Kai Riemer

Professor
The University of Sydney Business School

Dr Kai Riemer is Professor of Information Technology and Organisation and the Co-Director of Sydney Executive Plus at the University of Sydney Business School. He has extensive experience with industry-funded research and is the co-director of the Motus Lab, which researches the application of AI-based digital human technologies in business and society. Kai’s expertise spans the fields of artificial intelligence, future of work, emerging technologies, and philosophy of technology. He has published across a range of prestigious scholarly journals. Kai consults for executives and boards and is frequently requested to comment and speak around AI and the future of business and technology.

Kai has a PhD. (Dr habil) in Management, a PhD (Dr rer pol) in Information System, and a postgraduate degree (Dipl-Wirt.Inform) in Business Information Systems from the University of Münster in Germany.

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From this author

Inclusive and workplace acceptance of refugees
Partnering for refugee employment

When considering their talent pipelines, few companies think outside-of-the-box. Most refugees flourish in the workplace, and so do the businesses that hire them.

SDG 16
Institutional investors demand a more sustainable capitalism

Honey gathering is a solitary job in Indigenous communities. The collector then shares the honey with their community but refrains from joining in the honey feast themself. The idea is that the gathering is not about their gratification, it’s about their contribution to the collective.  

SDG15 Bushfires
Optimisation model as a guide to burning forests to save forests

Setting fire to parts of a forest to save it might seem counterintuitive to urban communities. There is no equivalent of torching a few streets to protect a suburb. However, amongst First Nations people in Australia, hazard reduction burning is a well-established practice.

SDG13 - coal mining
Net zero now – it’s the economy AND the planet

In Australia, as elsewhere, the climate wars have focused on the climate versus jobs dichotomy. Yet while Australia remains highly dependent on fossil fuel extraction for its national economic prosperity it has also become increasingly unequal in its distribution of that wealth.

Aerial shot of San Francisco
SDGs and the city

Over the next 50 years people living in low-income nations will undertake one of this century’s defining megatrends: rapid urbanisation.

SDG9 - Cybersecurity
Ending the wild west of data collection

Cybercrime attacks both individual and the national well-being. Such violations are hugely psychologically distressing and can lead to strong feelings of unease and a lack of trust in institutions.

SDG8 Income inequality
Decent work is a collective effort

Ensuring workers receive their fair share of their country’s wealth is a key concern of SDG 8, which aims to promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.

SDG5 - Gender equality
Inserting a gender lens into the public eye

Public transport systems are designed for “a-to-b” commuters, people tavelling from home to work and back. That is not how people with unpaid caregiving demands, which are still mostly shouldered by women in most societies, need to travel.

SDG5 - Women in the workplace
Women at work

Gender inequality in the home and at work are intertwined, impacting women across their entire lives. Globally, women perform more care work (both unpaid and paid) than men.

SDG4
Co-designing better educational futures

If we had to select a single word to encapsulate what higher education ought to embody in order to achieve these goals under SDG 4 by 2030, it would be 'connected'.

SDG 3 - Caring for carers
Caring for the carers

The world’s health challenges are enormous. Ancient diseases such as malaria and TB continue to kill and debilitate millions of people every year and a new pathogen could, once more, shut down the world.

Aerial shot of farming
The good business in ending hunger

Ending hunger is a business opportunity waiting to be embraced by corporations, particularly in the areas of developing sustainable small scale agriculture, improving food systems and reducing food waste. 

The ABC behind successful teamwork

With teamwork as the secret sauce for service excellence, is identifying and cultivating the right blend of teamwork mechanisms the special ingredient to transform customer satisfaction into profits?

Food security starts with food sovereignty

The UN's Zero Hunger goal faces challenges in West Papua, where palm oil plantations are erasing Indigenous foodways - could a food sovereignty framework help balance development, culture, and sustainability?

Making room for the rivers

When deciding if they should live with or fight the floods, Australia and many other countries can learn from the Netherlands.

Black mirror lawyering

Recent developments in AI have alerted lawyers that the environment in which they compete is changing.

Empty conference room with a long table and chairs.
Hybrid work: the 9 things we have learnt

After the pandemic-induced experimentation with new forms of work – here is a checklist of nine things we have learnt about hybrid working (and what is, and isn’t, working).

Sandra and Kai on an illustrated background
ChatGPT and generative AI

This week: Our ChatGPT and generative AI special. What is it? How does it work? What to do with it? Where to next?

The 4-day work week with Juliet Schor

This week: what if we all worked four days a week? We talk with Professor Juliet Schor about her research into the 4-day work week and the trials happening around the world.

Sandra and Kai on an illustrated background
Best business books of 2022

This week: corporate self-help, pandemics, climate, toxic stuff and socio-tech broccoli: our 2022 best business books for your holiday reading list.

Trading around divorce

Divorce, for most, is an uncomfortable, life-altering experience. What is the impact of divorce on individual stock market trading decisions?

Universal Basic Income with Scott Santens

This week: Universal Basic Income (UBI) trials have taken place all over the world from Namibia to Alaska. We talk with researcher and advocate Scott Santens about the future of the basic income.

Sandra and Kai on an illustrated background
Weird new jobs

This week: the AI whisperer, AI artist managers, data detectives, metaverse supply chain strategy consultants, and more cool jobs in the digital era.

The kids won’t be OK

Today’s children will be forced to endure the climate change consequences created during their parents’ lifetimes.

Sandra and Kai on an illustrated background
The future of sand

This week: the world is running out of sand. The most-exploited resource after water should be recognised as a strategic material and regulated like a mineral commodity

The future of geopolitics

This week: the future of geopolitics. From Australia’s place in Asia to the war in Europe, we discuss new ways of thinking, with Professor Marc Stears.

Sandra and Kai on an illustrated background
Hybrid office fashion

This week: what should you wear to work: the end of suit and heels and more hybrid office fashion.

Sandra and Kai on an illustrated background
Unlearn music on The Future, This Week

This week: we’re on a break but we have something interesting in store for you, we discuss how the way we engage with music is fundamentally changing — from something we listen to, to something we create with.

Sandra and Kai on an illustrated background
Neon and chip shortages

This week: the world’s leading suppliers of neon are in Ukraine, and that threatens to make the ongoing microchip shortage even worse.

Sandra and Kai on an illustrated background
New York Times gets Wordle

This week: we discuss the economics and business behind the New York Times’ decision to buy popular internet game Wordle.

Unlearn automation on The Future, This Week

This week: we’re on a break but we have something interesting in store for you, and it’s not about our longitudinal auto ethnographic research on leisure time but rather, how automation will make your job harder.