our assumptions. So, futurists often provoke.

[00:04:28]>> Mhm.

[00:04:28]>> So, you know, and we provoke with the scenarios that we do to try and make sure that you're not uh too stuck on what might be called ghost scenarios. You know, these exist around organizations. Maybe you have some ideas of the futures, but they have never been updated, and then you you have this false sense of certainty that you then navigate from.

[00:04:50]>> Mhm.

[00:04:50]>> You build your strategies from, you know, you This is this These are some of the truths that we um as futurists try constantly to explore other paths, you know, what is the plausible. The way that we work at the institute at the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, we we work with uh strategic applied uh foresight, and I think that is that is a big um what can you say? It's it's a big difference from if you work with more speculative future, where you don't need to apply or inform your strategic choices.

[00:05:20]>> Mhm.

[00:05:21]>> So, we try to see how broad is are these plausible futures actually. Uh and that's what we're using scenarios for, and that's why we call ourselves futurists, because we are leaning into these possible futures. And also, I want to emphasize the S in our name, the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, because that is one of the most fundamental things when you start leaning into futures thinking is understanding that the future is not uh you know a linear you futures are plural and we have no idea which ones it's going to be but we can uh look into these uncertainties and see what are the plausible outcomes and then we can start creating worlds in which we can start to understand some of the changes that are happening.

[00:06:06]>> Very interesting. I want us to understand how you develop those futures scenarios. So one of my favorite guests on this podcast was the German-Swedish economic historian Kai Benedict Frey who will also be a tech by the way. He said on this rap you have to understand the past in order to say anything meaningful about the future. Is that right from your perspective and what other data and information do you work with?

[00:06:34]>> So first of all I completely agree that we have to understand the past. It would be ignorant not to understand the past that we have but we also have to understand that we cannot base our understanding and navigation of the futures just by using the data from the past. Of course we can see a lot of trends we can see a lot of things that we should pay attention to but if we only refer to the past data then we are missing out on all the new things that we haven't seen before and especially in a time of AI where we are seeing these shifts that doesn't look like the shifts that we've had before because suddenly it's moving into new territory. Uh this technology is moving into our knowledge work it's moving into new spaces where we haven't seen technology change the the systemic sort of system or so uh as futurist and many for people working with foresight work with this futures cone is called the futures cone has a flaw because it starts at one shared point which is now assuming that we all have a shared you know, starting point, which we don't.

[00:07:45]And then but but the idea with the cone is to show that the further into the future, the broader the broader the the sort of um >> [clears throat] >> the more different futures will will come, you know, the broader the perspectives can be in the plausible futures, the more difficult it is to predict because of course we can predict to a certain amount with the data from the past.

[00:08:06]>> Mhm.

[00:08:07]>> But so some of the new sort of futures cones we're seeing are also and we're also working with that here at the institute is the historical cone because equally the further back to the future, the more different futures you also have. And of course you have to pay attention to that. So I think it's a great observation.

[00:09:01]>> [music] >> So how do you gather your information?

[00:09:04]Do you talk a lot to people, to scientists, to politicians? What kind of sources do you use?

[00:09:12]>> So that depends on the context, right?

[00:09:14]It depends on what project we're working on, on the scope. But we have an outside-in philosophy. So instead of looking inside out, of course we talk with experts within the field to understand the context that they're in, but we also have to go move beyond to the external environment.

[00:09:30]And one of the things we're also working at at the institute is understanding how the very act of foresight is changing with AI as well because of course the way we gather signals >> Mhm.

[00:09:41]>> and the way we interact with the world around us to try and make sense of it because that's basically what we of course try to do to take these signals and make sense of it in a future's perspective. Um that is also changing with these new possibilities of horizon scanning using AI of um simulation inserting you know a lot of assumptions and and possible futures and then see how do they play out with let's say an energetic um workforce. These kind of things is is extremely interesting. So our methodology and way of collecting uh data points and understanding the signals is is very very it's a huge area of places but of course we talk to a lot of people we do a lot of expert interviews a lot of research a lot of desk research um yeah. So it's a it's a it's a wide range.

[00:10:29]>> Mhm. And before we go further I should mention we have a rule here at Hundred Head Disrupt. We talk about big ideas and complex technical details but in words that anyone can understand. So I have this little squeaker and if you use a term that might need a sentence of unpacking and explanation I'll use it.

[00:10:47]Understood?

