What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of AI?

Robots? Data breach? Self-driving cars?

There are as many thoughts about AI as there are definitions. It really depends on who you ask. However, in this blog I won’t go over what it is or isn’t but rather how we as designers can influence its use for better or worse.

So is AI an opportunity or a threat?

I’d like to think it’s more of an opportunity but with that comes great responsibility. How so? I will get to that a bit later…

How to Service Design AI

On Thursday 21^st of November I took part in the Ompeluseuran palvelumuotoilijat event on “How to Service Design AI” hosted by Solita x Palmu where I got a lot of food for thought about AI. Anna Metsäranta, Data-Driven Business Designer, talked about why 85% of the AI projects fail business wise and Anni Ojajärvi, Ethnographer, Business Design and Strategy, discussed the ethics of AI and how AI can influence human behavior and everyday life. Here are my key take a ways from the event:

The Recipe for a Successful AI Project

1. AI is just a tool. Humans must define the problem as well as the outcome. The more concrete the better.
2. We as designers need to be part of AI development projects in order to bring the human aspect to the equation. It is important that we validate along the way that the project is going towards the right direction.
3. Your solution is only as good as your data. Case in point Amazon’s now scrapped recruiting tool that showed bias against women. The recruiting tool used application data from a 10 year period, mostly made up of male applicants’ resumes due to the male dominance in the technology industry.  “In effect, Amazon’s system taught itself that male candidates were preferable.” (Dastin, 2018).
4. Developing AI is not just a one of thing. AI needs to be constantly trained and the results validated.

WEIRD People Define the Ethics of AI

AI is for the most part developed by WEIRD people. That is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic people that make up only 10 to 15% of the world population. Thus, as my final question I leave you this: How can we make this WEIRD situation into a GREAT one? That is Global, Representative, Equal, Accurate and Tolerant.  As I mentioned earlier with opportunity comes great responsibility and it is up to us designers to think of the direct and indirect impact that our design and solutions have on the customer, context, community, employee/process, society and environment.

Written by Lyydia Pertovaara

Links:

https://www.solita.fi/en/

https://unsplash.com/@franki

References:

Dastin, J. (2018). Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women. [online] U.S. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G.