AI and the future of design: What skills do we need to compete against the machines?

This post originally published on Medium; it is republished here with permission. The word robot was coined by Czech author Karel Čapek, who used it in his 1921 play R.U.R. to describe a fleet of intelligent machines. He named his invention based on the Slavonic word "rabota," which means labor. More tellingly, rabota is also the root of the word "rob," or slave. It's interesting to note that today, robotics and automation promise to do away with some of the most tedious, repetitive tasks we love to hate. Take telemarketing, for example--one of the most slave-like occupations in the 21st century.