AI that actually works: four lessons from Rewire LIVE 2026

Last week, on March 5, 2026, business leaders from across the DACH region gathered in Frankfurt for Rewire LIVE. Together they shared their experience with AI, and how it is transforming industries, from energy and retail to emergency services and manufacturing.

Here are four lessons that emerged throughout the day.

Lesson 1: While jobs will evolve in the future, the "human in the loop" will remain essential.

Agustin Tenorio Bilbao, Senior Vice President at Siemens Energy, opened the day by discussing how AI is transforming the power industry. His main advice centred on leadership: empower people to use AI and refuse to let business units opt out of the transition. His human-centric strategy emphasizes the importance of fostering curiosity at all seniority levels to ensure the technology is understood and genuinely embraced rather than just mandated. Not least because “you cannot blame AI agents when things go wrong”.

Lesson 2: Many AI use cases are already delivering million-euro benefits in companies that know how to seize the opportunity. The conclusion is clear: AI is here to stay.

Industry leaders went on to share how they move AI from the lab to the factory floor:

• Dr. Michael Schäfer (SHS - Steel Production) showcased how AI transforms processes – from oxygen content prediction, to surface inspection, and automated scrap classification.
• Dr. Armin Müller (Kaufland - Retail) stressed that successful AI transformation is about organizational change, with three pillars: AI Products, Governance, and Enablement. Müller’s advice? Focus on solving the business problem rather than always reaching for the most advanced technology.
• Helen Rijkes & Freek Gulden (Rewire) showed how businesses are becoming agent-dense organizations, where hundreds of specialized agents – grounded in codified company knowledge – handle specific tasks at scale.

Lesson 3: Technology is only half the battle; organizations must redesign processes to remove the vulnerabilities these tools expose.

As machines become more human-like, Luzi Sennhauser (CEO, Aurigin.ai) warned that our instinctive trust in human voices is becoming a liability. Bad actors now use synthetic voices to impersonate executives and trigger fraudulent transactions. While Aurigin.ai provides tools to detect these "synthetic signatures," Sennhauser noted that this is an arms race that will require continuous (re)invention.

Lesson 4: The most successful organizations will be those that prioritize causal reasoning, human oversight, and cross-functional enablement

The afternoon largely consisted of mastermind sessions – designed to move beyond the "what" of AI to the "how". This is where the rubber meets the road; where small groups tackle complex, real-world problems - like how to handle the mental load of emergency dispatchers of the fire brigade in Cologne, who deal with over 300 thousand calls annually (an example brought to us by Sebastian Heitmann, the fire brigade’s head of IT. Or why AI often fails in complex scenarios – a debate brought to us by Michael Haft from Xplain Data. The answer: it sees correlations but doesn't understand causality. (With the group, Michael outlined workarounds that pinpoint the true "why" behind data anomalies without needing to run expensive real-world experiments.) Jonas Kari from RoX Health (part of pharmaceutical giant Roche), brought to us one of the biggest challenges in clinical trials: identifying and recruiting suitable patients - a problem where AI-based matching using electronic health records can help. To top it off, the day concluded with a panel discussion featuring Michael Haft (Xplain Data), Gunther Klobe (Supertext), and Professor Dieter Heermann. If one consensus emerged, it is that the future of AI isn't about building bigger models, but about contextual intelligence and specialized architectures.

A note of thanks

We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to all our speakers for sharing their invaluable expertise and to every participant whose insightful questions and energy made Rewire LIVE 2026 a resounding success. It is your commitment to innovation that drives this community forward. We look forward to seeing you all again at next year’s edition!