[00:10:48]>> I would actually be disappointed if you don't use that in our talk. So you will have to use it.

[00:10:53]>> Okay. Is there a concept or term from futures thinking that you know you'll lean on today and we should define up front?

[00:11:00]>> Huh.

[00:11:01]So from futures thinking itself I mean we have a lot of different methodologies a lot of different approaches.

[00:11:08]>> You already mentioned the concept of prepared mindset.

[00:11:12]>> Yeah.

[00:11:13]>> can explain what that actually means and what it means for leaders in 2026.

[00:11:20]>> So I think a prepared mindset for leaders is the ability to stay strategically alert and mentable sort of flexible and action oriented even under uncertainty right? So that whole idea of not uh needing to lean into the false sort of sense of certainty, but being able to have a mindset that has prepared itself for the plausible futures, hence it's much easier to to to lean in and say yes, we do this but with the information of the plausible futures that might come and and the ability to flexibly sort of change your direction as the futures unfold. So it's not having a perfect plan.

[00:12:05]Unfortunately, a lot of people come to foresight and say we want to use foresight to lean into the uncertainty so we can get certainty.

[00:12:15]And that is just the worst way you can approach foresight because that is not what a prepared mindset is about. So it's about understanding that especially you know, when it comes to the areas of of of huge uncertainty and where we have a very complex reality that we have to navigate on all levels.

[00:12:34]So this is not just with AI, this is our geopolitical landscape, this is you know, a lot of the changes that are happening in society.

[00:12:42]So having these several possible futures in mind, challenging the assumptions behind today's strategy and asking what if the things we are optimizing today becomes less relevant. So constantly questioning the past, that is what a prepared mindset is about. And it sounds kind of easy, but that kind of mental flexibility is is not something that just comes and and you cannot assume that people who are taking the decisions and the leaders listening in necessarily have this.

[00:13:12]>> And you now said there's no perfect plan. When I first heard about your concept of preparing for multiple possible futures, I thought well, what does that mean? So does that mean that we not have to have a plan A but a plan B and C and D in the drawer.

[00:13:31]>> Yeah, basically, yes, one would assume that as The problem is of course you can do big bets, right? But as the futures unfold, that big bet at a certain time, you will have to face it and say, is that actually the right way? Is it the right path? And then have the the possibility to change direction.

[00:13:49]>> Mhm.

[00:13:50]>> And I think we we have seen that in a lot of of course cases where people are simply betting on something wrong and they they they deny to to move out of that path because they have decided and this is the strategy and it's a 5-year strategy and we stay in this lane.

[00:14:04]Um so it's about understanding um how also to constantly monitor and ensuring that you are um not missing out of any of these signals.

[00:14:15]So, of course you could be you know, you shouldn't be paying attention to signals all the time and changing directions all the time, but being very very aware um that there is no one future and you have to, yeah, to look at when the signals gets too strong, now is the time that you should question assumptions and um and maybe consider um going in a different direction.

[00:14:37]>> Mhm. And here at 100% Disrupt, we focus on the disruptions triggered by new technologies mainly um and the dominant topic is of course artificial intelligence. On a daily basis, companies are trying to use the technology as a tool for efficiency, optimizing processes and so forth, but you argue it's even more important to understand AI as part of a larger systemic shift. So, what exactly does that mean and how do you actually do it?

[00:15:04]>> I think that it's very logical that once you beat a new technology, you start thinking about how can that be applied to our existing strategic fit, right? It makes perfect sense.

[00:15:14]And also a lot of companies are thinking, how can we do things, you know, faster, cheaper, better with this new technology? But the problem is that it's optimizing a logic that might be outdated, right? And it's a very narrow lens to look at it. But it's very, very hard to see the systemic shifts sort of when it's unfolding, right? So, as we're seeing right now and as I started talking about the whole idea that AI may change how knowledge flows, who has access to expertise, how decisions are prepared, and how work is coordinated. So, it's much more about the system surrounding and the strategic fit within that new sort of competitive ecosystem that we have to start thinking about.

[00:15:57]Where does value come from?

[00:15:59]Are you assuming that the value that once was from a certain task or a certain service or a certain product that that will still carry value in this new AI-mediated ecosystem because it might not. And I think that is the problem that if you're only looking at it on a very basic tools and task level of augmenting ourselves in our existing roles and keeping ourselves into that, then you're missing out on the deeper shifts. And this is something that we are seeing on all levels right now.

