SXSW Day 03 - Design in Tech Report and learning to speak with AI.
- Danton Rodrigues
- Mar 18, 2023
- 3 min read
If on day 02, AIs dominated SXSW, on day 03 it wouldn't be any different. I believe the subject will continue throughout the festival and will be part of the conversation among the "innovation crowd" for a long time. It's the topic of the moment, and someone will open Chat GPT every now and then.
Today's highlight is John Maeda, President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft, who took the stage at SXSW to talk about his Design in Tech Report 2023, which was first launched at SXSW in 2015, and also about how to get the best out of AIs.
Unlike the darker tone of the last two days, Maeda brought a more upbeat and optimistic perspective. He begins the session with a reflection on how some language models are limited and how critical thinking and context are essential when dealing with these models.
In a very friendly way, John spoke about his life, his connection with computers, and how, exponentially, AIs and technology have been developing in recent years. In a reference to Ray Kurzweil, he states, through the graph that illustrates the header of this article, that by 2045 AIs will be smarter than human beings.
With this new future perspective, we also need a new perspective on design. If Classical Design was limited to the physical world and Design Thinking to the organizational world, we have reached the era of Computational Design, present in the digital world and the subject of John's book, "How to speak machine," which addresses the language of technology and how it influences our interactions with machines.
In it, Maeda explores the different ways technology communicates information to us and how we can learn to speak the machine's language to improve our understanding and use of it. He also discusses broader issues about the role of technology in society and how the language of technology can affect the way we think and communicate.
From the perspective of Computational Design, we need to focus on improving processes and optimizing the contexts and commands we give to machines. And, like in a recipe, the ingredients are key to success. When making a cake, too much egg makes it soft, too much flour makes it hard, and if the materials are of poor quality, the cake will be bad. Anyone who has been involved in design processes with me has heard me say more than once that we need the right content and the right participants to provoke thoughts and results that will be truly relevant. Learning the language of machines is "adding quality ingredients to the recipe," making the result even better. And that puts the designer as the connecting figure between the user's needs and the machine. The designer who knows how to speak this "language," connecting cognition to context, will bring even better results to humans and companies, building new perspectives of value, saving time, and accelerating.
To conclude the session, Maeda puts into perspective that we should analyze what is pleasurable and what is not when performing work-related tasks. What is not pleasurable, we leave to AI, and with that, we gain extra hours to do what really matters and is pleasurable for us.
On day 03, I also had the chance to follow two more inspiring contents:
The keynote of Patagonia's CEO, Ryan Gellert, who talked about sustainability, conscious consumption, and showed (what we already knew) how much Patagonia is truly involved in causes connected to nature preservation.
A panel on how academic institutions that serve social minority groups prepare their young people for the job market.
The days here have been intense, and I have been positively provoked about the future, which has increasingly directed me towards tracks with the theme of the 2050s.
To learn more:
Download the "Design in Tech" report for 2023 and previous years: https://designintech.report
John Maeda's website: https://maedastudio.com/
NYT article about Ryan Gellert: The Patagonia C.E.O.'s Mission: 'Save Our Home Planet' https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/business/ryan-gellert-patagonia-corner-office.html
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