We turned the HelloDigital office into a space for real, no-nonsense debate again. On stage this time: Johannes Kleske, futures researcher and host of the Follow-the-Rabbit podcast. He came with an uncomfortable observation. Three years after the ChatGPT moment, we are producing more output than ever thanks to AI. But we are also working more than ever. And quietly wondering whether any of it still makes sense.
AI as a Contrast Agent
Johannes' sharpest take of the evening: AI is not a trigger, AI is a contrast agent. It makes visible the problems that were already there in our organisations. Overloaded processes, too many decisions in too little time, that constant feeling of falling behind. AI just accelerates them and makes them impossible to ignore.
This explains the big paradox of how we work today. The story we are told is that AI takes work off our plate. The reality is that the people working most intensively with AI are working the most. We are no longer producing ourselves, we are supervising machines that produce. And that constant supervision is its own form of exhaustion.
Meaning Making: The Human Superpower
Algorithms can calculate, structure, generate text and code. What they cannot do: make subjective decisions, sense relevance, pass judgement. That is meaning making, and it is the decisive human capability in working with AI.
At HelloDigital we firmly believe that enablement beats dependency. Johannes confirmed exactly that, with concrete examples from his own working life, from his experiments and from his dead ends.
We are deliberately not giving away the depth of Johannes' approach here. His practical examples, his tactical playbook for working with AI, and his uncomfortable questions for leadership only unfold their impact when you hear them yourself.
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