gerd leonhard

• Technology vs. Humanity: The Coming Clash Between Man and Machine
  The central argument of his internationally bestselling book, now translated into more than ten languages. Leonhard examines what we stand to gain and lose as exponential technologies reshape how we work, live, and think.
• The Good Future: People, Planet, Purpose, and Prosperity
  A call to design the future intentionally, organized around Leonhard's four-part credo. He makes an optimistic but clear-eyed case that the future is better than we fear — but only if we shape it with human flourishing as the goal.
• Digital Ethics in the Age of AI
  Why the values we build into our technology matter as much as the technology itself. Leonhard foregoes hype and buzzwords in favor of what he calls progressive humanism.
• Why Humans Will Still Matter in an Automated World
  The case for protecting and amplifying what makes us human as machines grow more capable. Leonhard brings together what he calls "algorithms and androrithms" — the technological and the human.

speaker Bio: 

Gerd Leonhard is one of the world's top-rated futurists and a leading voice on the relationship between technology and humanity. The author of five books — including the 2016 bestseller Technology vs. Humanity, now translated into more than ten languages — he is the CEO of The Futures Agency, a global network of leading futurists based in Zurich. Over the past two decades he has delivered more than 2,000 keynotes in over 70 countries to a combined audience of millions, working with Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Google, Visa, the European Commission, Audi, Deloitte, and IBM, among most of the Fortune 500.

Leonhard's path to futurism was unusual: a Berklee-trained musician who won the Quincy Jones Award and spent twelve years as a professional guitarist and composer before becoming an internet entrepreneur in San Francisco. After the dot-com crash, he returned to Europe and found his calling reading the future. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London and a filmmaker whose work has reached millions, he presents in both English and German, blending futurism with humanism — what he calls bringing together "algorithms and androrithms."

Summary (Core Conviction):

Leonhard is deliberately not a techno-optimist. His defining argument is that technology can do great things but does not want to do anything — the "want" is up to us. As exponential technologies reshape how we work, live, and think, his work foregoes hype and buzzwords in favor of what he calls progressive humanism: the conviction that the central task of our time is to protect and amplify what makes us human even as machines grow more capable. Organized around his "People, Planet, Purpose, and Prosperity" credo, his keynotes are a call to design "The Good Future" intentionally — an optimistic but clear-eyed argument that the future is better than we fear, but only if we shape it with human flourishing as the goal.

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