Homo Sapiens in the New Century

The focus was on the exchange on the innovation driver Homo Sapiens as well as insights into the latest innovations and the ethical questions that these innovations raise. Around 120 participants attended the HSR Innovation Conference on November 6 on the topic of "Man as Innovation Driver". Five speakers provided insights into new technologies and gave rise to exciting discussions.

"Human pilots" always important 

Humans have millions of years of small evolutionary steps behind them. From hunter-gatherer to the dominant species on earth. Today, human innovations have overtaken human evolution. Innovative technology and its application make man a powerful shaper of his environment, independent of physical abilities. A power that also comes with responsibility.

As a vivid introduction, Prof. Dr. Christian Bermes from HSR and exoskeleton pilot Thomas Krieg presented the innovations that technology can provide for paralyzed people today. Krieg is a pilot in one of two HSR Cybathlon teams. He pilots an exoskeleton developed by HSR and ETH engineers and students that enables him to stand up from a seated position and complete a course while walking, despite his paralysis. The second HSR pilot Florian Hauser, also paralyzed, can climb stairs with his high-tech wheelchair constructed at HSR or open and close doors with a robotic arm.

The two teams from HSR are taking part in the ETH Cybathlon competition, a unique competition in which people with disabilities compete in completing tasks relevant to everyday life using the latest assistance technology. "So we are practically allowed technical doping for our athletes," Bermes specified to laughter from the audience.

In the course of the discussion between Bermes and Krieg, it became clear that the development of both the wheelchair and the exoskeleton is not centered on machines, but on human pilots as the drivers of innovation. "Being able to stand up for the first time since my accident with the help of the exoskeleton was very emotional, because 50 students' work enabled me to talk to people at eye level again," Krieg said. During development, the individual body characteristics of the pilots must be taken into account at all times - for example, when controlling the devices or when adapting physical contact points between humans and machines.

Smart Building: How to live?
The presentation by Andreas Haas, who as Sales Manager of digitalSTROM AG in Schlieren, pursues the goal of fully networking as many buildings as possible, had a completely different focus. According to Haas, almost 10,000 buildings in the DACH region are already "smart", i.e. digitally networked and controllable - from blinds and household appliances to alarm systems and heating systems.

Although the innovation lies in building technology, control systems, sensors and devices, the innovation driver is also here: People. Because people will only network their buildings if they perceive smart homes as useful. According to Haas, the benefits can range from self-learning climate control to suit the wishes of the occupants to emergency or assistance systems for elderly or physically impaired people. Haas' grandmother served as an example for the audience. "Her morning routine is the same every day - so a possible smarthome function could be to have the house check to see if that routine is happening and if not, for example, send a message to her family or her doctor to check on her once," Haas said.

AI as a personnel planner
Dr. Alexander Grimm, CEO of Aspaara Algorithmic Solutions AG from Zurich, followed in the same vein - assistance functions for people. The company's main product is software that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to suggest staff schedules for companies with many employees. "Our system suggests fully comprehensive deployment plans with the goal of always scheduling the best employees at the right time for the tasks at hand. This should give human planners more time to handle complex cases," Grimm said. In the case of a company with a large number of field staff, for example, the system has reduced unnecessary business trips by 25 percent, Grimm said.

In the audience, the idea of automatic staff scheduling met with critical interest. "Isn't it a special stress factor if every minute is automatically scheduled?" was one question, to which Grimm replied, against the background of employee satisfaction becoming an increasingly important factor for companies: "Ideally, the individual employee doesn't notice anything at all about our system, but simply notices that the work scheduling fits his or her own preferences pretty well - for example, in terms of tasks or times."

Ethical support for innovations
Finally, ethicist Dr. Johan Rochel, founder of the ethix innovation ethics lab, gratefully took the previous presentations and used them as examples of where innovations raise ethical questions. For example, he said, automated workforce planning is useful, but "artificial intelligence is a black box - what exactly is happening in decision making?" If such systems were used in the future in the judiciary, for example, where judgments can have massive consequences for the individuals being judged, Rochel said it would be necessary to ensure that "you can understand exactly how the machine arrived at a particular decision."

Rules for dealing with innovations are important, he said. For example, data ethics must answer questions such as "What data is collected about people and under what circumstances do which systems have access to that data?" while ensuring that it remains traceable "how artificial intelligence has used and processed the data to make decisions, generate analyses or trigger automated actions," Rochel said.

Using sustainability as an example, Rochel showed that society is not powerless when it comes to getting companies to account for the way they make money. "In the past, companies only focused on making money, sustainability was not an issue." But these days, he says, public pressure for greater transparency is so high that companies are constantly having to justify how environmentally and socially responsible they make their money. "For many companies, that may be greenwashing, but the important step has been taken, justification has become the standard." The same principle can be applied to the collection and use of data, he said.

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