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Designers vs. AI
Exploring the role of designers and the power of deep understanding in the age of AI and GPT-4
Common sense is about understanding and reasoning about everyday life based on one’s experiences and oneself. A fundamental aspect of common sense is a deep understanding of how things and people are interconnected in time and space and how ideas and theories are related. What sets humans apart from AI models is the level of deep understanding, human instincts, and subjective understanding that comes from our sociocultural background, upbringing, friends, and family.
GPT-4 and similar language models (a complete list) will never have memories of a time and place other than those generated through conversations and prompts. For example, it will never know what it smelled like when the snow melted on Västerhöjden, Hofors, in the spring of 1981, or how it felt to ride a tricycle. It will also never know what it feels like to play guitar with one’s body and create a song out of nowhere. However, it might perform some of these tasks artificially without personal experience. The difference is that it is not personally made, empathetically, and without a deep understanding.
In this article, I will explain what is missing in GPT-4 and why it will not replace me in my design work. Yet.
Deep understanding
GPT-4 can only play roles and is not yet a conscious being with thoughts and feelings. It has the ability to simulate, but these simulations are not yet real. It cannot have personal memories or experiences to provide context. It is quite creative, but not on the same level as humans. Additionally, GPT-4 has no emotions. It can understand semantic analysis in text, but that is its limit. GPT-4 cannot see, smell, hear, touch, or taste anything. These limitations combined make it impossible for GPT-4 to provide the same level of understanding or insight as a human in certain situations.
In other words, GPT-4 lacks deep understanding; its intelligence is artificial and relies on shallow connections. To illustrate this point, I recall an experience during a prototyping course where a design professor commented on my code, saying
“You don’t know what you’re doing; you’re just taking a…
