*Well, somebody's gotta give that a try, so why not them?
Oh look, it's your dead grandfather right here on the screen
But for every smart moment, there are countless bungles, too. (((There must be some mathematical relationship there – the "Clippy Factor."))) Our digital assistants can seem utterly clueless — or worse, heartless. If we take the long view, we’re probably in the Cambrian era of intelligent machines. Our approach will be to go in humbly, with our hats off, knowing there’s a lot we don’t know, and much hard work to be done. That said, the promise of artificial intelligence is to make smart things feasible. And D4AI hopes to make them desirable. Humans will always see things machines can’t see, and vice versa.
In starting D4AI, we find ourselves at a moment very similar to when IDEO pioneered Interaction Design nearly 30 years ago. Bill Moggridge, the designer of the first laptop saw how essential it was to design interactions between people and computers that were rooted in human needs. At the time, many people were skeptical of the impersonality of software interfaces. But when treated as a design medium in the context of interaction, interfaces sprang to life in useful and previously unimaginable ways that now fuel digital transformations around the world.
The same can be said about applying design to data-driven interfaces. There is widespread belief that the value of data is unassailable. But that’s simply not true. Data by itself is inert — dumb raw material. (((etc etc about a hundred unwritten scripts for "Black Mirror" here.)))
