Forming meaningful relationships between human and machine

Description

Artificial intelligence is a mystery and a wonder. It can help us solve humanity’s most difficult problems, but it is also vastly misunderstood by most people. Some consider AI a magical black box with the intelligence of a PhD. It knows all about everything; you just bring your problems and, voilà, your problems are solved. For others, fears of AI uprisings, loss of human control and Terminator-like scenarios cloud their capability to understand the present utility of cognitive computing.

When looking for ways to apply cutting-edge technological revolutions, AI not only dazzles but can blind as well. The more buzz and hype, the greater the pressure becomes to quickly create something using whatever new capabilities are presented to us. The benefit of moments like this is the opportunity to discover, experiment, and learn. 



We humans will form relationships with just about anything, from our pets to our cars and our phones. AI provides machines the ability to understand, reason, learn, and interact, creating the building blocks for forming meaningful relationships with machines—machines that can hold a conversation, interpret nonverbal cues, and draw from vast stores of human knowledge. Here at the dawn of the cognitive era, we must focus our design talents upon this new type relationship. But as we move past text fields and submit buttons, what does it mean to design for relationships instead of UIs? And what should these relationships look like?

Adam Cutler explains why designing for AI requires new considerations and new rules and reminds us that when we find ourselves in such unfamiliar territory, the best way to begin is by remembering the true purpose for any innovation: to improve the quality of human life.