How Can We Teach More Students How to Design With AI?

While Raina's dream to have a dedicated space for AI design research on-campus is still out of reach, other design schools have started incorporating machine learning into their curriculum. Aaron Hill is assistant professor of data visualization at Parsons School for Design, and is the director of the Masters of Science in data visualization in the School of Art, Media, and Technology. "I come from a very quantitative and analytical background," he says, "I'm a statistician by trade, so that's an odd faculty hire for an art and design school." But given that Hill's work often lies at the intersection of art and science, he was in a good position to help establish the graduate program in data vis. "When the program launched, we started thinking about electives that would not just serve the data visualization program, but all of the graduate students at Parsons," Hill explains, "Machine learning was an obvious first elective that we needed to offer because it has become such an essential tool for how we take in information, how we filter it, and also how we interact with the world."