Introduction
Nice to have you with us again for another episode of Digital4Productivity. And today we're talking about hype or not to hype. Why hype or not hype?
Unfortunately, when it comes to digitalization, I see time and time again that we simply keep pushing the new media pig through the village instead of actually dealing with the topic in a productive way. That was the case with the topic of metaverse, for example, when AI came along, artificial intelligence, and then it was suddenly said that metaverse is out and AI is the new topic. Meta, i.e. the Facebook group, is withdrawing from it and AI is the new topic. And now I'm already seeing some people saying that AI is just another hype topic and it will pass. That's bad news. That's not a good strategy. There is the usual Gartner hype cycle, which you may have seen before. And we Germans are particularly good at it. And unfortunately, this also corresponds to the structure of our media consumption behavior. Because something new comes along and we say, yay! And we all jump on this new bandwagon and say This is the future, this is the new metaverse. We no longer communicate in real life, we only do it virtually. AI is replacing humans and everything is wonderful.
Will AI replace humans? No!
And I always like to use the example of self-driving cars. Last year, my wife and I visited an exhibition at the Post and Communications Museum here in Berlin. It was about visions that people had about technology in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1936, for example, there was already video telephony at the Radio Exhibition and everything that went with it. It really did work, even with slightly different technology. And what I found great from the 1950s were videos from General Motors with self-driving cars, where the whole family sat in the car, drank coffee and drove the car themselves. As you may have noticed, Ford has put the topic of fully autonomous driving on hold for the time being. So we're not as far along as we seemed to be in these hype things in the 1950s. So we always start out by saying yes, great, great, great. Then what comes next? Then comes this phase of disillusionment, where we realize: Ah, it doesn't work like that. And then most people say, oh no, it doesn't work, it doesn't work, it's nonsense. AI never works that well. And yesterday, I met up with my daughter in the afternoon and cycled through Berlin to our meeting point. And I always like to have the Pioneer podcast and Christoph Käse's tech briefing in one ear. And there was, no, it wasn't the tech briefing, it was the normal Pioneer briefing by Gabor Steingardt and he had interviewed Frank Thelen. And that was very, very good and very, very interesting, where he also said that this topic of AI is a significant, a well-known change in the way we live and work. And of course there are risks, of course. And we can't yet foresee whether it won't really be the case at some point that AI will potentially decide that humans aren't really good for the planet and work to abolish them. Which would certainly be the better solution for the Earth. The question is whether we as humans want it that way. So that's why it's an important discussion and that you also manage something like that, but on the other hand, and I found this very interesting, he also said that it's not just a hype topic, but today it's the case that he says he has either significantly reduced his team strength in the company in some areas or, and this is the frequent case, creates significantly more business with the same number of people. He said that some of his team members simply have two brains and six hands and are therefore much more productive.
That is also in line with my assessment. And I can see that myself. So AI doesn't replace me. And you may have heard that in the last episode. I dealt with the topic of digital twins. The digital twin doesn't replace me, but it can complement me. And what I always find very, very symptomatic and based on this episode, there were a lot of colleagues who said, yes, along the lines of, the real Thorsten is even cooler or to say, well, the quality isn't that great yet or, yes, it's quite funny, but I can't imagine anything under it. And that's very symptomatic. Unfortunately, I find that very few people are concerned with how new technologies can be used productively, but rather either in this yay and super-enthusiastic phase or they're all in the scrap phase. Instead of getting to grips with it and learning about it at first, I always say that digital know-how is important, but then also trying it out, that's how you get digital do-how. Because it's important to simply keep an eye on certain things and then try them out. And that's what I do all the time, that I simply try out new IT tools, new AI tools, but also the topic of metaverse, so I regularly attend a Monday evening get-together with a group of great VR experts and augmented reality experts, where we simply try things out. And these solutions are getting better and better every week. And of course there are sometimes companies like Meta that say, okay, the MetaQuest Pro that they have now developed will not be developed further in this form. But there is a MetaQuest 3, the successor to the MetaQuest 2, which is the widely used virtual reality glasses. And if I look at Apple, they have introduced the Apple Vision Pro and Apple recently acquired a company that offers a frame for glasses that you can attach an iPhone to. So