Careers: Interviews
A Chat with Christoph Santner: AI strategist; Speaker; futurist; Author; Consultant

This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with Christoph Santner.

Christoph Santner is an inspiring AI strategist, speaker, futurist, author and consultant. His book "Alles KI? - Die neue Welt der Künstlichen Intelligenz verstehen und nutzen. Das erste Buch mit eigener KI" (All AI? - Understanding and using the new world of Artificial Intelligence. The first book with its own AI) will be published in August 2024 by Goldmann Verlag (Random House Publishing Group) with a foreword by Ben Goertzel. Santner interviewed more than 50 international AI experts for this book. He also wrote eight articles on various aspects of AI for the magazine Forum Nachhaltig Wirtschaften (Sustainable Economy), of which he is a member of the board of trustees.

Christoph Santner is the founder of the AInitiative to aimprove (y)our future (an association based in Switzerland), as well as co-founder of Forum KAIpital, with which he organized an AI finance conference in Frankfurt in cooperation with DekaBank and the International Bankers Forum (where he also co-chairs the AI expert committee).

He organized and moderated the panel "FAInance for Good" (including a humanoid robot as an expert on this panel) at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva that ran parallel to the "AI for Good - Global Summit" of the ITU that he reported in his book and articles. He also organized and moderated the AI stage of the two-day DigiSustain conference in Frankfurt entitled "Artificial Intelligence - the RAIvolution for Good" with 40 speakers and panelists. DigiSustain is organized by the Inglosus Foundation (Institute for Global Sustainability), on whose advisory board he is a member.

Christoph Santner created the HAIckathon® format (for non-coders), in which teams develop complete start-ups within two days, including a website, business plan and pitch in front of a jury. So far, three of these HAIckathons have been held, partly in cooperation with Alanus University (see photo).

He works as an innovation and marketing consultant for companies such as Sixt and was co-developer and moderator of formats such as Audi Inspiration, BMW im Dialog or the Weimarer Visionen ("die FestSpiele des Denkens" - the Festival of Thinking. ELLE wrote: "To the coolest salon in the Republic"). He has also given keynotes for ITB, World Travel Market, Lufthansa, Fujitsu, Die Welt, UNWTO, LaFutura and TEDxMarrakesh ("Future, vision & the bright side""), among others.

He has written articles on innovation topics in various business magazines and as book contributions, including with Holger Kuhfuß: Marketing in der Kreationsgesellschaft - "Ich bin mein eigenes Geschöpf" in: Die neue Macht des Marketing. (Marketing in the creation society - "I am my own creature" in: The new power of marketing.)

Even as a young journalist in the 1980s and 1990s, he made reports on AI and future topics for ORF, BR, Focus-TV and others. He interviewed leading AI minds such as Joseph Weizenbaum, Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec and others, who had founded AI in the 1950s and 1960s.

At the dawn of the internet, he organized four future camps for Volkswagen and for a start-up in California, Hawaii, Bavaria and the Canary Islands. He was also a member of German President Roman Herzog's "Future Initiative", which was organized by State Secretary Wilhelm Staudacher, following Herzog's famous "Innovation Speech". Since then, Christoph's motto has been: "The future is what we make of it!"

In addition to AI, he consistently focuses on future topics such as quantum computing, cyber security and robotics. He believes that making the most of the superpower AI today and realizing "AI for Good" is the most important opportunity of our time - and our greatest responsibility.