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Our intelligence is what makes us human, and AI is an extension of that quality.
Yann LeCun
The human species has performed incredible feats of ingenuity.
What is AI & Machine Learning?
This is the ability to make decisions that maximize the chance of the system achieving its goals.
Even more important is the ability of the system to learn and evolve.
To achieve this, every system needs a starting point massive amounts of data.
Read: [AI will never replace good old human creativity]
What is creativity?
The more you have seen, traveled or experienced, the more creative you tend to be.
So how difficult can that be for AI to achieve?
It certainly seems that in todays world, creativity is actually very arbitrary.
Because both this…
and this…
are considered valuable works of art.
The current state of AI vs Creatives
Creativity is intelligence having fun.
Albert Einstein
The world of advertising is no stranger to AI.
Various design tools are already leveraging the power of AI to achieve some astonishing results.
AI is also being used to automate various mundane tasks like creating design variations.
This then allows designers to focus on the creative, problem solving aspects of the design process.
Nutella famously created7 million one-of-a-kind variationsof their labels using AI.
Now lets deep dive into this process and see if AI could fundamentally perform any of these tasks.
Research
Research is not only about combing through data, but also knowing where to find that data.
This is where human UX researchers are somewhat limited.
This idea is tackled by Wunderman South Africa in theirMore Than Datacampaign for Investec Private bank.
Data can know what you did last month, but it can never truly know why.
Can AI do this?
Not at the moment, as the status quo is it takes one to know one.
SCORE: Robot (2) Human (1)
Ideate
This is where it gets tricky.
We are constrained by our own mortality and humanity.
AI, on the other hand, has no such limitations.
One simply has to surface the solution through research and study.
Mark Twain put it this way…
There is no such thing as a new idea.
We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.
We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations.
Can a human perform this function better than a computer system can?
Can a human ideate and come up with solutions that billions of humans before have not already thought of?
I dont think so.
SCORE: Robot (3) Human (1)
Automate & Test
This is where things get mechanical.
Creating prototypes and validating design decisions through usability testing is something AI isalready doingto some degree.
We already find that there are establishedUX patternsthat have been documented.
It is not only logical, but ultimately inevitable.
SCORE: Robot (5) Human (1)
The conclusion?
Fei-Fei Li
So, there it is.
Five out of the six steps in product design can be done using machine learning computer systems.
Some of these concepts are achievable even with todays advancements in the technology.
So, should we be scared?
No, I dont think fear is the appropriate response.
Rather, we must be prepared.
Accept the inevitable and prepare for it.
Pivot your career to a place where AI will notreplacebut rather compliment your human function.