there are definitely ideas as to how this topic could possibly be done in a light version with the iPhone. Because Apple, and this is another typical example where people always say, yes, Apple sleeps through everything and Apple is not at all involved in this topic of Metaverse, and suddenly Apple comes along. What many people overlook is that Apple is a company that thinks very long-term. And all the technologies that they ultimately need for this Vision Pro issue have simply been developed over the last few years. So if you look at LiDAR, which is a combination of laser and radar, the ability to capture and measure objects in three dimensions with a camera is needed for augmented reality, which they introduced in the iPhone. This topic of spatial audio, so that you can hear where a sound comes from, via the Airpods for example, is also integrated. These are all components that are needed for virtual reality and augmented reality. If you have an Apple Watch, for example, you have motion sensors in it in all possible directions. So there are also considerations as to whether there could be a combination of Apple Watch and iPhone that would allow you to say, I have gesture control via the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch is already able to recognize when you make a fist, when you extend a finger and things like that. The Apple Watch recognizes that. And that's a typical example where you don't have to delve as deeply into new technologies as I do. You can take the shortcut by regularly listening to my podcast, checking my blog and following my LinkedIn profile. But this mindset is important to me, especially for managers. The world is simply not black and white. It's gray and not all new technologies will prevail, of course. But it's usually the case that we hopelessly overestimate new technologies and then hopelessly underestimate them. And the companies that separate the wheat from the chaff, try things out and do more of the things that work well and leave out the things that don't work so well, those are the companies that are successful afterwards. And when I come back to this topic of the digital twin and say, yes, the real Thorsten is better. Yes, well, but I don't speak Korean, for example. But now I can also offer videos in Korean via this channel. And if you think that you can use it to scale up into new markets whose language you don't speak, for example. Or if you are a company that operates in many countries, for example, and you have an internal support site. And many companies have this, where they have questions and answers for their customers or employees.
So, what would happen if you took an existing FAQ page again, all the texts that are in there and simply generated videos from it again using AI? So, and if you can put a chatbot on it again, where people can simply ask questions. So there are more and more companies, including management consultancies. So, if you take a look, I recently read a first article in Manager Magazin about the top management consultancies. If you look at McKinsey, for example, the ratio to those who are in the back office is now significantly larger, who are concerned with how to structure the knowledge and experience in such a way that it is really available to McKinsey consultants in such a way that they can provide excellent advice in combination with their personal expertise. So there will be many areas where people will simply be replaced by machines. But I always compare it a bit, and if you look at Spiegel articles from the 60s and 70s, the discussion of robots replacing people, the topic of computers replacing people. So for me, AI is also a bit like a typewriter or a computer to say I could write more legibly with a typewriter, if you know how to use it properly. With a computer, you don't have to work with Tipp-Ex, you can duplicate things more easily than paper. Has it replaced the author? No. And it's always an issue when people look back and say, yes, AI is stupid, humans are much more intelligent. Yes, I'm not so sure about that, to be honest. Because what does it always mean where is man better? Yes, humans are better and simply have a lot of personal experience. Sorry, but when I look at it now, how do we learn as humans? We learn by recognizing patterns and applying them afterwards. We're not that different from artificial intelligence. When I look at the topic of empathy, where it's always said that we feel, yes, we feel, okay. But when I look at it, six years ago I was at a lecture where Nils Müller from Trend One showed how advanced facial recognition was six years ago at the Fraunhofer Institute. And facial recognition with a focus on emotion recognition. And when I look back, six years ago, the systems were already more advanced than many a husband in recognizing his wife's emotions. Including me. So that means we're sooooo much better on this subject? Yesterday I had a discussion with the highly esteemed Marget Härtlein, who says that human AIs always have the same patterns that they work on. Creativity comes from breaking patterns. AI doesn't do that. So I say, yhm, not by default, absolutely right. But you know, one of my points is always to simply use technology, i.e. first switch on the brain, then technology, then simply use technology. And they can use AI wonderfully to say, break the rules, do it differently, think disruptively. And if you make these prompts accordingly, you get something completely different. You can also combine