The Competence Center Arbeitswelt.Plus is an information platform for the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) in the working world. In the Competence Center Arbeitswelt.Plus, 25 universities and companies from OstWestfalenLippe are working together with IG Metall to develop approaches for the introduction of artificial intelligence in the world of work. The Institute Industrial IT (inIT) at TH OWL is also involved and is investigating the possibilities of using AI, for example, with regard to the design of workplaces and the qualification of employees.
The experts at inIT are researching AI methods that can be used interactively, cooperatively and, above all, effectively in the working environment of industrial SMEs. Together with the project partners, it has set itself the aim of designing and communicating application-oriented development and providing trend-setting impulses.
"In the meantime, we can safely say that the working world will be fundamentally and sustainably changed by AI. That's why we at inIT are researching cooperative methods, i.e. humans and AI in tandem, to enable humans to perform new and more complex work steps and solutions. For example, AI can design product prototypes that are then completed by humans. Machine processes can also be monitored and optimized, and generally speaking, tasks can be reduced in their perceived complexity," describes inIT research group leader Christoph-Alexander Holst.
At the milestone meeting on November 4, 2021, one year of Arbeitswelt.Plus was celebrated and more than 75 participants looked retrospectively at the first project year.
In particular, the achievements to date in the so-called lighthouse projects were presented and discussed. The lighthouse projects focus on transferring AI methods in a participatory and human-centered way into specific use cases of companies. "In the lighthouse projects, we as research partners can concretely evaluate our concepts for participatory AI approaches and investigate AI-induced changes, especially in planning processes. Arbeitswelt.Plus enables us to gain knowledge on a unique scale," enthuses inIT employee Alexander Kuhn. At the milestone meeting, inIT employees showed the results of their work from the lighthouse projects. These included human-centered interaction schemes for AI-based planning processes and methods for AI-based business planning.
You can find out more about the Competence Center Arbeitswelt.Plus and its lighthouse projects on the project homepage at https://arbeitswelt.plus.
The Competence Center Arbeitswelt.Plus is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the program "Zukunft der Wertschöpfung – Forschung zu Produktion, Dienstleistung und Arbeit" and supervised by the Project Management Agency Karlsruhe (PTKA). The responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the author.