Category Archives: Business

AI-Winter, Plateau, Pareto-Principle?

Another article on AI, and again I found it on the platform piqd.de : Machine Learning Confronts the Elephant in the Room.

Maybe this just appears to me, or maybe it’s wishful thinking. But it looks more and more to me like the advances in AI are kind of stalling and less and less impressive lately. There are more products and services that pitch “AI driven”, but its mostly about the same few topics. Doesn’t appear too new to me.

But maybe the next breakthrough is just days or weeks away?

Or the reality is significantly more complex than scientists would like to think. Mabe the algorithms (and AI in the end is just the implementation of clever algos), just can’t keep up with our brains.

Well, just read the article linked above, I found it very interesting.

Teamwork in the digital age

Once again on piqd I found this article: What Sets Effective Teams Apart?

I think this is a really good article. Sometimes there are jobs for the single achiever, but the majority of work can only be achieved in teamwork. To put together such teams requires a good insight into how teams work and how to foster collaboration with different personalities that make up teams.

A important part is “safety”. The safety to be able to criticize when applicable, the safety to bring up new and radical ideas and the feeling of safety when at times there is a failure… that this is not a drama.

 

Why Germans Work Fewer Hours But Product More

If you work, like me, in a large international company and work with colleagues from many other countries, you are regularly confronted with the prejudice that Germans work so few hours and have so many holidays/vacation days.

Well, some of it is simply wrong (like having many public holidays, but thats a separate article), and then … could it be that this is part of why we are so productive? Because we really work, when we work?

Although this article is already from 2014, I just stumbled across it a few days ago when browsing some of the blogs that I follow:

Why Germans Work Fewer Hours But Produce More: A Study In Culture

Reading this takes you about 10 minutes or so … interestingly, the comments section below takes more than 90% of the web-page… some interesting stuff there also and the usual debate about “what is wrong” and “why its right”… didn’t read too much of it…

As I am German, I am by nature sceptical and do not have a tendency to be overly proud of myself or country. But I do think that some of that may be true… isn’t it?