Switzerland's AI Movement is About to Start! | Swiss {ai} Weeks Team on TechDrive Zürich

For the first time on TechDrive Zürich there are two guests in the car!

Katka Letzing and Anna Hakobyan co-initiated Swiss {ai} Weeks, five weeks of AI events running across Switzerland from 1 September into early October, with more than 200 partners and more than 200 events behind it. We recorded two weeks before it opened.
It takes about twelve months to build, and they start the week after the previous one ends.
Most of the conversation is about restraint rather than acceleration. Anna explains why generating ten pages of a document in two minutes does not mean you should, and what happens when the person receiving it summarises it with AI. Katka explains why leading with AI stopped being impressive the moment everyone started doing it. Both of them describe the shift away from large frontier models toward smaller specialised ones, and the gap between organisations that pilot and organisations that scale.
They are also unusually direct about themselves. Katka says she handles negotiation and diplomacy because she was trained to negotiate in war zones, then says in the next breath that the technical side is not her strength. Anna talks about taking ego out of a project you care about, and admits that asking for help is the part she still works on.
And one number worth sitting with: partner organisations taught 6000 children about AI, and then those children went back to classrooms where the teachers had not had the same training.

In this episode:• Why they built a movement instead of a programme• Coming in with the mindset of an experiment• From Czechoslovakia and the UN to Zürich• Why organisations backed this with no direct business return• What people keep getting wrong about Apertus• Why smaller specialised models are winning• AI consciousness, and generating less• Whether hackathons actually go anywhere

⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Two guests, two weeks to go
01:44 It takes 12 months to build five weeks
02:54 Why a movement and not a programme
04:21 Come in with the mindset of an experiment
05:35 Katka: Czechoslovakia, Silicon Valley, Kickstart
07:46 Anna: the UN, Montreal, New York, tech
10:34 What each of them brings to the team
11:29 Taking ego out of the equation
13:29 Getting partners on board
14:32 They backed it with no direct business link
15:03 Why this works in Switzerland16:18 What would make this year a success
17:22 6000 kids, and the teachers who were not ready
18:41 Where AI is actually heading
19:42 The Apertus misunderstanding
20:51 Away from the frontier models
21:53 Ten pages in two minutes
22:55 AI does not make you cool any more
23:43 Do hackathons actually go anywhere
24:47 How to take part

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Swiss {ai} Weeks: ai-weeks.ch
Katka Letzing: linkedin.com/in/katkaletzing
Anna Hakobyan: linkedin.com/in/annahakobyan

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Watch the video version on YouTube: youtu.be/mS4hiMQVwpk

TechDrive Zürich is hosted by Justinas Mišeikis:
jmiseikis.lovable.app