Gerd Leonhard

Why ‘smart’ machines still can't replace humans (while many tasks will be automated)

Digital Labor is all the rage, with AI agents sold as a future where routine work vanishes and “expensive” humans are replaced. But many real tasks still require embodied judgment, social nuance and context that no algorithm can reliably emulate. So we must ask who benefits if “full automation” becomes real, and insist that any post-labor prosperity is shared, not hoarded, because consciousness, not code, remains uniquely human.

Too much of a good thing can be a very bad thing

Techno-Optimism, often coupled with accelerationism, claims exponential technology will solve most societal problems, so progress should be as fast as possible. I argue for a balanced, holistic view that confronts risks like disinformation, job displacement, privacy and surveillance, and dehumanisation, while staying optimistic about The Good Future. The Future is amazing humans on-top of awesome technology.

AI is a general-purpose technology and a new platform. It could be heaven or hell, depending on whether the tools will dominate us, or whether human telos will prevail. This customized talk separates what is real from what is utopia or dangerous, and shows how to harness AI for human and planetary flourishing by pursuing People, Planet, Purpose, and Prosperity.

• Exponential technological change: heaven or hell. Regulation, policy, and why digital ethics is existential.
• IA versus AI versus HI: competence, not consciousness. Why AGI is a serious conundrum.
• Virtuality: AR, MR, VR, the Metaverse, Apple Vision Pro. Opportunity versus hype versus feasibility.
• A new capitalism? Beyond GDP and profit and growth toward the 4Ps: People, Planet, Purpose, Prosperity.
• The Sustainability Revolution: Big Blue and Big Green. Green is the new Digital.
• The human renaissance: rebooting education, training, learning, HR. Life with and after automation.
• Why humans will still matter: uniquely human skills in an AI-heavy world.
• Don’t mistake a clear view for a short distance: reality check on GenAI, self-driving, NLP.
• From optimisation to agility, resilience, creativity: the future of work and skills.
• Biology meets technology: the next wave in healthcare, pharma, life sciences.

Trust is the glue that hold societies together

Trust has been dissolving fast, and ‘too much technology’ may be fuelling mistrust, fear, and democratic decline through click-driven social media. As AI Agenting and AI Search scale, and virtual worlds go mainstream, this keynote asks whether we slide into dystopia or steer toward protopia. It offers five-year foresights and concrete actions to rebuild trust by rebooting social media, strengthening public media, and regulating AI to enhance humanity.

Why and how People-Planet-Purpose and Prosperity is the key to the Good Future

Fueled by geopolitical conflict, the accelerating climate emergency, and technological hyper-transformation, the world is changing at a mind-boggling pace and confusion reigns. This keynote asks what kind of future we want, whether today’s economic logic is fit for it, and argues for moving beyond GDP growth toward the 4Ps: People, Planet, Purpose, and Prosperity, to help show the way forward.

AI can generate content nearly indistinguishable from humans, and as algorithms shape media and decisions, the Internet will change forever. This talk asks how we retain what makes us human, protect democracy, and stay connected amid rising loneliness, and suggests ways to halt dehumanisation and use exponential technologies more wisely. “Algorithms know the value of everything but the feeling of nothing”.

Successful businesses always maintain a constant conversation about the future: what lessons need to be operationalized today in order to avoid future irrelevance or worse, extinction ? It is essential to understand that everything that can be digitized, automated or virtualised, will be. Cognification, automation, disintermediation and robotization are now taking place across all industries, not just in media, content and marketing. Digital transformation – going from an analog or semi-digital world to a digitally-native world – is certain to be the #1 challenge-opportunity in the next 5-7 years. How can people and companies become better at understanding, and move faster to implement the transformations that are required? How will a company or an organization prosper in a world that is quickly becoming inter-connected and interdependent? What skills and mindsets will we need, and what should remain human even if it is inefficient?

Transforming your organisation
The top 20 global technology brands and digital platforms are growing exponentially while many incumbent enterprises and former household-name-brands are forced to ‘pivot’ and dramatically reinvent themselves, or face sudden disintermediation and irrelevance. Witness the media industry, or recently, the incumbent car industry giants in Europe. In this eye-opening session, Gerd looks at how to evolve into a future-ready organisation based on understanding and exploiting The Megashifts, a key meme first presented in Gerd’s recent book Technology vs. Humanity.

