Who is Susanne Gold and exactly how many?

She is a member of the LinkedIn Grow2Glow editorial team, enriching many of our posts and contributions with her vivid illustrations. Her own articles cover topics about women in science and engineering or research cooperations, she is in contact with scientists all over the world. This woman has a vision of a better world – with the help of new technologies. Who is Susanne Gold?

She is a science journalist and illustrator at Siemens. Susanne Gold gives lectures on all kinds of aspects of technology and society, she is an expert on AI and has filed an AI patent with Siemens. In her private life she blogs and collects utopian visions. She worked first as a legal secretary, and then as a social scientist. She is the daughter of an inventor and an artist.

How does one person manage to be so much at once or consecutively?

The answer: at crucial turning points Susanne Gold has taken things into her own hands, shaping her life, looking for ways out of a crisis, reinventing herself again and again, something she does to this very day.

Someone who has lived so many lives at just 55 must be a master of bridge building between different phases in life.

 She started studying at university when she could not learn anything new as a legal secretary. Years later she stagnated at Siemens in career terms, yet did not throw in the towel. On a cold December day five years ago, she started her blog Utopiensammlerin for which she interviewed futurologists and AI experts, collected utopian visions about modern technologies and AI for a better world. She wrote articles as well as blog posts and established an international community of scientists, storytellers and artists. Today she is chairperson of the eponymous association. The blog has given her courage; she has met many like-minded people with wild ideas, visions, utopian dreams, inventions; she has attracted attention and made a name. Today the science journalist is widely connected in the world of science and research.

Then came Covid.

She was marooned at home and did not know her world anymore – like the rest of us. However, she remembered her artistic talent, took drawing lessons with the illustrator Angela Smets , practised, experimented and studied, often until late into the night. Today she illustrates blog posts as a digital artist. For Siemens, the native of Hamburg provides artwork for pieces on research and science.

New technologies for a better world

Susanne Gold is versatile, eclectic, a woman of many talents. However, instead of losing herself in this range of talents, she has developed a strong mission: “With my talks, texts and illustrations I want to bring an understanding of the new technologies, especially of Artificial Intelligence.”

Susanne would like to show

• what kind of psychological and social processes these technologies provoke
• what responsibility and role everyone plays in shaping our future - it is after all people who provide the training data for AI
• what this digital future could look like and
• what effects it will have on people and their narratives.

 Susanne wants to demonstrate that technologies such as robotics, algorithms, data science and digitalisations do not have to be a male-dominated field. On the contrary:

“Female thinking is particularly important here. After all, it is about no less than the future for us ALL. To shape it, we all have to contribute, not just one half of humankind.”

And what does Susanne say about her own future? She is a firm believer in her mission. “I want to show my illustrated ideas for a better world in terms of man and machine to a wider audience worldwide.” To achieve this, she intends to learn how to animate her illustrations and to perfect perspective drawing. In the near future she would like to realise her dream and present this complex world with animated science comics in a simple and comprehensible way.

When Susanne looks into the mirror, she already asks the questions of tomorrow: Am I going to be the first digital sociologist? Or possibly the first AI sociologist? Or a digital humanist? Or a cyber sociologist? Hopefully Susanne Gold's ability to always reinvent herself will never run dry. 

If you want to read more from her, follow her on LinkedIn and the blog Utopiensammlerin.