Designers Need to Embrace AI But Responsibly, Say Experts

Any mention of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, inspires some trepidation in many people, including designers, but those most familiar with it say that designers should be excited about the advent of AI. "I'm very excited about the future with AI, but we do need to make sure we are responsible with it, as with any other technological development,'' Silka Miesnieks, head of the design lab at Adobe, told the Brainstorm Design conference in Singapore on Wednesday. "Our superpower as humans is our creativity, and we are all creative," she said, adding that AI can aid human creativity but not replace it. "We spend a lot of time thinking about unintended consequences and trying to avoid them. And we urge all designers to do that too," she said. Rod Farmer also embraces the possibilities. As digital expert associate principal at McKinsey, Farmer researches how to bridge the gap between human-computer interfaces and software engineering practices. He took a similar view to Miesnieks. "In most cases, AI only affects a percentage of a job a person does, but rarely the whole job.