Fuck AI! I Wrote This
To AI, or not to AI – that is the question on the lips of everyone in the design and creative industry. 3daysofdesign tackle the dilemma during this year's design festival.
“It’s not a question of whether you want to use AI or not – it’s how.” Those are the words of Veronica D’Souza, at the first AI & I Symposium hosted by 3daysofdesign.
The annual design festival showcases hundreds of great Scandinavian designs in exhibitions and showrooms across the city for professionals and design enthusiasts alike. Copenhagen, rich in stunning architecture, natural spaces, and innovative and conscious designs, is the ideal epicentre for modern creativity.
And creativity is exactly what it’s all about. The theme of this year’s festival is Keep It Real. It’s a theme that is topical in today’s cultural and political discussions worldwide, and a theme that “honours individual expression and experiences, echoing our deep desire for a world that’s more caring, inclusive, and conscious.”
It is the first time that 3daysofdesign is doing symposium-style discussions to gather and disperse knowledge related to its theme. In six sessions spread out over the days of the festival, experts in their fields bring their differing views to Cinemateket in the centre of Copenhagen to tackle a variety of topics on AI in the creative industry.
Bridging the Gap: How real do we keep it?
It is clear among the panellists of the first session, titled Bridging the Gap, that artificial intelligence poses a real threat to creativity and critical thinking.
Veronica D’Souza is a social entrepreneur, artist, advisor, speaker and more. She has faith in the utopia that AI can bring if we use it correctly – if we use it as a supplement.
“AI can’t be valid in and of itself. It’s a tool and [the question] is how do you use it?”
Rebekah Cheng and Jian Wei are also among the panellists, and they share real-world examples of how their companies in Tokyo and San Francisco, respectively, have used AI to improve the workflow and deal with early project tasks, such as brainstorming workshops.
Cheng reiterates that we need to think about in what fields and which aspects of our work artificial intelligence can add value, and where it is prohibiting critical thinking and creativity.
Jian Wei points out that AI can fast-track our thinking and understanding of the world. But how do we trust the information that AI generates? How do we make AI fair and equitable across borders, cultures and communities? How do we bridge that gap?
Slops, misinformation and the biases of AI
Garbage bias in, garbage bias out.
It’s as simple as that, if you ask Liz Pomeroy, a Copenhagen-based product designer. The data that AI is learning from right now is mostly coming from a Western point of view. The outputs from AI reflect that, and they appear very homogeneous.
When we let AI tell the story – any story, not just the written – it is biased. But cultural bias is complex, and AI is making it worse.
If we are to use AI for all its positive potential, we need to feed it more data. But not any data, and certainly not stolen user data. Veronica D’Souza, Rebekah Cheng and Jian Wei all agree that we need data from people who think differently; people from the Global South; people who have a different experience from Sam Altman.
So, what does this have to do with art and design?
Author and journalist Lauren Beukes says she has never and will never use AI. She is tired of seeing slop everywhere, poor quality AI-generated content that is unwanted and unasked for.
She has also noticed artificial intelligence used in the news cycle: lately, to spread misinformation about the protests in Los Angeles. To top it all off, her work as a global best-selling author has been stolen and used as data to train AI code. She is not a fan of artificial intelligence, to say the least.
And like many, Beukes fears whether AI will eventually put her out of work. When AI is used in a way that disregards human experience, it quite simply dilutes the sympathy we hold for the people who do exist.
“We have to change our story about AI.”
In all the talk of doom and unemployment, Veronica D’Souza is certain that AI will not kill creativity. The real problem with AI is the commodification of it. The world is run by shareholders who want to see profit year after year. This is what will kill creativity: putting money before people.
There is faint hope in Aurélia Durand. She’s a French illustrator with African heritage, something that she channels and celebrates in her art. Durand believes that the art she creates comes from her life and her experiences, and AI cannot replace or recreate that.
“Reaching out to people with your voice is above these technologies.”
But she is not against the use of artificial intelligence. To make room for even more art and creativity, she uses AI to do the boring stuff that comes with being an independent artist, the administrative stuff, for example.
The cost and the sacrifice of AI
With its assumptions and mirroring nature (feeding us back the data we put into it), generative AI models can feel sentient. So human-like that there are multiple news stories reporting of people communicating with AI characters in such a way that they are pushed to commit suicide. Or people who engage with these fictive creations in a romantic way, having sex with them and referring to them as their partners.
In less extreme examples, the instinctive response to this human-like behaviour, where a commercial exchange of services takes place, is to show gratitude. After a prompt has been answered, some users thank the chatbots.
But you should think twice before typing ‘thank you’ into the chatbot after it has just done what you asked it to do.
Firstly, it doesn’t care! It’s a machine. Secondly, generative AI uses a lot of electricity and water to operate, much more than a typical computing workload (the resources required by a program to perform a task). The environmental impact of using AI to perform mundane tasks, such as sorting a grocery list, writing a university essay, or generating a sloppy image of SpongeBob in human form, is unjustifiable in a world that is burning because of our poor upkeep.
It is impossible to know where to place oneself in the discussion of how much AI should be used. Do we think of the creativity AI will allow and the problem-solving skills it will add? Do we think about the environmental devastation of its use and the misinformation, biases, and brainrot content produced?
AI is what we make of it. We have to change our story about AI.
3daysofdesign is hosting more AI & I sessions on artificial intelligence and its role in reshaping the creative landscape over the next few days of the festival.