On April 1st, 2025, the KI NRW Future Center, the ifaa – Institute for Applied Ergonomics, IDiTech and the T NRW agency are at the event “AI in the world of work: skills, exchange and perspectives” invited to the AI Village in Hürth.
The event, which was attended by around 50 participants from all over North Rhine-Westphalia, was aimed at managers, human resources managers, works councils and anyone interested who would like to advance the use of artificial intelligence in their company and was entirely under the motto of social partnership cooperation.
The start was made by Dr. Heike Hunecke (Bun) moderated “social partner dialogue” between the employer representative Timm Helten-Hildwein (METAL NRW) and the employee representative Dr. Detlef Gerst (IG Metal) on the opportunities but also challenges of economical and sustainable use of AI. It became clear quite early in the conversation between both partners that a successful transformation of medium-sized companies depends on a shared basic understanding of the necessity and importance of a strategic approach to the topic of AI and can only be achieved through cooperation between employers and employees.
In addition to the social partner dialogue, participants were able to get to know and experience various practical examples of AI-supported work in the company on a marketplace.
The following practical examples and demonstrators were on site:
- “A bag of colorful things”: Fabric retailer Julia Ellmann’s stand was all about creative AI power for retail! Julia is an entrepreneur and expert for innovative retail concepts. It shows how artificial intelligence can be used easily and effectively in everyday business – and only with a smartphone! Whether texts, videos, social media or creative ideation – with minimal technology but maximum efficiency, it demonstrates how AI can noticeably relieve the burden on self-employed people and retailers and optimize everyday working life.
- “Humane Toolbox”: Design human-centered AI in the workplace with the “FriendlyTechCheck” (FTC). The use of artificial intelligence in the workplace can result in learning and health potential for employees (relief, learning incentives), but also psychosocial risks (increased work, devaluation of knowledge). With the “FriendlyTechCheck” (FTC), company practitioners can prospectively record the health potential and risks of using AI applications in specific workplace settings. The FTC was involved in the project „Human“ (Competence center of the Ruhr Metropolis for human-centered work with AI) funded by the BMBF.
- “Amber Search”: No more endless searching. amberSearch demonstrated how internal knowledge can be made quickly and accessible to everyone in the company without having to use multiple individual applications and environments. Using an intuitive user interface, participants were able to find out how Amber Search combines a search à la Google and an AI chat, across systems, media and languages, in one program.
- “Experience AI”: How AI – apart from ChatGPT – can be used in the world of work often still seems abstract. There is often a lack of practical, tangible application examples, especially in the area of production. With a demonstrator of the bright Participants were given the opportunity to playfully experience how AI is used as an assistance system in the production of sheet metal components and what limitations the technology has. The focus was on image recognition technology, which offers possible uses, for example through a camera system in quality control during the production process.
- “Learning Chatbot”
How can learning chatbots support you and what should you pay attention to when using them and during the training phase? Using the example of the learning chatbot from Blockchain Reallabor These questions were promptly addressed. The bot was fed with content from METALL NRW and IG Metall and was able to answer context-specific questions about the association and the union.
Based on these experiences, the participants were able to bring themselves and their internal company perspectives into active dialogue on topics such as skilled workers, acceptance of AI-supported tools, qualification and “lessons learned” in three special topic islands and exchange ideas with each other and with invited experts.
The conclusion was a compact presentation of support offers for operational practice by the Agentur T NRWthe future center KI NRW and the Light Consulting.
Artificial intelligence is changing the world of work sustainably – let’s use the opportunity of AI to make the working world of tomorrow more humane, efficient and inspiring. Thank you for your interest and the constructive exchange.
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