Design X AI - 01
The year is 2025.
We stand at a precipice of technological advancement, digital reality, and geopolitical tension like perhaps never before. Forcing itself to the center of this cultural moment is AI, Artificial Intelligence. Over the last year or two, as we have seen AI take popular media by storm, upset the status quo, and challenge organizations to get up to speed, I’ve witnessed and felt an increasing pressure to develop skills and understanding of the tools relevant to my field. Popular design-thinkers and platforms of my industry have pushed out publications and posts with the all too common urgency that says “if you’re reading this, you’re already behind, so catch up quick!”. I saw the daily evolution of AI tools that made the impossible, possible. What they couldn’t do one day, they could do the next, and fast. I’ve also heard the increasing hunger, and curiosity from employers and leaders who want to know how they can get in on the action, and how all this buzz of AI can help their company thrive. With these mounting pressures, I decided to dive into the fun with my own research.
Initially, I had set a scope for myself with somewhat of a defined outline for what would be the value generated from this research. I wanted to write a white paper which would outline what the product development process could look like when AI tools are mindfully integrated to leverage uniquely human strengths and AI capabilities. This would be something I could drop on the table and say “you want AI in your organization, here’s how we can do it” with practical applications of who, when, where, and how a wide array of AI applications could be used, developed through a user-centered design lens and working to connect with a human-empathy design philosophy. Sounds great, right? I think so. But if I were to create this kind of practical guidebook without first weighing the broader state of Artificial Intelligence, I would have failed to think like a good designer.
Hindsight is 20-20, they say. When we look back at the creation of the personal computer, automobile, or smartphone, it is almost obvious that they would come to exist. And similarly, the cultural waves which they create as these technologies scale into ubiquity seem to be so obvious that we might look at them and say “how did no one consider that this [bad thing] would happen?”. We can be perfect pacifists of the past and point out all the safeguards that should have been put up.
So, I want to step back and start not with AI, but with people. How have people been affected by the rate of technological acceleration? How have people been affected by algorithmic information networks? What is AI campaigning on vs. executing in office? How are needs evolving as technology advances to solve ever more systemic and abstract problems? Who stands to gain from a world interwoven with AI, and what will it cost? What is the mental model AI that people are operating with? This is the nature of questions and perspectives which must first be answered and explored.
We can all be missing the big picture, and that is dangerous. So let’s start with a really grounding question - what is AI?
Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers. AI technology encompasses a number of forms such as machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, robotics, and expert systems.
We can spend the next few days sorting out the exact map of how Generative AI relates to Machine Learning, and how Large Language Models are the same or different from Natural Language Processing. But from my view, the terms being used to describe these facets of Artificial Intelligence are as fluctuating and elusive as the technology itself. For our purposes, it’s most important to recognize what AI isn’t, then allow space for unknown complexity in our mental model of the thing. AI is NOT a ChatGPT written essay or email. It is not an generated image of futuristic office space. It is not a deep-fake video of a politician doing some illegal and abhorrent thing. As obvious as this may sound, it is imperative that we not conflate the artifacts of AI technology with the elusive, complex, truth of what it is and what it is capable of. AI is the computer simulation of intelligence, typically to execute tasks traditionally associated with human cognitive capabilities such as reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, natural language processing, perception, decision making. The applications are vast, and ever expanding. The implications for our near, and distant future, are daunting.
So if you have heard some version of this question: “How to harness AI for [your job title here]” or “What AI implies for [your job title here]”, these are critically flawed and hopelessly shallow. These aren’t worthless questions to answer for yourself, personally professionally or for your organization, but it is categorically the wrong question. If what you’re interested in doing is making a change that matters, in influencing the world for the better, making an impact, then this curiosity needs to be turned on its head and multiplied.
I must ask, not “What does AI mean for the future of Design?”, but “What does it mean to be a Designer, in a world where AI is inevitable?”. A tectonic paradigm shift is taking place. As a human-centered designer, I have researched AI with open curiosity to look at the implications for culture, society, and the human condition and have emerged with a somewhat perilous view of our future, and a poignant sense of responsibility to hold fast to the ethics and philosophy of good design.
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DESIGN X AI is an 8 part blog series written 100% by my fallible human brain. I’m a designer, not an AI expert.