Artificial Intelligence in digital design industry

UTAR Tun Tan Cheng Lock Centre for Social and Policy Studies (TCLC) organised a talk titled “Artificial intelligence in digital design industry” on 7 April 2023 at UTAR Sungai Long Campus. The talk was delivered by Faculty of Creative Industries academic Lee Kin Keong.

Lee explaining the potential and threats of AI

At the talk, Lee spoke about the potential and threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to human development from a neutral standpoint and shared its impacts on the design industry based on a two-decade projection extracted from recently published books by top AI specialists. He explained how AI can impact and influence one’s living standard, decision-making, holistic development and value.

Lee said, “AI has the ability to analyse a huge number of data points, which is something we cannot do. As humans, we have a unique ability to draw experience, abstract concepts and common sense; this is what we do.” He continued, “Allow me to give you a context where we deal with insurance, for instance. You have premium insurance that you pay every month. The benefit of deep learning is it allows you to save money depending on your lifestyle. If you are the type who exercises regularly and store the data in an app, it is highly possible that your insurance agent is aware of it, and therefore may not pay you the allowance. The disadvantage is the manipulation part. For example, if you’re the type who often visits the pub or club with friends and your scores are not good, it is highly likely that your insurance agent knows where you have been and where you often go. This will affect your benefits.”

He also spoke about natural language processing (NLP), saying, “AI can help to customise. If a student likes basketball but doesn’t like mathematics, AI can help the student to learn mathematics using basketball terms. It fits according to what he likes.”

Speaking of computer vision and generative adversarial network (GAN), Lee said, “Computer vision is to teach AI to see and analyze gestures. It is often used in airports for security measures, smart cameras, editing software and autonomous vehicles.” He added, “GAN can generate a crazy amount of information. This is especially true when it comes to fake news. It is difficult to decide whether the online content is authentic or not.”

AI’s emergence has sped up design development by completely aiding the technical process and freeing designers to concentrate on the goals of the brand or campaign. The aesthetic and brand messaging are in the high-visibility region while the technical portion of the design business is regarded as low visibility based on how the audience consumes the content visually. Questions from the audience regarding AI’s holistic growth, coexistence, and current problems marked the session’s conclusion.

The talk in progress