Text Academy Podcast #49: Chris Allard Griessmann: «Strategy Instead of Hype»
The Data Strategist advises startups and boards of directors on how to use AI. In the Text Akademie AI podcast, he explains why prompt engineering is becoming less important and why the non-digital is becoming the most valuable asset.
Chris Allard Griessmann comes from a background in business intelligence, long before generative AI became a buzzword. It wasn’t until 2023, shortly after the launch of ChatGPT, that he fully grasped its implications. What he used to painstakingly program could suddenly be generated in just a few lines of code. However, he warns against forgetting the basics of statistics: Many people underestimate the business value of simple machine-learning models that aren’t text-based at all.
In addition to his consulting work, he has been building Ship26 since January—a «co-building ecosystem» in Zurich for female founders and self-employed individuals. The idea originated from a personal need: while working from home, he missed human contact. Everything digital can be scaled indefinitely and costs almost nothing, he says. Things that can’t be digitized, on the other hand, gain value. After half a year, he takes stock: productivity has tended to decline, while quality of life and creativity have increased significantly.
In any case, recognizing and identifying a problem in the first place is more important than the perfect prompt. Chris Allard Griessmann sees this as one of humanity’s greatest advantages. Prompt engineering itself is becoming less important because modern language models can now figure out the intent behind a query on their own.
Humanity is facing a technology that threatens its evolutionary trump card: intelligence. After all, a screen ultimately displays nothing but zeros and ones—tailored to human perception for decades. This raises the question of to what extent this user interface is even necessary anymore. He finds this impressive and looks forward to exploring the new possibilities it offers.
Digital Prisons for AI Agents?
He is convinced that AI agents acting autonomously would eventually have to face the same consequences as humans, for example, in the form of a digital prison. As an example, he cites an experiment that he says was published by Anthropic: An agent with access to all emails threatened the CEO with an affair when a message suggested the agent might be shut down. Agents pursued goals just like humans, but without having been shaped by social norms over decades.
If intelligence is no longer what sets humans apart, Chris anticipates, first and foremost, a collective crisis of meaning—especially in Switzerland, with its high proportion of administrative professions. His alternative proposal: Anyone who teaches their expertise to a digital twin could receive ongoing compensation for its use, similar to a marketplace for Swiss digital agents.
What isn't digital becomes more valuable
A business model can be replicated using AI within a day, provided the underlying data is publicly available. As a result, anything that hasn’t been digitized gains value, while functions such as finance or IT are becoming increasingly automatable. For himself, Chris has found this unique core: the exchange he organizes with Ship26.
The podcast episode on Spotify
«AI and Society – Pathways to a New World» is a video podcast produced by the Swiss Text Academy Foundation and the Swiss Prompt Engineering Academy in collaboration with Science City Davos and Lab42 Davos. Host: Christoph Soltmannowski. Production: Castalavista Podcast Factory .Available on YouTube, Spotify, and all other popular podcast platforms: tinyurl.com/5t4fyfex
