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AI & Design: takeaways from SXSW
Insights from the technology & arts conference of the year
SXSW just wrapped last week. Here’s everything you need to know about design and AI from the arts & technology conference of the year. From addressing concerns about AI, to the AI-innovation gap, industry insights, challenges & future visions.
(1) Design Against AI, John Maeda
(2) AI + UX: Product Design for Intelligent Experiences, Ioana Teleanu
(3) Designing Successful AI Products and Services, John Zimmerman, Nur Yildirim
(4) Creativity in Flux: Art & Artificial Intelligence, Brooke Hopper, Debbie Millman
(5) Designing for AI, Marco Barbosa, Hjörtur Hilmarsson
(6) The Great Interface Shift: Five Trends to Know in 2024, Jake Brody
1. Design Against AI, John Maeda
Evolving dynamics between design and AI, whether to compete with, protest against, or collaborate with AI, & the need for continuous learning
3 points: (1) understand computation to get beyond the myth of AI, (2) work will transform faster for some than others, (3) Design’s role to make things desirable, valuable, ethically-considered is a challenge ahead
Brief history. LLMs, conversational interfaces, chatbots… aren’t new. Nicholas Negroponte envisioned a conversational prediction model in 1967. Erika Hall’s Conversational Design emphasizes voice is the oldest interface because it feels most natural. MIT’s Dr. Weizenbaum, inventor of the first chatbot, warned in 1966:“short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking”
People have been working on AI for decades. LLMs grew exponentially from 2014 to 2022. Generative AI exists because of the transformer. Learn its comprehensive history from BERT to ChatGPT.
What are LLMs?
The ‘simple physics’ definition: Imagine the LLM as a genius locked in a room. It can receive only one note under the…
