#73: AI, design and this nauseating cocktail of mixed feelings

The writing on the wall and more pontifications on the future

When people think of ‘innovation’, they probably associated it with the big names in history such as Steve Jobs, Ford, the Internet etc. It is such an incredibly loaded term that doesn’t really have a clear cut definition nowadays. What does that mean, to innovate? I used to think it’s one thing (‘through creative thinking and science, create products and services that move humanity forward & with grandiose ideas that quite literally change the world, in one way or the other’) but now I’m having a lot of doubts.

In the 1960s, advertising was king, at least in New York City and the United States, in general. You don’t have to watch as much Mad Men as I do to realize just how powerful someone like Don Draper was back then. In an era where rapid modern-day consumerism was on the rise, and industrial revolution was, arguably, at its peak, it is not that hard to imagine why that is.

‘At Last, Something Beautiful You Can Truly Own.’

When it comes to humans, desire was—still is—such a powerful data point. We are emotional creatures, we respond best with storytelling. This is pretty obvious (and scary, depending on how you look at it).

Bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari wrote about this on his book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century:

“Homo sapiens is a storytelling animal that thinks in stories rather than in numbers or graphs, and believes that the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings. When we look for the meaning of life, we want a story that will explain what reality is all about and what my particular role is in the cosmic drama. This role makes me a part of something bigger than myself, and gives meaning to all my experiences and choices.” -Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

We want what we want and we won’t let anything, or anyone, stop us from acquiring them, or at least we can try in our lifetime, regardless of the consequences. This mentality is rampant everywhere. This was especially true then as it is now.

Desire brought progress into our world but also destruction and chaos. It is a double-edged sword and one that we continue to weaponize over and over again as a species. The worst part is there seems to be no end to this. As technology becomes more and more complex and increasingly sophisticated, this will continue to happen. Only that unlike in the 1960s, the Don Drapers of tomorrow are the sentient AI systems and advanced algorithms that can scale missions, do things exponentially faster and ultimately run the world.

Now, what could possibly go wrong?

Of course, there is also a strong possibility that as powerful as these things go, they are nothing with humans and a select group of corporations who’ll have the monopoly on the tech. That doesn’t make the future any less dire, in my opinion.

Made not by ai, illustration by yours truly

Design’s place in all of this

Like it or not, design plays a huge part in it. Some can argue it’s exactly through design that this is all possible, progress and chaos, chaos and progress. Design, in this case, isn’t necessary restricted to the work of the traditional designers in technology today. It is much bigger than that, I’m talking about computation and how it’s changing everything. Everything we know about human behavior will change, for better or worst. In the near-future, Design will eventually be done by almost everybody, but most especially ML/AI software engineers and anyone who is in control of the code and the data. (John Maeda is one of the best, most insightful voices on this subject. If you don’t know where to start, read 2023 Design in Tech Report: Design and Artificial Intelligence) It’s already like that now, a lot of AI startups are engineering-driven and so is the UX behind their products.

The evidence is concerning:

‘The necessity for user research into AI tools is evident, as is the need for bona fide UX designers to shape the next wave of AI applications. Regrettably, economists rather than UX professionals have done most of the significant task performance research with AI tools. While that research is great for collecting the productivity data that makes executives emulate Pavlov’s dogs, it lacks the qualitative insights to drive better UX design for AI products. Oh, for a few field studies done by UX anthropologists to inform the choice of features for industry-specific AI applications. Or some qualitative usability studies to inform AI UI.’ - From Jakob Nielsen’s post, ‘UX Needs A Sense of Urgency About AI

Not too long ago, the idea of democratizing design seemed so attractive for those of us who are looking to innovate. I’m an advocate for it as well, I still think it’s good for society (and the world, in general) to have some form of design literacy, especially now and into the future. But when you add Generative AI to this equation, it paints a completely different picture. It is a game-changer, by all accounts.

What was once a promising idea that was embraced by corporate America for the sake of innovation is now a fast growing source of tension for a lot of people¹… everywhere. I can guess that no one is more affected with this than Creatives or to be more broader, anyone who does creative work for a living and/or for self-fulfillment. When the existential threat is high, it really messes up with your brain. Survival mode becomes the default, until it isn’t.

In this essay from

Ethan Mollick

boldly titled, ‘Automating Creativity’, Ethan says on the subject:

In the most practical sense, we are now much less limited by ideas than ever before. Even people who don’t consider themselves creative now have access to a machine that will generate innovative concepts that beat those of most humans (though not the most creative ones). Where previously, there were only a few people who had the ability to come up with good ideas, now there are many. This is an astonishing change in the landscape of human creativity, and one that likely makes execution, not raw creativity, a more distinguishing factor for future innovations. - From Ethan Mollick of One Useful Thing

(Ethan covered a lot of papers on that essay that reflects the current landscape of AI and creativity. His body of work on this is phenomenal. If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you might be interested in it as well.)

As THAT designer who works in technology—being a spectator and an occasional participant² to all of this, this NOT a huge source of comfort for me. I drink a cocktail of mixed feelings almost everyday that I mindlessly ponder on this: honestly thrilled for a few areas in the economy as well as the hard sciences³, absolutely terrified for the rest of the world and humans. Adding to the fact that I have a feeling—as I’m sure a lot of people do as well—I have a feeling that this is just the beginning.

The beginning of whatever renaissance this is shaping out to be. Whichever side of the coin you are on, there’s no denying that we are in a renaissance. Some may call it ‘the best time in history for people with ideas’, as I’m quite certain I’ve felt also on some days. But others can legitimately claim the opposite. Hardly any of this matters unless we can really answer this question: ‘Who REALLY stands to benefit from this? What about the complete opposite?’

