Last Saturday I spent a whole day in a room with research scientists and quantum computing specialists. The topic was communicating science with AI… which is my two jobs in one sentence.
The event was Communicating Science in the Era of AI in Zurich, organised by Marie Curie Alumni Association as part of the Zurich AI Festival Keynotes and a panel moderated by Ashish Avasthi in the morning, hands-on workshops in the afternoon.

My day job looks nothing like theirs. I spent 15 years in marketing and communication, and today I train teams in AI and build AI workflows. They work on things I cant explain at a dinner table. So here is what I observed: their technical level in their fields is far above mine and the need that kept coming back was still not technical. It was two things. AI literacy, and communication itself: how to explain complex work to people outside the field, with these tools, without losing accuracy or the trust of the people reading you.

One slide in the afternoon workshop made it concrete for me. It listed ten different types of science communication, from journalism to policy briefs to patient information. Ten audiences, ten levels of risk. Use AI for communication is not ONE task, in a lab or in a marketing team. That workshop, led by Claudia Alarcón López and Cerstin Mahlow was a complete training in itself, built by people from linguistics and communication.

The cost of skipping this step is the same in every field: strong work that gets explained badly, or an AI-written summary that goes out unchecked under your name. This is why I give full days to events like this one, Saturdays included. Im not there only to be visible. What I learn from specialists in other fields goes straight back to my clients and my students.

If your team, in a company or in a research group, has the expertise but struggles to communicate it with AI, that's where I work: AI training with a communication background ✋ And when training isn't enough, I build the AI flow or the app myself.

Which field outside your own taught you the most about AI this year?

PS: I still can't explain quantum computing. But I now know several people who can. 😄