Workshop in the age of AI

The impact of artificial intelligence, AI on the design process is accelerating, from the early days of CAD streamlining a wide array of mundane steps associated with manual design (drafting) to becoming a tool and medium for complex design expressions (ideation). Ultimately, the merging of CAD and prompt-engineered Large learning models, LLMs, would take care of the design process end-to-end, or result in fully integrated Building information models, BIMs, from first idea to final materialisation. But if AI someday becomes able to perform actions currently carried out by designers and engineers it also raises concerns related to employment in the field. Indeed, AI is prompting questions on the future of work and human creativity. In one recent example of generative AI’s achievements, as reported in Scientific American, AI programs (GPT-4) outscored the average human in tasks requiring originality, as judged by human reviewers. But while it is natural and historical that humans are apprehensive of new technology, the cognitive associations of generative AI and humans differ. That is, human sensemaking is generated through personal interests, memories, feelings and lived experiences whereas AI is rather imitating or simulating what people can do. Moreover, the ethical, cultural and societal values and judgements underlying and supporting design proposals need to be made transparent for which humans, not machines should be accountable. Overall, then, this suggests that the ideation workshop, in encouraging the participants to trying out a wide range of conceptual tools, both analogue and digital, in order to better engage with, and therefore better understand design thinking and making, remains relevant and meanigful in the age of AI. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-anxiety-is-on-the-rise-heres-how-to-manage-it/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-gb