Thinking in instant mode

«Watson, you idiot, someone has stolen our tent!» With this Sherlock Holmes joke, Stephan Klapproth opened an evening at the HSLU Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts that was actually about artificial intelligence - and very quickly landed on a much older question: What remains of humans when everything becomes faster, smoother and instantly available?

More than 150 guests attended the event «Aristotle 4.0 - Life in instant mode: What falls by the wayside?». The event was hosted by Matthes Fleck, Head of the Institute of Communication and Marketing at HSLU, and Patricia Feubli, Head of the Competence Center Communication and Marketing Technologies. The focus was on the talk with Dr. Miriam Meckel and Dr. Léa Steinacker, moderated by Stephan Klapproth. In the accompanying m&k video, Meckel, Steinacker, Klapproth and HSLU Director Fleck have their say at Hürlimann - with a view to an evening that showed: AI has long been more than just technology. It is a cultural issue.

When AI meets human wisdom

Patricia Feubli got to the heart of the new event series early on. At the Institute of Communication and Marketing, AI is not only observed, but also researched and applied in concrete projects: from explainable artificial intelligence in the healthcare sector to AI in candidate selection to information systems for voting or models of consumer behavior.

This is precisely why the HSLU wants to understand what AI does to people, society and humanity. The title of the series - «AI meets Human Wisdom» - was therefore not a decoration, but the program. It was not about the next prompt show, but about the question of how technological acceleration goes hand in hand with responsibility, education and judgment.

Matthes Fleck also told a personal story about this. Around 20 years ago, Miriam Meckel had said to him in Berlin: «This in St. Gallen, it will work.» Research into Web 2.0, and later AI, turned into an academic path that has now led to this series of events at HSLU. The fact that Fleck's family later gave him the book «Alles überall auf einmal» by Miriam Meckel and Léa Steinacker, of all things, was a wonderful little punchline to an evening in which books came to life, so to speak.

Klapproth as a philosophical detonator

Stephan Klapproth, former «10vor10» presenter, journalist and new lecturer at HSLU, took over the evening not with a traditional introduction, but with a detailed, sparkling introductory lecture. His title thought: «Idiots have never been so intelligent.»

Klapproth covered a wide range of topics from Sherlock Holmes to René Descartes, Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Alan Turing and Aristotle. It was an intellectual warm-up, cabaret, media criticism and philosophical risk analysis all rolled into one. His basic thesis: the AI revolution could not only take work away from us, but also rob us of something that lies deeper - the «élan vital», the vitality, our own ego, the friction of thinking.

Klapproth was particularly strong where he contrasted the shiny surface of the digital everyday world with the impoverishment of real encounters. We are connected to the whole world at seven in the morning, he said, but anyone who greets the other person on the S-Bahn at half past seven already seems like an exotic with a behavioral problem.

The writing guild also got its comeuppance. Journalists of all people, whose greatest joy should be writing, are now handing over their work to the «electroslaves» with astonishing enthusiasm. That was right. Especially in a room full of communications people.

The orange wrecking ball and the rest of the world

Klapproth was not sparing in his side blows to Silicon Valley, tech billionaires and Donald Trump. The «orange wrecking ball in the Oval Office» became a symbol for a dangerous alliance of power, capital and technology. It was pointed, sometimes hilariously pointed - and was almost part of the compulsory rhetorical program that evening.

With a twinkle in our eye, however, we can add that if Trump is the villain of the moment, he is certainly not the last of the global assortment. And historically, American democracy has had a few more endurance tests than some others. But the punchline served its purpose: Klapproth wanted to show that AI is not created in a vacuum, but in power relations, ownership structures and business models.

This set the framework. The machine may calculate. But people decide what it is used for.

Meckel and Steinacker: open-minded, but not naive

Then Miriam Meckel and Léa Steinacker took to the stage - two of the most prominent voices in the German-speaking AI discourse. Meckel is Co-Founder and Executive Chairwoman of ada and Professor at the University of St. Gallen. Steinacker is a social scientist, CEO of GaiaLogic AG, board member of Weleda AG and lecturer in Technology & Social Science at the HSG.

Together, they form an influential duo in the German business and technology landscape. Their book «Everything everywhere at once» became a Spiegel bestseller in 2024. In it, they analyze how AI is changing society, the economy and politics. They also regularly discuss technological trends in the ada Learning Community podcast.

What stood out in Lucerne: Meckel and Steinacker are not cultural pessimists. They use AI intensively, they see its creative and productive potential, they argue with great openness. But they are far removed from the cheap euphoria that automatically sees every new technology as progress.

Perhaps the most important sentence of the evening therefore came not as a warning against AI, but as a warning against complacency: you have to know when AI supports - and when it replaces thinking.

The «shitty first draft» must come from humans

Klapproth brought the old writing rule into play: «The shitty first draft.» The first draft can be bad, but it has to come from you. Meckel and Steinacker confirmed exactly this point.

According to Meckel, when you start a new chapter, you are faced with a blank document and have to endure the effort of developing a thought in the first place. This effort is not pleasant, but it is crucial. Because if you hand over the process to AI, you not only lose a work step, but a part of your thinking.

Steinacker formulated the problem even more fundamentally: "If an AI writes an article and another AI summarizes it in three sentences, bots end up talking to bots. The human process disappears on both sides - when writing and when reading.

This was one of the strongest moments of the evening. Because here, AI was not morally condemned, but precisely categorized. The danger is not that machines can produce texts. The danger lies in the fact that people no longer want to take the path to thought.

