Thursday, June 13, 2019

Advantage AI-deation

CAD programs, such as Rhino, are already great at researching algorithm-based design solutions which allow designers a high degree of flexibility in creating both simple and complex forms. Now the use of artifical intelligence, AI, which writes its own algorithms through coded programs based on data fed to it, is supporting design ideation by researching and calculating responses to well-defined design problems. Although AI works on a system of probability, it may come up with creative surprises. But it is not so much the case that AI "tells" the designer what the best idea is for a given problem, rather AI enables ideas to scale, test and measure more easily and quickly, producing hundreds of possible iterations of an idea instantly, which the human mind never could. So the main advantage of AI, as the technology appears currently, is to minimise mundane and repetitive tasks thereby freeing up designers' time for more human-centered inventiveness as well as keeping the emotional resonance of the idea. Or put differently, while the design brief is inspirational, AI makes the brief aspirational, enhancing existing ideation processes.* It may be worth pointing out that AI-ideation carries the risk of algorithmic bias, that is, different types of outcomes depend not only on the amount of data, but also what kind of digital information is being generated, classified, stored, and made available for analysis.