Reflections on AI and design. Is AI simply another tool for the designer's toolbox, or did it introduce paradigmatically different ways of interacting with technology? Rahel Flechtner and Aeneas Stankowski tried to make an educated guess based on what they had observed during the last years of design education and the last few years of applied machine learning research.

In their talk, they explored opportunities for designers to make use of the amazing new possibilities offered by this technology and discussed possible strategies to shape design education towards making a real impact on how AI technologies are developed and deployed.

Rahel Flechtner is an industrial and interaction designer and works in the field of tension between the digital and the physical. Since 2013 she has worked for different design offices and research institutions, with one of these being the interdisciplinary design research project Design Research Lab, where Flechtner worked on new possibilities of human-machine collaboration. At the Interaction Design Lab at FH Potsdam, she looked into the potential of technologies such as virtual reality and AI in the field of mental health and has been researching how AI influences human-computer interactions and thus our relationship to the "machine," as part of her work at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) since 2019. Aeneas Stankowski studied industrial and product design at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts, ECAL in Lausanne and at the University of Art and Design Offenbach. After having spent some time working at the design department of Braun, he founded the Berlin based technology design studio "Same" together with some colleagues, in 2019. Their work focuses on AI-based interaction design, while they are actively engaging in current debates on possible applications for the technology. Since 2020 Stankowski has worked at the German Research Center for AI, at the Design Research Lab, and has taught Machine Learning at the UdK and TU Berlin, FH Potsdam and other universities.

Correlations Forum, an interdisciplinary event, provided a platform for dialogue on AI in art and design. Through lectures, workshops, and exhibitions, participants engaged with intelligent systems in creative contexts, exploring their impact on society. The next forum is scheduled for November 2024, organized by KITeGG, a research project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Visit correlationsforum.de for more details.

Photo: Jakob Dieckmann