with Generative AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has firmly established itself as a transformative force across industries, revolutionizing problem-solving capabilities and expanding its reach into various use cases. The creative and design economy is no exception, as it continues to be shaped and molded by the broad spectrum of AI applications, particularly generative AI.
In this era of AI intervention, designers and creators find themselves at a crossroads, with a range of emotions from excitement and curiosity to indifference and resistance. However, embracing the future of the design and creative economy requires acknowledging and adapting to this paradigm shift. Traditional team structures no longer define success; the tools, solutions, and even established processes set professionals apart.
Nevertheless, amid this disruptive landscape, concerns emerge. Questions like, “Will AI take my job?” or “Will it make my job easier?” reflect professionals’ anxieties. Fortunately, the answer is not a simple yes or no.
This article explores the complex relationship between design practitioners, creative professionals, and Generative AI, shedding light on the transformative potential of this collaboration within the design and creative economy. We also look at OpenAI’s ChatGPT as an illustrative example, highlighting the key aspects of this evolving landscape.
Expanding the Boundaries of AI Conversations
When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, it proved to be a game changer, ladling out the impressive and distinct functionalities of Generative AI technology at the fingertips of everyone, from professionals to the everyday user.
For instance, this is what it gave us when prodded for a self-reflexive response on its functionalities:
As seen above, ChatGPT perceives itself as a sophisticated tool designed to augment our daily activities and take the workload off us. It is designed to reply according to the programmed data model and dataset and trained to reply according to it. The significance of the AI platform’s personality and impact on human interactions has yet to be widely known, but necessary for all users to understand.
We reached out to the platform to better understand its functionalities and benefits. We aimed to discover how it could be of value to our business.
As creatives, we have discovered and deployed ChatGPT beyond its original ambit for unexpected purposes. Our extensive list of use cases includes interview preparation, news summarization, song-writing, code debugging, auto-grading homework, and recipe hunting. In addition, ChatGPT has become the go-to solution for many who prefer it over traditional search engines for obtaining intended answers.
But ChatGPT should not be considered an infallible source despite its popularity and many functionalities. It is important to note that speed should not be mistaken for accuracy, reliability, or credibility. While it performs its designated tasks efficiently, ChatGPT operates with certain limitations and biases that restrict the accuracy of its responses. Further, the free version of ChatGPT offers responses only up to 2021 and is not a live platform.
This limits it from providing real-time information. We decided to ask ChatGPT to list its gaps:
To better leverage the functionalities of this technology, we must comprehend the reasons behind the rise in popularity of ChatGPT and other AI solutions; it took its course to become a technological phenomenon today, and hence understanding the underlying factors is crucial.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals held a myopic perspective towards AI and intelligent assistants, primarily because of science fiction’s portrayal of AI-spurred global domination or a dystopian, catastrophic end of the world. However, ChatGPT has turned this trend around in a short period.
ChatGPT has been launched as an open and free-to-use solution that empowers individuals to achieve enhanced efficiency and productivity in their work. As creatives continue to thrive in today’s competitive industry, they can significantly capitalize on the versatile functionalities of ChatGPT as an assistant in creating, modifying, and delivering their content. This innovative platform eliminates the barriers to accessing information and finding skilled individuals while significantly reducing the time needed to produce results for creators. By tapping into ChatGPT, professionals can elevate their work to a higher standard of refinement, allowing them to position and market themselves more effectively.
The availability of AI solutions and assistants is growing exponentially, providing creatives and designers with various innovative tools to increase productivity, streamline the thought process, and improve output quality.
The rise of Generative AI and the way ahead
- Post-COVID-19 pandemic, technology adoption has gained significant traction, increasing opportunities for individuals to pursue entrepreneurship, side hustles, and become creators.
- However, thriving in such a hyper-competitive landscape requires significant effort and resources. There exists a gap in the creator ecosystem regarding skill and time and the availability of proficient individuals.
- Luckily, Generative-AI has emerged as a game-changer during this period, addressing the skill and resource gap with automation.
- Its advanced capabilities and unique features give creators an edge they could not achieve otherwise by filling the gap in skills and accessibility of resources with automation.
- It is both avant-garde and user-friendly, making it both intriguing and accessible and requiring only an email to begin exploring its capabilities.
What are the main criteria we assess AI assistants on?
Closing the Gap: Unravelling the AI User Experience and Expectation
Although many people are increasingly eager to adopt AI solutions at the foundational level, a lingering mistrust still needs to be addressed regarding its capabilities, trustworthiness, and potential in enterprise business. This is primarily due to the recognition that the AI model can exhibit biases that results in challenging predictions and maintain racist or sexist systems.
Notwithstanding these concerns, most individuals bear an optimistic outlook on AI’s future in enterprise systems, extending from routine and autonomous work to complex decision-making processes.
Examples:
Unlocking Insights: Essential Considerations for Future AI Interactions
- It is funny that an AI solution asks if we are human.To use an AI app, we need to prove ourselves human. Does this mean AI solutions are not allowed to use AI?
- While it says the goal is to collect feedback and make them safer.
a. What and where is the feedback being collected, and for what?
b. How does it make the system safer?
- How do we know what is incorrect or misleading? (See Figure below)
At a deeper level, how would the user identify discriminatory content / inaccurate statements?
- Data is being collected and reviewed by AI Trainers. If so, what is being collected and how are they being use?
- An overview of what ChatGPT is capable of and is limited to. It is important to know the full capabilities and limitations to know how to best use this.
- While the response speeds for the free plan are enough for most use cases, subscription and data bandwidth segment the users into different tiers. This creates a lot more implications regarding priority, experience, ease of use, environmental impact, and other criteria.
- When Gen AI seems self-assured, will you ever question it? Why treat Gen AI as ‘objective’ and not experimental at this stage?
- How can we reduce human/researcher bias; what limits (of our own) can we test and rethink with AI?
- What role should it play for us as designers: enabler, assistant, decision-Ad, counterpart, or advisor?
- How much power and responsibility are we willing to relinquish for efficiency?
Conclusion:
The potential impact of generative AI on businesses, regardless of size or technological expertise, is undeniably thrilling. Executives must remain vigilant and cognizant of the emerging risks inherent in this early stage of technology development.
With intentional use cases, fostering a culture of learning, a change journey, and establishing guardrails and sandboxed environments for experimentation, and creativity & design could be embedded more efficiently in every part of the enterprise.
References:
Cohen. (2021, September 25). Research: Mistrust of AI runs deep, but many remain optimistic for its future. Momentive. https://www.momentive.ai/en/blog/perception-of-ai/
Image References: Screenshots sourced from ChatGPT