Creativity between promptography and goosebumps

The topic of creativity was particularly exciting. Meckel defended so-called «promptography» using the example of German artist Boris Eldagsen. His AI-generated image had caused discussion at the Sony World Photography Award 2023. Eldagsen did not want to keep the prize, but wanted to initiate the debate: What is creativity when man and machine produce a work together?

Meckel described the process as a hybrid art form. Not classic photography, not pure machine production, but a third space: human idea, machine variation, iterative collaboration.

Steinacker opened up the debate even further. She recounted a conversation with Björn Ulvaeus from ABBA. When asked whether «The Winner Takes It All» would still be art if the song had been written by an AI, Ulvaeus replied: For him, yes - because art is what it triggers in people.

This raised the key question: does the creative process count or the effect on the audience? Klapproth remained skeptical. He referred to AI singers who sound good but have no human behind the voice. Steinacker provided a strong counter-example from comedy: a comedienne who imitates humans with her body, voice and presence is touching precisely because a human can do it. A machine can simulate 74 languages. But it cannot amaze us that a single person can do it all.

The sentence of the evening came from Klapproth: "People are interested in people. This is not just a basic journalistic axiom. It is perhaps also a communication law for the AI era.

AI is not a technology problem, but a cultural problem

Meckel and Steinacker made it clear that the introduction of AI in companies is often misunderstood. Copilot access for all employees is not yet a transformation. It is basically just the moment when the real work begins.

Steinacker talked about companies that believed they were digitized because everyone had a laptop. Today, there is a similar misconception: everyone has access to AI, so the AI problem is solved. This is precisely the mistake. Technology transformation is not a technology problem, but a leadership and cultural problem.

Managers are needed who set an example in dealing with AI. It needs spaces for experimentation. It needs rules, reflection and joint learning processes. And it needs a willingness not to eliminate all friction immediately.

Because friction is not only inefficient. It is productive. It forces people to clarify positions, endure contradictions and develop the power of judgment.

Stupid capitalism or better work?

One particularly concrete field was the labor market. Klapproth brought the example of Klarna into play: an AI bot took over millions of customer chats, massively shortened processing times and saved high costs. For people, this quickly sounds like rationalization in glossy format.

Meckel did not disagree, but differentiated. Klarna itself has now recognized that efficiency alone is not enough. In certain situations, customers still expect a human being. Human contact is therefore becoming a «VIP treatment».

The example of IKEA is even more positive. There, the chatbot «Billy» has taken over many standard interactions. Instead of laying off employees, thousands were trained as design consultants. This has resulted in a new sales channel.

The point: AI can destroy work if it is used in short-term, stupid capitalism. But it can also enable better work if companies use it to relieve people of routine tasks and qualify them for higher-value tasks.

This is not a romantic position. It is a strategic one.

Sentio ergo sum

Klapproth had brought Descartes with him: «I think, therefore I am.» Steinacker wanted to expand the sentence. Feeling had to be included, she said. Perception. Physicality. Experience. «Sentio ergo sum» - I feel, therefore I am.

The evening thus touched on its philosophical core. When AI is increasingly able to calculate, write, design, analyze and simulate, the question of what is human shifts. It is no longer enough to define intelligence in terms of output. The output is often astounding. Sometimes better, faster, cleaner than human work.

But being human is not just about output. It consists of experiencing, doubting, loving, failing and enduring misunderstandings together. This is precisely why Meckel and Steinacker did not answer an audience question about the most important human ability with «creativity», «critical thinking» or «prompting skills». Steinacker said: feeling. Meckel said: love.

It wasn't cheesy. It was a pleasant deceleration in a discourse that otherwise very quickly ends up with use cases, efficiency gains and productivity.

Davide Cortese brings back the practice

Finally, Davide Cortese, CEO of the Lucerne-based digital commerce agency Arcmedia and lecturer at HSLU, gave a practical perspective on the evening. His conclusion was precise: the challenge lies not in the tool itself, but in the design of processes.

A prompt is not yet a process. Organizations must consciously decide where AI should be allowed to accelerate and where friction, discussion, doubt and joint thinking are still necessary.

Cortese warned against seeing AI only as an output machine: faster text, faster analysis, faster code, faster presentation. This is useful, but dangerous if the path to the result disappears. Because it is precisely this path that makes organizations capable of learning.

His strongest sentence: You shouldn't produce nonsense faster just because the machine formulates it more beautifully.

This was a very good end to the evening. Not against AI. But against thoughtlessness. Not against speed. But for care.

What falls by the wayside?

The first edition of «Aristotle 4.0» showed that the crucial AI issues are not only being negotiated in data centers, start-ups or tech companies. They belong in universities, companies, media houses and communications departments.

Klapproth provided the philosophical tinder. Meckel and Steinacker kept the balance between enthusiasm and skepticism. Fleck and Feubli gave the HSLU a stage for a discourse that links research, practice and society. Cortese translated the evening into organizational consequences.

And perhaps that is precisely the task in the AI era: not slowing down for the sake of slowing down. But to think more slowly where speed alone does not generate better thoughts.

In instant mode, many things are available immediately. Answers, images, texts, slides, analyses. What is not there immediately: judgment. Trust. Resonance. A personal attitude.

This still requires people. And sometimes even an evening in Lucerne, where Sherlock Holmes, Descartes, Bergson, Einstein, Aristotle, Trump, ABBA, IKEA, Klarna, AI bots and over 150 guests can fit into a common thinking space.

Everything everywhere at once - but fortunately not without friction.