AI and the Recontextualization of Design

Since the 1950s, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced rapidly due to the improvement of computer computing power. This progress has not only fascinated academic researchers and novelists, but also caught the attention of the general public through various high-profile events. The frequency of these events has been on the rise.

In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer became the first computer system to beat the world chess champion within the standard game time limit. In 2016, AlphaGo defeated nine-dan Go player Lee Sedol. In 2017, the emergence of Deepfake technology enabled the creation of forgeries of public figures’ speech, including that of President Obama. Also in 2017, Bill Gates suggested that robots that take human jobs should pay taxes. In 2018, researchers from MIT published an experiment in the journal Nature called The Moral Machine, which explored ethical issues related to self-driving cars. In February 2022, Ilya Sutskever, one of the authors of the AlphaGo paper and the chief scientist of OpenAI, tweeted that it is possible that today’s large neural networks are slightly conscious. In June of the same year, Google engineer Blake Lemoine claimed that the large-scale language model named “LaMDA" had a soul and released an interview about LaMDA on his personal Medium account. These events demonstrate that artificial intelligence is beginning to have a wider and more comprehensive impact on society, as it moves beyond the lab and the business world.

The phenomenon of AI in the field of art and design is also worth considering. In February 2022, the US Copyright Office rejected Steven Thaler’s application for a copyright on the grounds that the developed AI algorithm lacked human authorship. In August of the same year, game designer Jason M. Allen used an AI-generated image called “Theatre D’opera Spatial" created by the Midjourney service to win first prize in the annual Colorado state fair art competition. These events suggest that the ability “to create" is no longer unique to humans. In the foreseeable future, the design field, which prides itself on creativity, is likely to face significant impacts and will need to undergo profound transformation. This year’s conference focuses on the topic of “Artificial Intelligence and Re-contextualization of Design," and encourages practitioners and academics in the field of creative design to come together and explore the diverse developments and multi-level influences of artificial intelligence. In the context of the intersection of science, technology, and society, we will delve into the development of “design" as a field of knowledge and consider its possible future.

(The text is translated with Google translation and revised with ChatGPT of Open AI. All trademarks, logos and brand names are the property of their respective owners.)