I was invited by Gema Gutiérrez, the creator of Píldoras UX, to talk about what it means to work designing artificial intelligence tools at Google. Here is a summary of some of the key points.
What is artificial intelligence?
Each person has a different answer to this question, depending on how informed they are or how much science fiction they consume. Artificial intelligence has existed for a long time already. Let’s think about calculators that perform mathematical operations for us. Artificial intelligence is based on the notion that human thought processes can be replicated and mechanized.
What is it like to design AI for everyone?
We need to start from the premise that we all have different levels of literacy and knowledge. Many people think it’s a magical process. We need to show more real examples with applications in the world. We need to think about the ethical dilemmas that AI poses. How can we prevent the algorithm from making us feel uncomfortable, with that feeling that it can read our minds?
How to use AI as a tool?
Historically, we were indoctrinated to perform repetitive tasks. To be the tool ourselves. Now, we have tools that already do those tasks. So, what is our role now? Perhaps it is to use the creativity and power we have in our hands to improve society.
Artificial intelligence is like having a hammer. Imagine that we are going to build a chair, we build it because we want to sit. So we use the hammer to put in the nails, to assemble the wood. But we are not making the chair because we love using a hammer, but because we want to sit.