[00:16:31]>> And let us make that concrete with an example. So, we at Handelsblatt are firmly convinced that AI will change every industry, every company, every job. In our own leadership team, we think a lot about what that means for us specifically. So, how will readers find us in the future if platforms like Google lose relevance? What happens to us if our most platform, which is the Handelsblatt app, disappears because people no longer use apps, but instead rely entirely on personal AI assistants? So, the media business is your sweet spot, luckily.

[00:17:04]What does the systemic shift actually looks like for us?

[00:17:08]>> I have been spending the last four days discussing this with industry leaders in the media industry. So, I just came out of another conference and another working summit exactly looking at what does the business model look in this new AI mediated information ecosystem where we're moving from buckets to pipes. And it is this is a huge shift. Um because one thing is that your app might you know your the whole sort of disintermediation that that kind of your own app and your relationship to the audiences is being disrupted due to the fact that people are moving from the attention economy where you had your visibility go and approach the your users and you have the direct relationship to being mediated by agents. Like right now, sorry, yeah.

[00:17:53]>> Can you Thank you.

[00:17:55]I think attention economy is a term that I use very often but maybe outside the media ecosystem it's not so common. So maybe you can explain what that actually means.

[00:18:07]>> I can. So the attention economy, you know, is in in both in the physical So when we have you know print magazines and media and newspapers, it's about getting the attention people to buy something to come in. In the digital that transformed into getting attention online. So getting clicks, getting you know, being visual, people being aware of you so they came to your web page so you could show some ads and you can get some you know, get people to pay for subscriptions. So it's all about getting the attention. You need to catch the attention. Right now, suddenly we have a technology that can cater to your intention.

[00:18:44]It that will know what you want, that can act [clears throat] on your behalf.

[00:18:48]And the better we are the better we are seeing What we're seeing right now is that this whole infrastructure of me building my own personal second brain That might be a little bit but I can say it myself. [laughter] So building our own contextual sort of knowledge that I can then plug into the system and say, "You know me and you So I don't need to explain much to you.

[00:19:13]Agents, go ensure that you fetch everything that is interesting for me and I don't want to, you know, I don't so then it goes from the attention that you're trying to get from me to an intention that you are sort of relevant in in what I intend to do. And that completely changes how the internet is being structured right now. This movement, we're seeing it with the news Google announcements on how we search, you know, it's completely different way.

[00:19:39]Uh so the generative part of the internet and the machine readable part of the internet is becoming much much more important because it's about how agents can serve my intention and you have to fit into that ecosystem. So that is completely changing how then content and that is one thing. Then the other thing is that that content no longer necessarily comes in buckets, right? I want the information in a way that is relevant to me, whatever format I use, whatever length, whatever, you know. So I don't want to spend a lot of time clicking through a lot of static content, but I want what's relevant and hence the content becomes liquid. So it moves from static to liquid and that's where it's moving through the pipes instead of being in buckets and the whole business model around this changes, right? So you have to figure out what value do you What is your value in this ecosystem?

[00:20:35]How will my agents find you and be willing to negotiate the price of paying for the content that you provide or at least maybe the facts that you provide if we go down to the sort of very atoms of the of of what you are delivering and the value that you're giving.

[00:20:52]>> You know what's so interesting about reporting on AI as a journalist, you can really emphasize with the challenges other companies are facing because you're living through them and exactly the same time. I personally believe that people in white collar jobs, managers and knowledge workers like you and me are going to go through an enormous identity crisis in the coming years because the things we've been recognized for, the things that perhaps made us successful are in many cases now much easier with AI and people who previously couldn't do them as well are suddenly achieving the same or similar results. So, how should people mentally prepare themselves and not only [clears throat] the companies for that very personal challenge and change?

[00:21:40]>> Yeah, that is the million-dollar question, right? And that whole understanding of the competitive advantage.

[00:21:47]So, it's not producing more content. You will not be get more value just by producing more content or more expertise or more, you know, it's about figuring out how you can >> [snorts] >> like what value do you bring in the new ecosystem? What what what cannot be put into bits and pieces that creates some kind of value. And for instance, for podcasts hosts, I would say that that is a lot of personality, relationship, you know, the people kind of this whole move towards the creator economy that we have been seeing for a long time and the move towards you as a person being more the most important thing because it's not necessarily the facts that you bring or the content that you have in there, it's more the relationship that you have with the consumers. But when you are a knowledge worker in other kinds of organizations, also acknowledging that that that scarcity that has been around your expertise is gone because I can plug in a skill set an AI skill set that can be your expertise, right?

