Artificial intelligence: From trailers to prime movers

Peter Uhr

The discussion about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in companies is increasingly focusing on whether it should only be used as a complement or as a strategic element. The development in the education sector offers a parallel: In the past, digital teaching materials were seen only as a supplement to books, but over time they became the driving force of innovation.

Many discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) revolve around the question of what role AI should play in service-providing, manufacturing or sales companies: Should it be used as a supplementary tool to attract attention as a marketing gadget, so to speak? Or should AI fulfil strategically elementary tasks that require far-reaching reorganization processes?

This discussion reminds me of an earlier debate that took place in the education sector, more specifically in teaching material publishers and schools and their sponsors (municipalities and cantons). A whole generation ago, publishers offered supplementary teaching materials such as songs, videos, stories, small exercise sequences, sometimes as learning games on separate data carriers (CD ROM, DVD). Books and exercise books remained the main vehicles for learning content and progression. At that time, the Internet served as a research engine and e-mail provider.

As the growing bandwidths allowed more data traffic and teachers and the first schools connected to the Internet, new opportunities also opened up for the development of educational materials. The first step taken by a number of publishers was simply to make what had previously been available on external data carriers additionally, and later exclusively, accessible on the Internet. The fact that this presented new distribution channels, price calculations and copyright issues proved to be an unexpected challenge.

The most open-minded publishers finally realized that new production processes and forms of distribution also entailed new business models. So they began to take a holistic view of the entire conception, development, production and distribution processes based on the digital nature of these learning media: Only at the second or third instance was it considered and decided for which learning phases, activities and needs digitally designed elements needed to be available only digitally and/or also in print.

In other words, the former nice-to-have sidecar became the engine of development or a future-proof truck. And this is exactly where companies are today if they want to answer the question formulated at the beginning. Read the article by Aslam Jilani: https://einklang-academy.com/en/you-need-an-innovation-strategy-to-move-from-ai-to-ai/