Digital humanism in the fast-paced world of AI

Georg Krause, CEO of the IT service provider msg Plaut, on the imperative of digitisation with people at its centre.

As a specialist in digitisation, msg Plaut supports leading companies on their way into the digital world. European roots and values are cited as strengths, so that digitisation benefits people and their environment, and expands opportunities for development and fulfilment – says the msg Plaut credo. But can digital humanism stand up to big business without barriers? Georg Krause, CEO of msg Plaut, is convinced.

What is digital humanism, simply explained?
Georg Krause: Many people who can relate to the term ‘digital’ can also relate to humanism. Someone who has never dealt with the subject before at least has an image in mind, even if humanism is not a very sharply defined term. We must succeed in ensuring that our humanistic, humane and European values, which we have internalised and lived for ourselves over the past centuries, also remain valid in the digital world. The digital world must not tip over into a direction in which these values no longer have any meaning, are no longer taken into account and we end up in a Wild West scenario. People, their values and the good of society must be placed at the centre of digitisation.

The first thing to fall by the wayside in all revolutions is humanism. How is that supposed to work in a booming business like the digital world?
Krause: We don’t live in an ideal world. But we have succeeded in preventing the greatest excesses in new developments such as the Industrial Revolution. There, the positive side, the supply of people with goods, is in the foreground, and the negative downside, the exploitation of industrial workers, was regulated by appropriate labour laws. We are currently in a similar situation, which is why digital humanism is so important and is being widely taken up. For some years now, the European Union has been moving very strongly in the direction of putting the human being.

In the Industrial Revolution, it took decades for workers’ rights to become established. How long do we have to wait for workable rules?
Krause: Should it happen quicker and better? Yes. The question implies though that nothing is happening, which is not true. You have to look at the temporal dimensions. Digitisation in the sense of changing our lives and its effects on them has been around for about 30 years, since the advent of the internet and the resulting explosive developments. That is a relatively manageable period of time. Of course, it has to happen faster than during the Industrial Revolution, because the development is much faster. We only have to look at the past few months to see what ChatGPT has changed in terms of perception. This increases the pressure to do something. The topic arrived in political discourse months ago, which helps in raising awareness and puts pressure on politicians to provide corresponding regulations quickly. The EU has proclaimed the Digital Decade for the years 2020 to 2030, where this is already laid down. The Digital Decade is heading in precisely this direction. For new matters and products, new rules are needed. That’s why I’m confident that we’re setting the course now. But of course, it should happen faster.

ChatGPT already exists since last autumn, and only months later people are starting to think about regulations – but there is nothing concrete. Won’t regulations always lag behind technical changes?
Krause: Yes, and there are various reasons for that. It starts with the fact that politicians are usually not experts in the matter and that awareness for a problem is not always there. That is inherent in the system. It also has to do with the fact that legal explanations always require precision. In addition, things change quickly, and new technologies are often not even fully developed yet, like artificial intelligence. There are good examples in the EU of how matters need to be fundamentally regulated. The line of the General Data Protection Regulation is right. It is about the protection of privacy and personal rights, and classical humanistic principles are anchored there. This also applies to artificial intelligence. There are already EU ethical guidelines for AI, but ChatGPT has massively accelerated the development and will also accelerate the implementation of guidelines.

Until GDPR, big tech companies had been making a killing on data trading of all kinds for decades. Will we have to wait a similarly long time for AI regulations? Can we even wait that long because of the possibilities that AI opens up?
Krause: Someone who has hope will work for it and help get things moving in the right direction. That’s how I see it too. I think there are many risks, and we would do well to work on rules with pressure. We are at a crossroads. Let’s look at how digitisation has developed in the US and in China. There are two completely different political systems that have had different effects on development. In the US, it’s a company-centred, market-capitalist system; on the other hand, there’s a very autocratic, totalitarian system in which power lies with the state. Whoever has the data ultimately has the power over the citizens. If I have power over data and information, I have control over people. This is a blatant contradiction to every humanistic principle.

Both systems are reality and have not been put in their place.
Krause: One of the central points in the humanism approach in the EU’s Digital Decade is that we in Europe are trying to develop a counter-design, namely a people- and citizen-centred approach. That is the key point. We believe in and want to continue to live in freedom and democracy, we want to live self-determined lives and have responsibility over our own data. When I give away my data, it is my decision and not that of a third party. That is a clear goal of the EU. I am hopeful that we will succeed in finding a European way. If we do not succeed, we have lost.

Doesn’t living digital humanism go hand in hand with competitive disadvantages due to the necessary self-restraints?
Krause: On the contrary. It is our only chance to put people at the centre of digitisation and thereby develop a sustainable economic model. In the short term, we have lost. We are nowhere near the market capitalisation of the largest companies and have long since been left behind by Asia and the US. Even in start-ups and unicorns, China has twice as many as Europe. Our only chance is to bring in a counter- draft. It won’t be as fast as the capitalist approach in the US, but hopefully it will be more sustainable. The highly criticised GDPR is already being copied in some US states. It has been recognised that after an initial pioneering phase of a Wild West approach, rules are also necessary. If the development continues in this direction, we Europeans have a chance to play a role again.

Will people sacrifice part of their prosperity for humanistic rules?
Krause: I don’t believe that digital humanism entails a loss of prosperity. Europe is still the largest economic area in the world, and as long as we can enforce our regulations on companies that want to do business with us, there is no loss of prosperity. We can demand that others play by the rules, and that benefits our citizens.