Jonas Bjerg: "If you don't adapt to future digital opportunities, you'll be left behind"

In Formpipe's new portrait series, "With an eye on the future digital society," we meet inspiring profiles from various industries who share one common trait: they all have a clear stance on the future digital society. In the third article of the series, we meet Jonas Bjerg, Data Science Manager at Bain & Company.

This third article in the portrait series starts with a straightforward statement:

Where Denmark used to be a digital frontrunner, we have been overtaken in recent years - at full speed.

And those who have left us in the dust, particularly, are the USA and Asia. Alongside most other countries in Europe, we now watch as companies from these nations gain an ever-increasing lead. A lead that impacts our competitiveness, our ability to streamline, and thus save money, time, and resources. In essence, a massive threat to a flourishing and competitive Danish business sector.

But it's not too late...

At least, not according to Jonas Bjerg, now Data Science Manager at Bain & Company - a renowned international consulting firm - but with a CV that attests to a period in Silicon Valley at Google and two degrees in International Business and Business Analytics and AI respectively. However, it requires us to be willing to change our approach to future technologies:

"When we look at the Danish industry, I would estimate that we are 5-10 years behind - and in the world of data, which is our yardstick, things move extremely fast. This means we are missing out on a lot, and our competitiveness is severely compromised. The reason is that in Europe, we rest on our laurels because we view digitalization and streamlining as a massive investment, and in boardrooms, they repeatedly question whether it's worth it," he says.

Future technology is worth the investment

It takes Jonas only a few milliseconds to answer whether an investment in future technology is indeed worthwhile, as Danish boards of directors often doubt:

"Absolutely! You can make money quickly if you become more data-driven in your decisions. I helped a company increase their annual revenue by 30% in just 6 weeks... 6 weeks! And I have not yet encountered an industry or a company where we couldn't make a significant impact," he says.

But it requires us to step away from the laurels we rest on and seize the opportunities in front of us instead of fearing the consequences we believe they might bring. According to Jonas, there is absolutely no danger that technology - specifically AI - will render humans obsolete. On the contrary, technology will make humans even more effective in their jobs and in many cases, create greater job satisfaction:

"Many creatives, especially, fear that their work will now be taken away from them. But it's entirely unnecessary. If, for example, you're a copywriter, you likely love playing with words and sentence structures, breaking grammatical rules to give the text life and personality. That creativity can never be replicated by AI. However, it can correct all your punctuation errors in a split second. So, you save a lot of time on a relatively mundane task and can focus on what you find really fun," he explains.

And one of the reasons not to fear AI taking over your job - especially as a creative - can be found in a tiny difference between the human brain and the computer "brain." A small difference with significant implications:

The technique behind ChatGPT is inspired by our brain cells. Inside our brains are neurons, and they help us learn new things. The same kind of neurons can be found in the various layers of the network inside a computer "brain." However, unlike the human brain, which stores information in the neurons, the computer stores all its information in so-called weights, which are what connect the neurons. And that little difference has a huge impact. Because that difference means that the human brain only needs to try riding a bike 10-20 times to have learned it, whereas the computer needs 100,000 times. And currently, the technology is far from being able to crack that code.

"And let's also remember, a computer can never think in entirely new ways. A creative output from a computer comes from input from humans. It's all still just statistics and data, and if it's not in a dataset, the computer can't figure it out. And who creates that dataset? Humans do," he emphasizes.

However, if you manage to use current technology correctly, you'll experience a tremendous increase in efficiency in your work. And one of the new technological possibilities that has taken the world by storm is ChatGPT...

Getting the most out of ChatGPT

If you're looking for the very best tips and tricks to get the most out of ChatGPT, you'll need to arm yourself with a little patience...

You'll get that information first at our big event IMPULS, taking place on November 9, 2023. Jonas will be giving a presentation on this very topic, and he will also demonstrate live on a big screen how different language models can be an invaluable partner for you in your work.

However, he reveals the entire structure of the aforementioned language model in this article:

The instructions we give ChatGPT are called prompts. And ChatGPT is developed in such a way that it should be able to understand the context that lies between your words and thus understand you just like if it were a human facing you.

But it's not - it's just a machine.

Therefore, you need to prompt it in its language to get the most out of the advanced AI language models. The structure of the model you should use for your prompt is called CIDO. It stands for context, instruction, details, and output. The more specific you are in describing these four elements, the better and more useful a response ChatGPT will give you.

How it looks in concrete terms, Jonas will show you at IMPULS. And you can get a ticket right here!

And if you're still interested in even more knowledge about correct and valuable prompting after Jonas' presentation, you can even take courses in AI prompt engineering - yes, you can even get a job at a company as an AI Prompt Engineer!

"Within 5 years, we'll see self-driving cars on the streets."

And ChatGPT is just the beginning. For perhaps you're one of those who think that self-driving cars are far off in the future?

You might want to think again!

Because if you ask Jonas, the near future holds so much new that it might be hard for some to imagine. And self-driving cars on the roads are just one thing...

"When I look just 5 years into the future, I see two really big technologies ruling; one is self-driving cars, i.e., 'level 3 autonomous cars,' which already have a major car manufacturer, namely Mercedes-Benz, that has been granted permission to sell in California. The other is a massive platform shift on par with the shift that happened when we replaced paper with the machine. Going forward, we will communicate with our technology!," he says and further explains:

"I geek out on technology daily, so I can already control my TV, my front door, and my coffee maker by talking to them. But imagine that on steroids; being able to say to your computer 'Alright, I need to report to the tax office, can you handle that for me?'. It will be a virtual assistant in an entirely new way," he eagerly explains.

And here, we leave Jonas Bjerg - for now... Because we've only scratched the surface of the knowledge Jonas has about technology and including ChatGPT. You'll get a much deeper insight if you participate in IMPULS on November 9, 2023. And who knows; perhaps an increased knowledge and use of Generative AI, where ChatGPT is the first to become world-famous, is precisely the stepping stone needed to get Europe - and especially Denmark - back in the lead?

You can read more about our digitalization event - IMPULS here