[00:22:48]So, when AI makes some forms of knowledge more abundant, advantage then moves towards those, you know, who has the best context, trusted data, better questions, stronger judgment, faster learning loops and you have to be part of that and I think that is creating a an extreme divide right now because some people are building their contexts, getting better into doing what they're doing or moving it to the next level, right? And others have no idea that this is actually happening already. So this whole understanding of how the orchestration is changing and what becomes valuable in this is yeah, we [clears throat] we're just trying to figure it out.

[00:23:24]>> Now we talked about how the scarcity around my own personal expertise is disappearing. Does the same apply at the company level? How does the competitive landscape of companies change when knowledge, expertise, and decision-making becoming increasingly AI-driven and mediated?

[00:23:45]>> I think so.

[00:23:47]It's completely redesigning workflows and roles and products and models and we've had like now also with with some of the latest trends like is the SAS couplets, you know, that SAS products. I don't know. You know, you just vibe code them. And this is the reality.

[00:24:04]>> You need to explain what the SAS couplets >> [laughter] >> Okay, I I can't I can't even say it. So SAS couplets.

[00:24:12]>> SAS couplets.

[00:24:13]>> SAS couplets.

[00:24:14]>> So the whole idea, you know, you have software as a service, which is SAS. And then you have the couplets.

[00:24:24]So the idea is that the companies that have a service where they said, "We have some software. You go here and subscribe to it and you'll pay us." And then a a lot of companies spend enormous amounts of money subscribing to these software that can help them do different things.

[00:24:42]Now you can vibe code. Is that also or do do your listeners know what vibe coding is?

[00:24:48]>> explain it for them. Okay, I will explain.

[00:24:50]>> So um vibe coding is a term that came out that it's a beginning with generative AI was mostly used to transform text and you could sort of start using it also to generate code, but with vibe coding, suddenly this multi-modality of changing something into something else is you can just write and say, I want an app and I want it to do this and it has to be green and it has to look like that. And then you just click the button and then you get the app.

[00:25:19]And this is of course simplifying it, but that means that I was just seeing today some journalistic products, you know, that you you can just suddenly create these these apps or these small features that we have never been able to create before because you needed some kind of programmer to do it for you and we just do it. So that means that some of these services that you paid for, you can just make it yourself. And of course this is not just you can just make it yourself because there are lots of flaws in it and you know, we have a lot of Well, programmers and coders will say that it's a messy, you know, a messy and they're cleaning up in so much of this vibe coding mess.

[00:25:56]But to me, these are one of the pockets of future that we're seeing [clears throat] that the whole idea we have with with software being something exclusive and something that is made for the masses now can be hyper-personalized. So I can have my own personal app that does exactly what I want it to do. It's only made to monitor something specifically and act on that and do this and you know, have something that is for me. Nobody else could have interest in that app, but I just make it for myself. And that is a new reality where of course if you provide that piece of software, I don't want to pay $10 a month to have that service because it's not even [clears throat] hyper-personalized to me. So it's not even as good as mine is and then I don't really care about the small flaws that might be. Plus it's getting better and better.

[00:26:42]>> Yeah, that's in the coding.

[00:26:44]>> That's an interesting point. So if you start a company today, the preconditions are totally different than >> I mean, what what you think might be a business model can be a small feature in 6 months. This is the reality. This is why we're seeing so many of the new AI native companies die as well, because what they have built and think can be a company, great idea, great product, but suddenly it's just a feature in the AI mediated information ecosystem, you can just do it in Claude.

[00:27:10]>> Yeah. Yeah, a good point. So, our opening interview at Tech is actually with Max Unanderstand, the CEO of Legora, one of the fastest growing AI companies in the legal space. And he once said something that really stuck with me. He said, "My employees have to be prepared that they may have worked on a problem for months, and then it becomes obsolete within weeks. Is that the new normal?"

[00:27:32]>> That is the new normal, and I think it's it's it's also in the in the innovation space and in the business models and how do we pivot and what do we pivot to and what is our value? What is our moat, you know? What what what is it that keeps being something that has a competitive edge?

[00:27:48]Those are some of the questions like in all industries that are being asked right now. Um because we're simply that is the systemic shift. We're seeing new logics and we have a hard time figuring out what that logic is.