The writing on the wall

THINGS ARE CHANGING AND PERHAPS, WE CAN NEVER GO BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS. The AI genie is out of the bottle, and we can’t put it back in.

I openly reject the narrative of the doom-and-gloom, in almost any form. I have since day 1 of this newsletter. This… delusional thinking isn’t naiveté. I’m aware of the realities out there, most especially with the industries I’m a part of—as well as adjacent ones. There is no doubt in my mind that currently, things are just brutal. Perhaps, the worst I’ve seen since I started working a decade and a half ago.

In times of crises, there’s lessons to be made and with those lessons come opportunities. Specifically, opportunities to look at and process things differently so that we can move forward and take risks with the best judgement possible. No one can predict the future but we can (and we should!) make educated bets on some versions of it that we’re rooting for. If we can’t think of any version to root for, that is a different problem in itself, and one I won’t cover for today.

When I think about my own personal educated bets on the future of design and where my work is heading towards, I like to keep things a bit more high-level. Wrote an early thinking on this here:

I have to admit, with the rate of how things are going and with the unforgiving nature of market volatility, it is near-impossible to make bets of any kind. I’ve mentioned above of this idea of a new renaissance that’s happening, particularly felt more in the West. It seems like design, as is a lot of industries, is on the edge. Change is everywhere and it’s not looking pretty. It calls for the most resourceful in all of us. In an ironic way, this is also how innovation is born, isn’t it?

We may see a lot more people pivoting to Venture Design for it makes the most sense to do so. Whatever label that is, the most important thing is the intuition for not just change, but also value. Seeking value is hard, and was probably more lucrative pre-AI. On the other hand, creating value—possibly, out of nothing—this is going to be a lot more important now, with knowledge being an accessible commodity.

‘Knowledge workers must embrace the role of intellectual capitalists to thrive in today's economy. Your unique ideas and expertise are valuable assets - if you:

•create net new intellectual capital
•constantly invest in yourself
•and reap the rewards!’ - Christopher Lockhead on LinkedIn

If you ask me where my bet is at, that is it. Such a simple concept but nothing could be harder to execute in real life, especially with AI lurking around.

WHEW?

Now, in spite of AI, practicing these core basic strategies will never get old, in fact, they are now more valuable than ever:

• Find my core strengths and double down on them aggressively - Now is the worst time to be shy about what I have to offer. Even for the gainfully employed, it is always a good idea to brush up on your existing skills, be a lot more effective at selling them and maintain a decent work ethic that can support all of that. Best be prepared at all times for what could go wrong, even if it means just means updating your cv and LinkedIn profiles every few months.

• Think like a developer, always - The career path of a software engineer is a really good use case to emulate for designers in the same field. Besides being at the forefront (and the public face) of the tech industry as a whole, it is also a path that shares a lot of similarities with design: from org structures to operations all the way to basic problem solving principles, there is a lot to learn about how they’ve risen to the top — and how they will continue to do so in the future. Even if you have zero plans on being one, there’s a ton of upsides to studying them and how they do things. We can learn a thing or two about power & product along the way.

• When it comes to ‘selling your business value’, focus on the vision, on the product, on the problem you are trying to solve. Adapt the generalist mindset above specialization, whenever possible. - None of this is possible without the presence of clear thinking. Hone your brain, feed it well and use it right and you will most certainly standout among those that are just ‘winging it’. This probably would explain my disdain for the ‘check-the-box’ type of approach when it comes to careers, in general. I’ll save this for another day.

• Create, experiment, and get a lot more technical with everything you do. Even with AI. - “Try it out. Learn how prompts work, learn how context works. Take the scissor blades and start snip, snip, snipping. Let’s first understand it. Let’s learn what the cons list are and just adapt as quickly as possible to what we want to use it for and what we don’t want to use it for. This technology is much like the World Wide Web’s emergence. When someone first showed me a homepage, I was like, ‘That’s never going to take off.’ And then a month and a half later, I said, ‘Well, I’ve got to build a home page.’ It’s like that, I think.” - John Maeda on on how we can get a handle on the potential of AI

If there’s a takeaway to any of this, it’s that change is a constant force in our messy and chaotic lives. There’s a million different ways where any of this could go wrong, that we could lose. But one thing that we can do to make that for certain is if we stop paying attention.

The minute we do so, and give in, and not care at all about our collective futures, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy just waiting to happen. For designers, our biggest asset and resource is time. What we use it for makes all the difference to the future we are trying to create.

While we still have it, make it worth your while. Do things that are worth your time. Never stop paying attention, no matter how tempting it is to look the opposite direction. The clues of what’s to come are in the hiding in plain sight in the present, whoever can design with change in mind, may not just survive but also thrive.

Thank you for reading working title,

Nikki

If you have a spare moment, I’d love to hear your opinion on my newsletter. This will help me understand what to write about and curate better. I am also on Notes, where I post previews and premature ideas that fuel my writing streaks.

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Worth your time:

• Amy Santee wrote a comprehensive report on the current state of the UX job market - really compelling & relevant stuff

• Lenny Rachitsky (of

  Lenny's Newsletter
  ) talks about product, growth and career advice with Christopher Lockhead

• Feel-good productivity and deep work from Cal Newport’s the Deep Life Podcast

• From Sam Altman’s blog, ‘The Merge’, posted 6 years ago - 6 years ago.

• I’ve also been really enjoying Ten Bullets from Zac Pogrob

• Other newsletters I’ve come to love lately—Product, Startups, Innovation, Tech:

  • Rob Henderson

  • Peter Yang

  • Elad Gil

1. More specifically, white collar workers

2. I am involved actively, from the design side, on building AI/ML-driven products

3. Particularly with how AI can help solve the world’s biggest problems such as Climate Change, Cancer, Viruses and all other healthcare issues, Food Insecurity, Poverty etc