The Megashifts include digitisation, automation, datafication, virtualisation, robotisation, and others (for a total of 11), and understanding them is the ticket to future success. The Megashifts are fuelled by a multitude of game-changers such as The Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, deep learning and robotics, new human-machine interfaces (such as voice-control and intelligent bots). In this riveting talk, Gerd depicts the key trends, reveals the likely minefields and identifies the key opportunities, dishing up a mixture of future-shock and awesomeness to stimulate some serious thinking. Watch this related video.

In this dynamic talk, Gerd delivers the immersion and the excitement that is often necessary to truly futurize your business or organisation, and to challenge and change established mindsets, toxic assumptions or satisfied attitudes. Understanding that the ‘digital default’ is becoming the new normal is often crucial to the process of constructing a new future. Angling for quick disruptions is no longer sufficient: everything and everyone is getting connected, everywhere and at all times; mobile devices have already become our external brains while bots and intelligent assistants are next – connected devices are now truly becoming the ‘the extension of man’. This coming hyper-networked society will not just change the very definition of ownership, property and control, but business models in general will become increasingly transient rather than permanent and predictable. How can you get ready for this kind of VUCA future, personally and professionally? How will you move beyond disruption towards constructing a truly sustainable future?

Enterprise leadership has until now been largely based on military examples – hence the chief “officers” of various kinds. But because of exponential technological developments, leadership is changing in radical ways, as well. How can you grasp the changing nature of your role above and beyond shareholder value? What human skills will you need to evolve alongside the strategic, financial or technological and engineering ones you may have already mastered? And how can you leave backward-looking, or ‘toxic-assumption’ – decision making behind and start deploying a future mindset? In this new talk, Gerd Leonhard addresses a world of leadership where most of the old models are suddenly obsolete, and delivers inspirational precepts from the parallel worlds of imagination and invention.

The total transformation of business and society
Successful businesses always maintain a constant conversation about the future: what lessons need to be operationalized today in order to avoid future irrelevance or worse, extinction? For one thing, it is essential to understand that everything that can be digitized, automated or virtualised, will be. Cognification, automation, disintermediation and robotization and 7 other Megashifts are now taking place across all industries, globally, not just in B2C sectors like media, content and marketing. Exponential change is certain to be the #1 challenge/opportunity in the next 5-7 years. How can we – and our organisations – become better at understanding the new challenges and opportunities, and move faster to develop the mindset and implement the transformations that are required? How will a company prosper in a world that is quickly becoming hyper-connected and interdependent? What skills and mindsets will we need, and what should remain human even if it is inefficient? Watch this excerpt from a recent keynote on digital transformation, or this complete talk.

The future belongs to those who can hear it coming!
In this fast-paced talk, I cut to the chase. Only my most important future-observations make it into this presentation. Culled from my firehose-like-mix of recent reads, news, reports, research, videos and films, and influenced by the many brilliant people I meet and speak to, this constantly updated keynote lays out the top-10 things I find most relevant for our immediate future. This talk is highly customisable and can cover almost any desired segment within business, society, technology and humanity.

9 Game-Changers, 11 Megashifts and 6 Future-Principles
In this brand-new talk I share my observations and foresights on three sectors: science & technology, business & society, and mindset & philosophy; customized for every specific client and their industry.

Science and technology: We are confronted with 9 game-changers: data, cloud, AI, quantum computing, the Internet of Things, blockchain technologies, 3D printing, augmented and virtual reality and genetic engineering (biotechnology)

Business and society: the game-changers above result in 11 Megashifts that impact how we live, across the board: digitization, datafication, personalization, cognification, augmentation, robotisation, automation, disintermediation, platformization, virtualization and simulation (see www.megashifts.digital for details)

Mindset and philosophy: In response, we need to adopt a future-ready mindset and philosophy based on the understanding that the future is exponential, convergent, combinatorial, circular, holistic and human-centric (the 6 future principles)

“You have to think about the future while doing the present so that the present is going in the right direction”