[00:28:00]And then we hence [clears throat] we try to clinch to the old logics. We try to clinch to the certainties, and that's where we unfortunately spend a lot of money in a lot of products that are not fit for the future. So, we're missing out on sort of preparing for the futures, which is what foresight basically is about, understanding how you can prepare for these possible futures as well. At the same time, of course, which brings me to a term that I'm pretty sure you'll use your sound to the ambidextrous leadership.

[00:28:31]>> Oh, what's that about?

[00:28:33]>> I don't This is a This is a word that I've recently been acquainted to, so this is also new in my vocabulary. Ambidextrous means that you have to do two things at the same time. Like you have to both write with the with the right and the left hand so to say. And leaders have to improve the understand that they will have to improve the present return on investment now. Of course, do what you do at the same time as exploring what may replace and reshape it. And what we're seeing is most people they spend a lot of time again back to the optimizing to the you know making things more efficient taking your existing logic spending a lot of time finding out how can AI do this faster better cheaper.

[00:29:13]But what we need to do is at the same time spend and of course not not not maybe the same amount but a larger amount than now on exploring some of the new paths that this can can can lead. So if you are an ambidextrous leader, you understand that there are some things that should be protected but there should be space to explore what may become more important tomorrow.

[00:29:43]>> Meaning we need to understand and think about how we could disrupt ourselves.

[00:29:49]>> Exactly. Which is your what what your podcast is all about. And but I think navigating that ambidexterity is very hard and it comes together with the prepared mindset and it also comes to be together with the sense of urgency. What I'm seeing what I'm seeing a lot with the leaders and managers and top executives that I talk with is it that yeah, but and then you know this and this and this and hey, we still have this business model that is yeah, it's good. Yeah, yeah. It's a 65 plus but that's great.

[00:30:20]It's the basis of what we earn.

[00:30:23]It I think that kind of mindset that will then say I acknowledge it but it's just not urgent enough right now because my business existing business and strategic fit is still where we need to focus our time.

[00:30:37]And it's like you need to ensure that you're also working on those possible futures and understanding and learning slowly learning also organizational learning preparing the organization for these changes that are happening.

[00:31:26]>> [music] >> And at the institute you work with the concept of the three horizons. If I understand it correctly, it addresses exactly these kinds of challenges. We need to be prepared for the fact that emerging technologies will challenge our current convictions, positioning, and products. So, tell us about the concept and explain how it helps us deal with having to let go of things we've worked on for a long time.

[00:31:53]I think that the three horizon framework is something that we have been used it it's it this is a not created by us it's from Bill Sharpe so it's been used in foresight for a long time but especially when preparing sort of innovating and taking strategic decisions it's a great sort of very simple framework to work with where in the first horizon you you have data you know you have all this security at least in a lot of things you know and hopefully you also have a strategic fit with what you're doing and that is good and you can work a lot in innovation in that then you go to the second horizon this is where the transformation is happening this is where we're testing new things this is going to be a temporary strategic fit for the products you make, but you will have to understand that these are not the products that are necessarily this is not how the the future will look like because that is the horizon the third horizon where there has been the transformation and we have a completely new ecosystem. So understanding when you start working with innovation and you start working with your strategy like what horizons are we talking about? And it's not like I can say like the third horizon is 10 years because that depends on you know the scope and what you are working with um but it is a super good way to also try and look at your own innovation your own products and services and think where is the strategic fit for this and when we do something new is this a strategic fit for the current horizon?

[00:33:24]And or is it even a strategic fit for a horizon that no longer exists because we're people's behaviors are already moving on and we're seeing the behaviors and the expectations of the users who we have to remember in the center of all this. This is not about technology. This is about what what what human behavior is starting to sort of how it's changing from the new possibilities that are there. So understanding that in the eight sort of horizon three framework can be very beneficial.

[00:33:57]>> Mhm.

[00:33:57]>> [clears throat] >> It is so interesting talking to you and to learn that there are not only many possible futures but also many possible ways to address them and concepts to work with them. I was surprised to learn that companies like MasterCard and Deutsche Telekom have their own experts in strategic foresight. For which companies does it make sense to create such roles or even open dedicated departments for future studies or future studies and what can companies do that can't afford that?

