While the universe of AI/LLM/ML offers huge potential and promise, I always cringe when I see “AI” used as a marketing term, particularly for consumer products. It’s a vague buzzword that doesn’t communicate much, and it definitely doesn’t communicate trust and security. Non-technical people (and probably some of the technically inclined as well) either don’t fully understand or trust the technology, and rightfully so. It is improving at a near exponential pace, and it is opaque in regard to the data it is trained on and the data we input into them. Yet it still has the capacity to generate consequential errors.
Designers have a critical role to play in not just improving the power of this technology, but in ensuring that it is applied in a considerate and practical manner that boosts its utility, and not just foisted upon consumers as the next big market-transforming, data-hungry invention. We can get there, be we need to think before we step.
The study referenced in the article below highlights the emotional gap that exists when it comes to consumers trusting and adopting AI products.