For a long time now, the news has been filled with fear-mongering articles about AI taking human jobs. While it’s true that many jobs will be replaced by AI, human-AI partnerships will also create many new jobs, with humans and AI filling in each other’s weaknesses and working towards a balanced future. While we shouldn’t downplay the challenges due to the jobs that will be lost to AI, we should focus rather on finding opportunities to work together and create new jobs in an evolving future.
For designers, AI streamlines our work and completes menial tasks for us, giving us back the time for more creativity. Personally, though, I am not convinced that greater productivity is always a good thing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us found more working hours with the loss of commute times, social breaks at university or the office, or other distractions that we no longer had when working from home. However, it was widely reported and now has been studied that those moments of pause keep us mentally well and also lead to greater creativity, as boredom generates breakthroughs. Of course I am thankful when the AI embedded in Adobe products auto-selects the part of the image I am trying to trace, but I would also be remiss to say that all menial tasks should be removed from design by AI. Repetition can be meditative. I am neither entirely for or against AI in design, as it is much more of a grey area, but I do believe that it is important to carry some caution and reservations as I move forward in my research.
