Risk of over-dependence on AI?

Skills that once were core to designing, such as hand drawing and rendering, have become less prevalent and less practised in the digital age. And as computers perform many tasks that once depended on designers independently, artificial intelligence is impacting the design process from first thoughts to final outcomes. But as the use of AI among designers has become widespread, reliance on algorithmic systems designers might become too dependent on AI-generated content that, moreover, might be too similar to each other. That is, given the same prompt by various users, GenAI generates the same output. This risks a feedback loop where AI, trained on AI-generated data results in diminishing returns of new ideas blurring the line between innovator and imitator.*. The counter argument is that AI simply enhances the creative process through collaboration between machines and humans? That is, combining AI with human intuition and emotional depth might yield outcomes that neither AI nor humans could achieve alone. Anticipating AI evolution, then, is difficult as algorithm development is fluid and dynamic (fluid non-linear dynamics are utilised in machine learning) and with each new development, new potential risks and opportunities arise. The challenge for designers, then, when ideation itself reflects transition and transformation, is to leverage GenAI to facilitate and enrich the design process.  * 58% of British architects say AI increases the risk of their work being imitated, in RIBA AI Report 2024.

Complexity and contradiction in ideation

Design ideas, pragmatically speaking can be characterised as either simple or complex where the simple idea proposes a fairly straightforward, low risk solution to the problem at hand whereas the complex idea combines several simple ideas to produce one idea but at a higher level of uncertainty. Designers deal with both simple and complex ideas although simple ideas are typically easier to generate and communicate to clients and other stakeholders. Overall, clients prefer simple ideas as they are easier to understand and execute and are less likely to go wrong. Yet complexity reflects the multi-layered reality of the world around us which calls for deeper levels of understanding and greater problem solving ability on the part of designers. So what about contradiction between simplicity and complexity? Design ideas, as elements of thought, overlap and interrelate and are developed and articulated through the project. And so, ideation can be seen as a puzzle of simple and complex ideas put together by the designers and stakeholders involved in the project. In this pursuit, Generative AI has become a powerful ideation tool, and a virtual member of the design team.

2025: What have we here?

In a famous 1903 letter, the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) urges a protege of his to 'be patient toward all that is unsolved ... to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue … The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.' And so, what have we here? A bit of self-help that suggests how questions generate ideas, and vice versa. In other words, questions trigger ideas that pave the way for design solutions.