things wonderfully. For example, I really like to use this for the title of my presentations. I recently had a request for the whole thing to be in a James Bond theme, the whole event. And then I just had a few ideas for talks and I said, you're the event organizer for this and this company. Here's a link to it. You know what it's all about. That's the goal, those are the goals of the event. These are the other contents. Here are the first, these are the core messages of my speaker. And please, here are a few ideas for a title or subtitle. Please give me 10 presentation titles and subtitle alternatives that take up the titles of James Bond films. I'd like them to rhyme or be a play on words. And then 10 suggestions came out, they said do another 10, do another ten. 30 suggestions. And then I took two of them, combined them into something new and I thought they were super slightly modified. For example, just yesterday I wrote a workshop invitation for a client, where I said, what are the goals of this workshop, what is the target group and what is it about and so on, and I said please write the whole thing from the keywords. I recently wrote a reference for an Executive MBA program for a very esteemed colleague. I just had a page where the briefing was there and then I just took the questions, copied in the chat GPT, replaced the questions with my answer in keywords, which I would put in there. And then I said please write me the target group, the and the school, this is the person, here you have the LinkedIn profile again, here you have the website of the person, here you have three four links to sample references, because the school has just offered them and please write it to me in Polished Oxford English. And I am relatively fluent in English. The result that came out was even better than what I managed. Did I just bang it out without revising it? No. But I realize that the better the prompts are, the better you can handle these systems, the better the results will be.
Conclusion
And at the end of my podcast, I would like to appeal to you not to switch between hype and frustration, but to look at technology, especially as a manager, to evaluate it, to say to what extent it can help me to optimize my customer service, to free up resources, especially in times of skills shortages. Shortages are not necessarily an issue of reducing staff, but simply not being able to fill positions. And then I can consider to what extent I can simply use AI to map more capacity there.
So of course I also see it in terms of risks. That's why there's an ethical discussion right through to very pragmatic things. For example, if you make a digital twin, please always indicate that it's an artificial, AI-generated video, especially if it won't be easy to distinguish in a few weeks' time. Because I sometimes find it difficult, there was recently a video where Elon Musk fires employees live in the video call. And it was such that I had to check three or four times to see if it was fake or if the whole thing was real. They're getting better and better, these things.
The important thing is not only to let the systems get better and better, but also to get better and better yourself. And I always accompany you regularly through my podcast and my blog. And if you, as a manager, would like a personal IT coach to bring management and IT back together for you as a sparring partner, then I would be delighted if you would simply send me an e-mail to t.jekel@jekelteam.de and I would be delighted if you would join me again next week when it's Digital 4 Productivity.
Yours, Thorsten Jekel.
Key Takeaways
- New technologies like AI and the metaverse follow the Gartner hype cycle: initial enthusiasm is followed by disillusionment, then a more realistic plateau of productivity.
- AI does not replace humans — it complements them. Professionals using AI effectively have "two brains and six hands" and get significantly more done with the same team size.
- The digital twin concept lets Thorsten Jekel offer content in languages he does not speak (e.g. Korean), enabling new market reach without replacing the human presenter.
- Self-driving cars are cited as a classic example of hype: fully autonomous driving promised in 1950s GM videos has still not arrived, showing how we consistently overestimate short-term progress.
- Apple's long-term approach to building component technologies (LiDAR, spatial audio, motion sensors in Apple Watch) shows that companies thinking ahead quietly lay the groundwork before a big product launch.
- The quality of AI output depends heavily on the quality of prompts: well-crafted prompts for presentation titles, workshop invitations, or reference letters produce results that exceed what a skilled human alone would write.
- Managers should avoid swinging between hype and frustration. Instead, they should evaluate new technologies objectively: try them, keep what works, drop what does not.
- AI-generated videos (digital twins) must always be clearly labelled as AI-generated, especially as quality improves to the point where distinguishing them from real footage becomes difficult.
- In times of skills shortages, AI can help organisations do more with existing headcount rather than simply cutting staff.
- Digital know-how alone is not enough — "digital do-how" comes from actually trying out tools, attending VR/AR meetups, and experimenting regularly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Gartner hype cycle and why does it matter for AI?
