Text Academy Podcast #44: «When AI saves money, everyone should benefit» - Alain Graf on the distribution of efficiency gains

Alain Graf has 25 years of experience in sales, business development and entrepreneurship in the construction, real estate and SaaS sectors. In the video podcast «AI and society - paths into the new world» from the Text Academy Foundation, the founder and CEO of EncoSphera talks to presenter Christoph Soltmannowski about the issue of justice in the AI transformation.

What drives Alain Graf is an uncomfortable calculation: 83 percent of companies are currently unable to quantify their AI profits - and practically zero percent of employees receive a share of this. «Pure shareholder capitalism is reaching its limits - we need an expanded capitalism that also includes the people who create value. Otherwise, AI will win in the end - and AI will win over people.» With the «Human Dividend Model», Graf has developed a framework that makes efficiency gains visible and can be shared fairly - between companies, employees and society. He sees the fact that OpenAI itself spoke of an «efficiency dividend» in April as retrospective confirmation.

What is not measured cannot be distributed fairly

The model is based on three building blocks. A quick scan shows the efficiency potential in francs or euros. The EncoSphera Amplification Score measures the degree of maturity along the dimensions of efficiency, value creation and employees on a scale from 0 to 100. From a score of 50, the Human Dividend becomes payable. 32 transparent and comprehensible parameters record where the profits are actually generated - in terms of people, materials and energy. Only this transparency makes fair distribution possible. As long as no one knows how big the cake is, it can be made as small as you like.

Four-day week instead of job cuts

For Graf, fair distribution does not automatically mean higher wages. It can mean a four-day week with full pay compensation, a training budget, more time for creativity and social contacts. «Efficiency doesn't mean that we have to be worse off.» Instead of replacing people with AI, they should share in its profits. For Graf, the fact that around 49% of employees are afraid of AI is the biggest obstacle to innovation: «Any project that doesn't involve people will fail.» A transparently distributed dividend defuses this fear - and thus turns a supposed cost factor into a transformation accelerator.

The economy must deliver - not the state

Graf is deliberately not advocating a state-imposed basic income. Anyone replacing people with AI should not pass on the consequential costs to the state: «The economy has initiated the transformation - it must also shape it.» Nevertheless, he believes politicians have a role to play. His picture is clear: «Politicians see a tsunami approaching - but instead of setting up a warning system and protective structures, they are still discussing whether life jackets are enough.»

His vision is that in five years« time, job interviews will ask about a company's distribution model as naturally as they ask about its environmental footprint today. Those who share efficiency gains win threefold: with talent, with customers and on the capital market. Those who withhold them first lose the motivation of their workforce - and then the legitimacy of their business model. For Graf, it is clear that the real question of AI transformation is not a technical one, but a question of distribution. »People are the compass, AI is the engine. We set the course - not the other way around."

The podcast episode on Spotify

The video podcast format «AI and Society - Paths into the New World», hosted by Christoph Soltmannowski, is produced by the Swiss Text Academy Foundation. Two episodes are published monthly on Spotify, YouTube and the major other podcast platforms.