Totally self-serving question. But weren’t you wondering it? What is the role of interaction design in the world of AI?
In a recent chat I had with Intel’s Futurist-Prime Genevieve Bell (we’re like, totally buds), she pointed out that Western cultures have more of a problem with the promise of AI than many others. It’s a Western cultural conceit that the reason humans are different—are valuable—is because we think. Contrast that with animist cultures, where everything has a soul and many things think. Or polytheistic cultures, where not only are there other things that think, but they’re humanlike but way more powerful than you. For these cultures, artificial intelligence means that technology has caught up with their cultural understandings. People build identities and live happy lives within these constructions just fine.
I’m also reminded of her keynote at Interaction12 where she spoke of the tendency of futurism to herald each new technology as ushering doomsday or utopia, when in hindsight it’s all terribly mundane. The internet is the greatest learning and connecting technology the world has ever created but for most people it’s largely cat videos. (Ah. That’s why that’s up there.) This should put us at ease about some of the more extreme predictions.
If Bell is right, and AIs are just going to be this other weird thing to incorporate into our lives, what is the role of the interaction designer?