Designers‘ fears and expectations of AI tools

"The progress cannot be stopped." Philipp Thesen talks about this in an interview about the future of AI tools and design. And perhaps that is precisely what often leaves people unsure about new technology. People have always built machines to support their abilities. Engines were developed because humans cannot muster enough power and because humans do not possess tremendous speed of thought and action, they develop computers. Hanno Rauterberg speaks of the old machine bodies and the new machine minds. These machines turn people into cogs in the wheel, because automatable processes can and are taken over by machines and computers, which can give people in many sectors the feeling of being replaced. Due to the black-box problem, in which the decisions of the AI tool can neither be reconstructed by the programmers nor by the AI tool itself, the technology seems like something uncanny and inscrutable. Fears of manipulation by AI tools also increase with their spread. People often unconsciously feel alienated from technology. They see AI tools as a threat because they perceive them as an alienation from nature and because these AI tools are not visible. Digital technology operates in the blurry void and drags parts of the present into it. Creativity is considered the ultimate domain of human genius and is now being challenged by AI tools. If some developers have their way, AI tools should not only be playmates of the creative, but should emancipate themselves, become creative and finally become artists in their own right. This could mean a downgrading of the creativity of the individual. In recent months (as of January 2023), a countercry has formed in social media, driven not only by anger at the data theft of artworks but also by the fear of being replaced. The question of developing a label for AI free art is on the minds of many. At the same time, it is almost impossible to avoid AI tools in the field of digital art these days. Most programs, such as Photoshop and Procreate, already use AI tools to simplify the work process. Therefore, the question is rather what people and especially designers can expect from AI tools.

The computer actually stands for the perfect and exact and with the term artificial intelligence, people usually do not expect errors and mistakes. People rely more or less consciously on AI tools. This overtrust phenomenon is described by Hanno Rauterberg. AI tools are seen as particularly efficient and objective and being calculated and controlled is not experienced as an aggressive or active process, because everything seems to happen by itself. In design or in art, an exact or perfect result is often not desired. The outcome should surprise, make you look, i.e. contain a glitch in the wording of the technology. Georg Nees, a pioneer of computer art, wrote that a realistic approximation to the optical laws of the external environment is not absolutely necessary, and from an aesthetic point of view is often not even desired. At the same time, AI tools are supposed to produce a virtuosity that human artists have overcome in order to be considered art. The expectation of AI tools is contradictory. If people use them in everyday life, they expect perfection. If AI tools are used for creative work, this perfection appears unattractive and uninteresting. With this knowledge, the results of the experiments in the following chapter can now be better interpreted.