The Gartner hype cycle describes how new technologies pass through a peak of inflated expectations before crashing into a trough of disillusionment and then reaching a plateau of real productivity. According to Thorsten Jekel, AI follows this same pattern, and the danger is that people abandon a technology right at the trough — just before it becomes genuinely useful.
Will AI replace human workers?
AI does not replace humans, but it does change how much a single person can accomplish. Thorsten Jekel cites Frank Thelen's observation that team members working with AI effectively have "two brains and six hands," meaning companies are achieving significantly more output with the same number of people rather than simply cutting headcount.
How does Thorsten Jekel use AI in his own work?
Thorsten Jekel uses AI tools such as ChatGPT to write presentation titles in a James Bond theme, draft workshop invitations from keyword briefings, and write Executive MBA reference letters in polished Oxford English. In each case he reviews and refines the output rather than using it unedited, and he finds that better prompts consistently produce better results.
What is a digital twin and how can it expand business reach?
A digital twin in this context is an AI-generated video version of a person that can present content in languages the real person does not speak. Thorsten Jekel explains that he can now offer videos in Korean through his channel, which means a business can scale into new language markets or provide multilingual internal support without hiring additional staff.
Why are self-driving cars used as an example in this episode?
Self-driving cars illustrate how we have been overestimating technology for decades: General Motors showed fully autonomous family cars in 1950s promotional videos, yet Ford has since paused fully autonomous driving development. Thorsten Jekel uses this example to show that hype-driven expectations rarely match the reality of how long meaningful technology progress actually takes.
How should managers approach new technology without getting caught in hype cycles?
Managers should avoid jumping straight from enthusiasm to dismissal. Thorsten Jekel recommends evaluating each technology pragmatically: try it out to build "digital do-how," keep the things that work well, and stop doing the things that do not — rather than either hyping or discarding it entirely based on headlines.
Is AI just a hype topic that will fade away?
No — Thorsten Jekel argues that AI represents a significant and lasting change in how we live and work, comparable to the typewriter or the personal computer. Just as computers did not replace authors but changed how they write, AI changes how knowledge workers operate without making them redundant.
What role does Apple play in the VR and AR space?
Apple has been quietly building the component technologies needed for spatial computing over many years — including LiDAR sensors in iPhones, spatial audio in AirPods, and motion sensors in the Apple Watch. Thorsten Jekel uses Apple's long-term approach as an example of a company that avoids the hype cycle by developing foundational technology before launching a headline product like the Apple Vision Pro.
What ethical responsibility comes with using AI-generated video?
Thorsten Jekel stresses that AI-generated videos — digital twins — must always be clearly labelled as artificial and AI-generated. He notes that deepfake quality is improving rapidly, citing a video of Elon Musk that required multiple checks to identify as fake, and warns that transparency is essential before such content becomes indistinguishable from real footage.
How can AI help companies dealing with skills shortages?
In times of skills shortages, AI allows organisations to handle more capacity with their existing workforce rather than simply cutting positions. Thorsten Jekel gives the example of management consultancies like McKinsey that are restructuring their back-office teams to use AI for capturing and distributing institutional knowledge, so that fewer consultants can deliver the same quality of advice.
Tools & Resources Mentioned
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) – central topic of this episode; covered in depth on digital4productivity.de
- ChatGPT – used by Thorsten Jekel for writing presentation titles, workshop invitations, and reference letters via carefully crafted prompts
- Apple Vision Pro – Apple's spatial computing headset, cited as an example of long-term technology development
- MetaQuest 2 / MetaQuest 3 – Meta's widely used VR headsets, mentioned in the context of metaverse development
- Apple Watch – cited for its built-in motion sensors and gesture-recognition capabilities relevant to VR/AR control
- Pioneer Podcast (Gabor Steingart) – listened to by Thorsten Jekel during a Berlin cycling trip; featured an interview with Frank Thelen on AI
- Trend One / Nils Müller – cited for a lecture six years ago demonstrating advanced facial and emotion recognition at the Fraunhofer Institute
- iPad – part of Thorsten Jekel's broader digital productivity toolkit covered on digital4productivity.de