{"id":4243,"date":"2020-09-29T15:07:27","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T19:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/?p=4243"},"modified":"2020-10-23T18:25:02","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T22:25:02","slug":"co-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/2020\/09\/29\/co-existence\/","title":{"rendered":"Co-existence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Automation threatens to make graphic designers obsolete | Robert Peart<\/strong><\/p>

\u201cA designer\u2019s role will evolve to that of directing, selecting, and fine-tuning, rather than making. The craft will be in having vision and skill in selecting initial machine-made concepts and pushing them further, rather than making from scratch. Designers will become conductors, rather than musicians.\u201d\u00a0 \u2013 Claire Waring<\/strong><\/p>

I\u2019m going to just be nitpicky here about this particular analogy because I think it raises some problematic suggestions; it does, however, posit an interesting reality! First of all, I think that the role of the musician has persisted all of these years because of an inherent human quality: wanting to create \u201cthings\u201d, i.e. creating music.<\/p>

Note:\u00a0 I don\u2019t pretend to know all the intricacies of becoming a conductor (and the following description is likely simplifying the incredibly complex and difficult process to become a composer, as this analysis stems from observation as a musician).<\/em><\/p>

Then to be a conductor, is to have an intimate connection along with the music. Often, this means a process of understanding music (learning music theory; or at least practicing enough composition). Conductors typically micromanage the entire orchestra and guide the process to ensure that things don\u2019t erupt into chaos. And if that doesn\u2019t already sound difficult enough, just try to keep a consistent rhythm throughout an entire piece (that can range from like three minutes to thirty minutes to like five hours). In this case, the conductor, as Claire argues is the designer, and the musicians become the machines.\u00a0 But what this analogy neglects or doesn\u2019t address is the fact that to becoming the composer requires some kind of knowledge of music construction involving how musicians work, what the audience wishes to hear, and how to create pieces that really bring out the best of the musicians; when do you, for example, deem the best time to isolate individual instruments or allow them to exist in harmony? What is the rhythm and flow of the music? What do these rhythms call for? What is the message? And while these questions do relate to design knowledge, the key thing here is that it requires an understanding<\/em> of how music functions and how the musicians function<\/em>, as well.<\/p>

We can\u2019t say the same for machine learning algorithms, because they\u2019re not so easily transparent. We can\u2019t pick apart a code that an AI has done and we can\u2019t understand why they make some of the choices they do. We just say \u201cDo this,\u201d and then let the machine have its way as it undergoes a process of trial and error.<\/p>

If we were to extend this analogy a little further, maybe it\u2019s akin to simply asking the musician to improv an entire work and let the conductor just try to guide improv. But that also doesn\u2019t seem to work, because improv is really the musician\u2019s role, there\u2019s no need for a conductor to facilitate, only the inner workings and connections between multiple musicians. So, with that, then, the machine really does make the designer obsolete. Huh.<\/p>

But back to my previous point of the machines, we don\u2019t necessarily understand the AI; so how can we make assertions of just simply auditing? How might we then design systems that mesh this human element of creation to the automated AI processes?<\/strong> <\/span>What kind of world would that look like?<\/p>

\u201cThe Danger of AI is Weirder Than You Think\u201d | Janelle Shane<\/strong><\/p>

Furthermore, Janelle\u2019s TED talk is one of my favorites that I\u2019ve seen so far. I just love that kind of witty humor and hilarity, where teaching an AI feels incredibly funky and awkward since it just does exactly what it tells you to. For one,\u00a0 it\u2019s inspired me to buy the book and read more about her shenanigans. I think there\u2019s something very real about her experiences with AI and the weird experiments that she\u2019s conducted; which is how, for example, the book\u2019s title was born \u2014\u00a0 because she decided to train an AI to give pickup lines to a human and \u201cYou look like a thing and I love you\u201d was born. Her examples are infectious, leading me to wonder what the role of humor is in dispelling uncertainty with regards to new forms of technology adoption?<\/span><\/strong> Also, what might a world look like where AIs dating humans becomes the norm; would that disrupt how we think about machines? Would we refer to humans as more machine-like or vice-versa?<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>

Robert Peart, \u201cAutomation Threatens to Make Graphic Designers Obsolete,\u201d<\/a> Eye on Design, October 25, 2016<\/p>

\u201cThe Danger of AI is Weirder Than You Think,\u201d<\/a> by Janelle Shane<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m thinking about the role of the designer in the age of automation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":4244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[345],"tags":[380,105],"class_list":["post-4243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-your-guess","tag-automation","tag-machine-learning","entry-card--landscape"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Artboard-1-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p86O3z-16r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4243"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4402,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions\/4402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}