[00:34:30]>> Yeah, there are many different ways of integrating foresight and and and of course the we we we work with a lot of these. We also have um a whole network of um people who are working with foresight within these large organizations um and we're seeing more and more interest in this because the need to have that capability and the prepared mindset and and understanding the signals and is is something that is more and more needed the more sort of uncertainty and um complexity we have.

[00:35:01]So, of course being a smaller company that cannot afford to hire a futurist or have a strategic uh entity that can have foresight in in in its role. Um well, at there a lot of these things are not, you know, rocket science in the sense. These are quite simple tools that you can start integrating even on a personal level uh to to think about how to be more prepared to have the mindset of futures thinking and to integrate it if you want to create new things and have it as a shared language because I think that is the thing that these companies are gaining. They're gaining a much more nuanced language of understanding futures and that that understanding can also be done in smaller companies. And of course with AI, this is also something we're looking at. This is giving possibilities to create, let's say, scenarios uh at a much sort of smaller scale.

[00:35:58]Of course, it doesn't have the same value as when you do a long process because it's in the process that the learning happens and the mindset shifts.

[00:36:06]But still, we are seeing a lot of interesting capabilities that can also be set into these skill sets and you can have the skill set of a futurist in an AI-mediated ecosystem and that so you, you know, as in all other kinds of roles, you wouldn't necessarily in a small company have the possibility to have a futurist, but you can have an a futurist agent that can help you ask the right questions and >> you know, maybe send you signals within your field. And of course, we ourselves are also thinking, where are we relevant in this?

[00:36:41]Where Where am I as a futurist relevant when suddenly we have these kind of new capabilities? And um we believe that a lot of the relationship that you're also talking about, a lot of the processes, a lot of the the human facilitation and and and and the way that we interact during those processes with the mindshift changing, that is where the value is.

[00:37:03]But it's in collaboration also with the new tools and the new possibilities that AI bring.

[00:37:08]>> So do you think you could be replaced by an AI agent, a futurist agent at the future?

[00:37:16]>> I think I could be prob- I mean, it could be a part of what I what what what you can subscribe to.

[00:37:24]>> [laughter] >> And there will be a lots of there already are lots of skill sets. You can already hire You can already get a an an agentic futurists that you can then attach to your system, right? And we're already seeing that and we are also working on that. I'm co-lead on our H3 AI lab, so the Horizon 3 AI lab here at the institute. These are some of the things that we're looking at because what are the implications then? And how do I control that what my my AI agent or you know, my own digital twin or let's call it whatever is saying what I actually want to say. But the better context it has on me, the better it can actually also at least be a a piece of me, right? That people can then >> [snorts] >> get access to in a way that they wouldn't be able to gain access to because I am very expensive to hire, right? And my agent will not be that expensive, of course, and maybe even be a free version in the sense of public good.

[00:38:27]So, those kinds of things This is just the start that we're seeing this. So, can I be replaced? Well, I think that some of what I bring of value right now will be replaced. And I have to figure out where is the real value that I bring, and then I have to do that really well.

[00:38:43]>> And again to figure out how you could disrupt yourself.

[00:38:48]Before we come to the end of our episode, I want to hear your assessment of some concrete future scenarios, future scenarios.

[00:38:57]>> Thank you very much.

[00:38:58]>> [laughter] >> We constantly talk about human-machine collaboration shaping our future. What do you we do ourselves? What do we leave to the machine? Where are we at our best when we work together?

[00:39:10]But tech gurus like Elon Musk think further ahead and are betting on convergence. Like they are working on chips we can implement in our brains and AI that can read our minds. I understand you're not the right person to tell us whether that will really happen, but what if it did?

[00:39:30]>> I mean, so neurotechnology and and and brain-to-machine interfaces is definitely something that we are going to see, and I think that that is also one of the understanding of a prepared mindset.

[00:39:47]Amara's law is that we tend to overestimate these changes on the short term, but underestimate it on the long term. And now now I'm going to say a word that you probably have been working with a couple of years ago, but nobody wants to hear, right? So, the metaverse, which >> [laughter] >> which Mark Zuckerberg took and created his own vision of what the metaverse was, but the way that we were working with the metaverse at that time was more that kind of convergence of our physical and virtual lives. This is what's happening right now with our contextual knowledge, the tacit knowledge of me that we are increasingly recording in our, you know, in our everyday life.

