Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Kapsch TrafficCom AG / Managing Director, Kapsch Group, Kapsch TrafficCom AG
Zero Project Conference 2024: Podium mit Markus Wurm und Georg Kapsch
Wir sind stolz, dass wir bei der ZeroCon24 dabei waren, und das am Podium im Forum Artificial Intelligence and Disabity Inclusion. Seht hier unseren Beitrag von Markus Wurm und Georg Kapsch, die zu unserem erfolgreichen Pilotprojekt Stellung nehmen.
We are proud to have been part of ZeroCon24 and to have taken the stage at the Forum on Artificial Intelligence and Disability Inclusion. Check out our presentation by Markus Wurm and Georg Kapsch, discussing our successful pilot project.
#ZeroCon24 #Inclusion #AI #Responsibility #ResponsibleAnnotation
About Georg Kapsch
In 2017, Georg Kapsch, as CEO of Kapsch TrafficCom and host of an event for the Federation of Austrian Industries, characterized the digital transformation as an "evolution" that has been underway for roughly 50 years, adding that only its pace has accelerated. He argued that success belongs to individuals and societies that "are able to drive change," emphasizing a need for social responsibility and cohesion. Kapsch also criticized the practice of creating and selling companies at a price he described as "far beyond the intrinsic value" of the firm, calling such an activity "not real same for a society." Also in 2017, Kapsch announced the seven winners of the Kapsch Factory1 Acceleration Program, a startup initiative. The selected companies included Quantoz Blockchain Technology, mobiag, BroadBit Batteries, i4drive, Acyclica, Fileradar, and ViNotion. Representatives of the winning startups expressed excitement about collaborating with Kapsch, citing access to the company's testing laboratories, technology, and market network.
Transcript (4 segments)
H
Host0:01
Hold those thoughts the challenges and the barriers that new technology may be creating in terms of access to employment for people with disabilities. But what I want to do is to flip that again. I want to ask George and Marcus if they could come up to be our final speaker, and I'm particularly pleased that we finish with you. I'm going to tell you why: because I don't think that your life experience and what you bring has been quite as obsessive about disability as everybody else in the room. This is what all of us do all of the time, and so maybe we're a little bit skewed in our perspectives. And you, as a very successful entrepreneur, I'd be really interested to see how you're taking this forward in the work that you're doing. George, Marcus, thank you.
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Marcus0:51
That's really true. If you had told me four years ago I would be on a panel for disability, I would ask why. Because we saw there's an opportunity for people with problems finding a job, and we needed people working on this annotation part, and it just evolved via competence. We did work trainings open for everybody. We had socially disadvantaged people, we have had refugees doing work training with us, and people with different disabilities. Over 100 work trainings, and the correlation was extremely high with neurodivergent people, especially autistic people. So it was their competence getting them their job, and their skills. It was not us setting up something for a specific identity group or not. And I think that's also from the self-esteem perspective, work worked quite well. What I liked most is when I asked the tech department guys, 'Okay, let's try maybe we can make a breakout of this area out of the company and remove these guys.' And those tech nerds really said, 'No way, you touch them.' And I know it's not because of their high social skills in that tech. So it's really the value they create that brings their job and that opportunity. They solve themselves. We also funded and created an NGO responsible for annotation, which you see just outside of the exit there. People of the team you saw in the video are there and can show you annotation. So you're all welcome to help us creating those open job opportunities.
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Georg Kapsch3:16
Well, thank you very much for the invitation. It's a great pleasure being here. And you might think, well, everyone was on his own and they are coming as a couple, and so maybe you think we are not capable. But in this project we are kind of digital twins, so we think very much in parallel and help each other. So thank you very much. But before I start talking about the project, I would like to thank Susan for what she said. You were really speaking from my heart, really, really. And I'm grateful that you said all of that. But I think this does not just apply to the disability community, this applies generally what you said. So thank you very much for your remarks. So, well, we have a different approach. We are approaching the topic from a different angle. Despite the fact that we are a telecom company and my personal professional career comes from IT, I'm dealing with internet when it was a tiny little net, not even yet the WWW. But anyway, we are using AI. We do not provide products for your community. We don't provide products. We are in the mobility segment anyway. We think and we are convinced, and our attitude is about people. Everything in our world is about people. Technology as such can be changed tomorrow, but people will stay, and people with their feelings will stay. Therefore, it's really important. Maybe we are wrong, but that's our conviction. We think we are all human beings with strengths and weaknesses, and each of us in this room and outside is strange in one way or the other. So what we want to create is to build on strengths of people and to help people to build their career and their life on their strengths. And therefore we created a project that incorporates people with different abilities, and these people were integrated in the regular labor market. And this leads to self-confidence of the people. I think that's what we need to provide, and this is our responsibility. And our project is a contribution to that.
We can roll it out in two ways. One is globally. We already transformed or moved this project or extended this project to Latin America, to Chile, because my son is leading Latin America. And you can extend it in the value chain, for instance towards your customers. And before I hand over to my colleague, I would like to comment to you again. And I said, as long as I'm the CEO of my company, of this company, we will not in any way use digital tools for recruitment. Certainly not.