"AI Race": Switzerland must step on the gas
Efficient training and fair taxation of digital value creation are important pillars for the ICT industry, so that Switzerland can not only maintain its current good position in the global digitization race, but also expand it.
At a media briefing during the 38th swissICT Symposium, which was held in Basel for the first time in 2018 with over 100 experts, swissICT President Thomas Flatt expressed his conviction that the ICT industry itself is well equipped. However, he said, the business community needs to become even more aware that digitization now has a massive impact on a company's core strategy.
Focus on education
Politicians and companies would not sleep through digitalization, said Thomas Flatt in response to the observation that many companies were still paying too little attention to the development. In the discussion with Andri Silberschmidt, president of the Jungfreisinnigen Schweiz and board member of the FDP Switzerland, the IT and marketing specialist Thomas Hutter and the top specialist for artificial intelligence (AI), Pascal Kaufmann, there was agreement that the focus must be on education for a successful future.
Silberschmidt also identified a need for action on taxes, labor law and spatial planning. According to Thomas Flatt, however, there is no need for a new tax model for startups but simply a "debate on how digital value creation should be taxed via the existing tax system.
Leadership in artificial intelligence
AI pioneer Pascal Kaufmann emphasized that Switzerland is number one in Europe in the field of artificial intelligence research and is ideally placed to take a leading role in the "AI race". Only with considerable investments - Pascal Kaufmann speaks of billions - could this role be secured in the longer term. He reckoned that the next five to ten years would see a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence. "The cards will be reshuffled worldwide," Kaufmann says.
Skills shortage the bigger problem than robots
That's why Kaufmann also advocated a reorientation in training. The four experts did not see jobs in which people play an important role in danger. Rather, it boils down to the fact that many positions will not be filled in the next few years, partly because the baby boomer generation is retiring.
IT specialist Thomas Hutter was also convinced that new jobs would be created. In his experience, however, many Swiss companies still need a lot of convincing and investment. There is still a great deal of reticence when it comes to digital topics, said Hutter.