[00:40:32]We have more and more recordings on meetings and how we behave and our A lot of the tacit knowledge starts to become part of this ecosystem. The [snorts] reason I say this is that this moves closer and closer to our brains and bodies. So, these variables very likely This is not something that is a distant and has going will be, but the signals are very strong that um even with the ethical implications and all these kind of things that the benefits that we will get in being relevant and understand, you know, being part of the AI-mediated information ecosystem and a part of the agentic workflow and a part part of this whole sort of new digital layer of AI uh will demand more contextual knowledge in order to get the best, you know, um What can you say? The best relationship in there and the best uh outputs and what best and and I think that in that sense um Yeah, it's I'm a bit vague as you can hear because it's like we don't we don't know how this will look. We have these ideas and as futurists we try to visualize how could they look in this version or that version or that version or that version. But as you see what the what is being worked on right now in Silicon Valley is this third core product. And the third core product, which is moving away from the smartphone, oh well, you still would have the smartphone, you still would have a computer like your um but what will be the next product that we will all have? Will it be augmented glasses? Will it be a little a little wearable, a little pandang? It would be an AI pen that records everything and you know, what kind of device and we're we're going to see Plenty of those devices coming in and the next version of that will then most likely be something that is a bit more closer to our brains.

[00:42:29]>> Mhm. And as things stand, at least solutions like brain chips would not be available to everyone but to the rich and powerful. Do all AI scenarios lead to a world where the gap between rich and poor grows even wider or can we still prevent that?

[00:42:48]>> We're [snorts] trying to work on that.

[00:42:50]Just get a societal, you know, positive societal end states.

[00:42:55]With the radical change. It can be hard to reimagine that. We tend to go into these dystopian sort of surveillance, very very divided, very heavily polarization, as you say. Because also just not not even on the neurotechnology side of it but also the second brains of how we build our own context.

[00:43:19]This will create an extreme divide in how well we navigate this new and a lot of people will not have access to that. So they will get the premium version so maybe not even be in that loop, right?

[00:43:32]Which will create a bigger divide. But on the positive side, if we have organizations that starts taking this seriously and start building into this and I know quite a few that are luckily are, this can also be a huge democratization.

[00:43:48]It can make knowledge available and knowledge would maybe be a big word but information at least available on a much much larger scale than it has ever been.

[00:43:57]And in that sense, hopefully that gap will narrow. But I think that a lot of the trajectory that we see right now is that if we if we do not start to take this seriously, the whole systemic shift, then the trajectory is kind of leaning in the wrong direction.

[00:44:14]>> Mhm.

[00:44:15]>> And this is also why we need more urgency in this space, because it's changing extremely fast, and and there are some scenarios that are less likable.

[00:44:25]>> Mhm.

[00:44:26]And the question of AI-driven division doesn't only arise at the level of rich and poor, but also between West and East, between the West, China, and Europe. At Tech over the coming days, we'll be discussing how Europe can use new technologies to build the economy of the future and remain geopolitically relevant. What are the chances from your perspective, and what do we need to do to seize them?

[00:44:51]>> Yeah, we need to Europe needs to avoid defining, you know, technology and futures just by catching up. It seems like they're playing this game of catching up, and instead of being the ones redefining it.

[00:45:07]>> I think that's again, like that the act of actually peeling away our assumptions and going down to the very values that we have, and then rebuilding something new. This is not something that Europe has been extremely good at when it comes to technology. It's more like adapting what has been invented other places, and then scale it in in in in a kind of a let's do it a bit better.

[00:45:29]In the sense of better for society, but it's still the same logic. So again, going back to the could >> we change this logic and rebuild something new, ask what kind of technological future we want to shape, and the values and institu- what what institutions do we still need? What infrastructures are needed? And start to build that and own.

[00:45:47]I mean, sovereignty, of course, is a huge thing, but building the infrastructure for these pipes to run through, and understanding how this is, it's a huge work, and I know again, a lot of people are working on it. Um but we need a mind shifts mindset shift, I would say, in in order to actually achieve that because it's um in the way that a lot of the interactions that we have on that level, which we have quite a few, um people really want to lean into it, but it is uh an ability and a capability that needs to be trained. So, that futures muscle and that prepared mindset, uh we need to start working on that more.

[00:46:27]>> Sophie, this has been a fascinating conversation and I've learned a lot about how we can deal with uncertainty and prepare well for multiple possible futures. I'm really looking forward to continuing this in Heilbronn from Sunday. Thank you so much for being with us today.

[00:46:42]>> See you soon. Bye.

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