In the latest episode of the Dinis Guarda Podcast, Dr. Annette Doms, CEO & Director of Future Business at ICAA, explores the transformative power of AI, blockchain, and Web3 technologies, emphasising their role in enhancing creativity, education, finance, and leadership. She also discusses the challenges and opportunities in implementing these technologies responsibly, focusing on the importance of transparency, human-centric design, and continuous monitoring. The podcast is powered by Businessabc.net, Citiesabc.com, Wisdomia.ai, and Sportsabc.org.
Dr. Annette Doms is a Tech Evangelist, entrepreneur, Future Business Expert, In-Company Trainer, Web3 Expert, academic, and Public Speaker, digital transformation strategist. She is the CEO and Director of Future Business at ICAA Strategists GmbH, a consulting firm that helps businesses transform using technologies like Web3, AI, and Blockchain. She is also the Vice President of Education and Research at VENTURE AI GERMANY.
During the interview with Dinis Guarda, Dr. Annette Doms reflects on the intersection of AI and human creativity:
“The common narrative around AI and creativity actually focuses on whether machines will replace human artists or replace jobs. But in the end, there were more jobs than before, and the same happens now with AI.
What we’re witnessing right now is not replacement but augmentation and an expansion of what’s possible when human intention and machine capabilities come together.
In art, AI is becoming a generative partner. Artists like Rafik Anadol don’t use AI for efficiency, they collaborate with AI to generate new ethics in art that could not have been imagined before AI.
In education, AI has the potential to reshape who gets to access services and how, by adapting to different learning content, styles, and cultural contexts. In finance, AI allows more nuanced risk modelling, more personalised financial products, and better access to services for previously underserved communities.
Organisations that will thrive won’t simply deploy AI to optimise. They will use it to reimagine their value to society. The real divide won’t be between adopters and non-adopters. It will be between those who use AI to reinforce old models and those who use it to create entirely new forms of value.
Responsible AI: Driving innovation with ethics
Dr. Annette Doms discusses the importance of responsible AI, emphasising the need for transparency, human-centric design, and continuous monitoring:
“Responsible AI is not about theoretical ethical debates. It’s really about how we build, how we deploy and govern AI on the ground. We need to be radically honest about what AI can do and what it can’t.
We are still talking about weak AI. We are not at the point where we have strong AI with human-like general intelligence. These are mathematical systems or models shaped by human-made data, with all biases and limitations that were made by human-made data.
Responsible AI doesn’t aim to replace automation. It supports and enhances human decision-making, especially across areas like lives, rights, or livelihoods when they are at stake.
We must ensure humans stay accountable for the outcome. Technology is not the problem; it’s about people and how they treat AI.
Humans are not always good, especially when it comes to power and money, and there is a lot of misuse and fakery outside.
We don’t have to forget that there are still a lot of hallucinations. It’s a black box, and these are problems we are dealing with. We need continuous monitoring and governments that adapt to the technology. One-time audits don’t cut it.
Germany has a deep-rooted tradition of technology impact assessment, which gives us a unique advantage. We are culturally wired to ask the right questions from the beginning.
Responsible AI isn’t a drag on innovation. It’s a driver of it. Systems built with care, context, and human value at the core turn out to be more robust, trusted, and ultimately more successful.”
The winners in AI won’t be the fastest movers. They will be the ones who move with the deepest integration of technology, humanity, and purpose.”
Overcoming AI implementation challenges
Dr. Annette Doms identifies several key challenges businesses face when implementing AI at scale:
“The gap between AI’s theoretical potential and practical implementation is or remains surprisingly wide.
The first big challenge is really the data reality gap, Many companies approach AI with unrealistic expectations about their data assets.
Data must be structured, many companies discover that their data is fragmented across systems or poorly structured, or sometimes simply insufficient for AI. What we do is make data ready for AI implementation, and this, of course, needs time, and it’s also an investment.
The second challenge is still this talent mismatch, successful implementations come from interdisciplinary teams, combining domain expertise with technical knowledge. These hybrid professionals are still very, very scarce.
Governments need to be productive and dynamic, future-oriented and focused on outcomes and risks, and also on continuous evaluation.
AI is different. It’s probabilistic, iterative, and context-dependent. Governments need to develop strategies for continuous evaluation, not just compliance.
Early-stage companies often underestimate technical complexity, and legacy enterprises struggle to integrate AI systems into their existing processes or culture.
Invest in data infrastructure before algorithms, cultivate interdisciplinary teams, and develop governance that is not just compliant but strategic. AI-assisted employees or AI-assisted workers, this is maybe the beginning of every company. To teach and educate employees because this is definitely future productive.
Ultimately, the most successful companies will be those who recognise that building effective AI is not a journey but rather a destination.”
Essential skills for AI & Web3
Dr. Annette Doms emphasises the importance of a new leadership toolkit to thrive in the AI and Web3 world:
“The leadership toolkit of the 20th century is no longer enough. AI and Web3 don’t change processes, so they extend them and are reshaping entire value chains and ecosystems. The most essential skills are curiosity, openness, and lifelong learning.
Today, we need to be fluent in systems thinking. The ability to see not just cause and effect but networks and feedback loops, and emergent patterns.
Leadership should not just know what a tool can do, but what it should do, having an ethical compass strong enough to guide innovation, even when the path is uncertain. It’s easy to move fast, but harder to move wisely. Leaders must be wise these days.
Leadership must master adaptive collaboration. No single genius will solve the challenges ahead. It will take diverse interdisciplinary teams and humans, and machines across cultures and sectors.
The greatest misconception is that technical knowledge alone will be sufficient. Yes, leaders need enough technical understanding to ask the right questions, but more fundamentally, they need wisdom about human needs, motivation, and values. The true essential skills for the future are actually more human than technological.”
AI, Blockchain & XR in transformation
Dr. Annette Doms discusses the transformative potential of AI, blockchain, and XR when combined:
“If you consume [AI, blockchain, and XR] together, you create a new beverage that people are willing to spend a lot of money for. Each of these technologies is revolutionary on its own, but together, they are transformative.
We are moving towards what I call the programmable reality, a world where AI provides intelligence, blockchain ensures trust and ownership, and XR delivers immersive experiences.
AI is already there; it’s easy to access and really relevant. Metaverse is not gone—it’s still there, especially in the industrial field, education, and more. Blockchain is an efficiency technology; it creates trust and credibility.
We will go far beyond Zoom. Next time, we will meet in the metaverse, where we can collaborate with teams, work on whiteboards, and be guided by AI that translates languages and cultural nuances.
Contribution to work can be token-rewarded. This combination of technologies is really exciting, and economically, we will see value creation in new business models.
We already see digital twin production in industries, not only for the industrial metaverse but also for consumer industries. Digital twins of any product can be monetised, created through AI, secured through blockchain, and secured through blockchain.
The most profound change will not be to our technical systems but to our knowledge system. The information infrastructure we rely on today is buckling under complexity, and these technologies together will enable a new kind of collective intelligence: spatial, immersive, interactive, verifiable, and dynamic.
It’s not just a technical challenge we have right now; it’s a civilisation choice. We have it in our hands, and the future lies in our hands.”
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