Business talk on the topic of "Artificial Intelligence"

"These are extremely turbulent times, and we have the feeling that everything is spiraling out of control, whether we think about the war in Ukraine or about Israel and the Gaza Strip. This, of course, changes all our economic thinking and impacts our competitiveness. All the more reason for us to focus on our competitiveness and utilize artificial intelligence to make our daily work even more efficient and effective," said Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner at a meeting with representatives from industry and business at the House of Digitalization in Tulln. The main topic of this meeting was leveraging the current possibilities of artificial intelligence. Hermann Erlach, General Manager of Microsoft Austria, provided insights into this in a keynote address.

"I am pleased that we built the House of Digitalization here, where the focus now is on further developing it – also in close cooperation with the Research Studio for Artificial Intelligence at the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences. I think we have laid a good foundation; now it's about putting all of this into practice," the Governor emphasized. Artificial intelligence has already found its way into the state civil service; for example, the 700 emergency vehicles in the road service are coordinated using AI. The governor is convinced that there is no way around AI, adding: "It exists, and we must use it properly and remain innovative."

Thomas Salzer, President of the Federation of Austrian Industries in Lower Austria, said that AI is a topic that "will massively occupy all of us in the coming years. It will not only affect us in the workplace and bring about many changes, but the major challenge is how we can prepare companies so that we don't fall behind." Regarding education, he commented that, given how quickly information can be gathered, the focus will no longer be on how knowledge is acquired in schools, but rather on how existing knowledge is handled.

In his presentation, Hermann Erlach used practical examples to demonstrate how AI can already be used in daily work and gave an outlook on future applications. The event concluded with a panel discussion moderated by Lukas Reutterer and Claus Zeppelzauer (both managing directors of Haus der Digitalisierung), featuring, among others, IVNÖ managing director Michaela Roither, IVNÖ vice president Helmut Schwarzl and ecoplus managing director Helmut Miernicki.