AI, Meet Service Design - with Pontus Wärnestål - Part 1
12/12/23 • 50 min
On the need for service design in the age of AI, with award-winning Service Designer and Human-Computer Interaction researcher Pontus Wärnestål.
In this guest episode, Juli, Pontus, and the pack hiked up to the Hármashatárhegy airport to dive deep into all the things we call AI.
The path we took:
- The importance of having a critical eye toward AI, and why it is no longer optional to be interested in AI
- Defining AI and ML among fluffy terms, stochastic parrots, and semantic dragons
- The five pillars of service design, and the necessity of focusing on backstage operations
- Legal implications, and the current state of tech based on data theft
- Breaking things fast vs the ethics of business decisions
- And a brief history lesson with Ada Lovelace, envisioning a machine capable of composing music
Grab your headphones, and head to the snowy hills to walk with us!
Further reading:
- https://warnestal.com/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/pontuswarnestal
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62588814-designing-ai-powered-services
- https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can_we_build_ai_without_losing_control_over_it
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
Ps. At some point in our lives, we all were tech bros. Sorry for all the tech bro-bashing that’s about to happen in this episode.
Ps. If you want to chime in, DM us or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!
★ Support this podcast ★
On the need for service design in the age of AI, with award-winning Service Designer and Human-Computer Interaction researcher Pontus Wärnestål.
In this guest episode, Juli, Pontus, and the pack hiked up to the Hármashatárhegy airport to dive deep into all the things we call AI.
The path we took:
- The importance of having a critical eye toward AI, and why it is no longer optional to be interested in AI
- Defining AI and ML among fluffy terms, stochastic parrots, and semantic dragons
- The five pillars of service design, and the necessity of focusing on backstage operations
- Legal implications, and the current state of tech based on data theft
- Breaking things fast vs the ethics of business decisions
- And a brief history lesson with Ada Lovelace, envisioning a machine capable of composing music
Grab your headphones, and head to the snowy hills to walk with us!
Further reading:
- https://warnestal.com/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/pontuswarnestal
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62588814-designing-ai-powered-services
- https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can_we_build_ai_without_losing_control_over_it
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
Ps. At some point in our lives, we all were tech bros. Sorry for all the tech bro-bashing that’s about to happen in this episode.
Ps. If you want to chime in, DM us or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!
★ Support this podcast ★
Previous Episode
The Gods of AI
On AI, with its threats and hopes, history and religion.
We are back! In the last season, we mostly focused on our past: where we came from, and how our history affected the value we seek to create in our career. This season, we are looking towards the future.
This time we recorded among the mushrooms of the autumn forest. While the dogs ran around sniffing the wind, we discussed what we hope from AI, and what we fear the most.
The path we took:
- Science fiction's AI promises, teaching us to fear the robots early on.
- The promise of growth and prosperity, and the last time we heard those promises: in the mobile revolution.
- Machines doing stupid human stuff much more efficiently than humans.
- The brief history of AI, or all the different things we called AI at some point.
- Regulation, legislation, and setting rules for something we don't fully understand.
- Surpassing human intelligence being a thread in itself or a way to salvation.
- Robot gods, robots with emotions.
- And for a more grounded ending: AI tools we use now, in our daily work, and why we're not worried about robots taking our jobs just yet.
Further reading:
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6398163-the-orchid-cage
- https://www.fastcompany.com/90942310/ai-napster-who-going-to-own-it-next
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2016/12/30/a-very-short-history-of-artificial-intelligence-ai/
- https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/17/the-cambridge-analytica-scandal-changed-the-world-but-it-didnt-change-facebook
- https://ourworldindata.org/artificial-intelligence
- https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/04/28/yuval-noah-harari-argues-that-ai-has-hacked-the-operating-system-of-human-civilisation
- https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/artificial-intelligence/
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40947778-the-outside
Spoiler warning: This episode contains major plot spoilers for the following sci-fi movies or books: The Matrix franchise, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, The Orchid Cage by Herbert W. Franke, and The Outside series by Ada Hoffman.
Grab your headphones, and walk with us! We have some sparkly winter sunshine, just ideal for a one-episode-long walk.
Ps. If you want to chime in, DM us or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!
★ Support this podcast ★Next Episode
Service Design, meet AI - with Pontus Wärnestål - Part 2
On the need for service design in the age of AI, with award-winning Service Designer and Human-Computer Interaction researcher Pontus Wärnestål. The second part of a two-part episode.
In this guest episode, Juli, Pontus, and the pack hiked up to the Hármashatárhegy airport to dive deep into all the things we call AI.
The path we took:
- Thought leaders who can expand our understanding of tech possibilities
- Humans changing the job landscape with AI, or AI taking our jobs
- How AI is about predicting the future, and how that can go very wrong
- The agency of designers on a strategic level, design maturity in an organization
- The way forward is education - different education paths leading to responsible service design
- Worries about the dilution of the service design profession
- How interaction design can finally be about designing interactions, not just screens
- And advice for mindful design in the age of AI
Further reading:
- https://warnestal.com/
- https://drpontus.medium.com/ai-will-not-take-any-jobs-cdea12d86d2c
- https://www.predictionmachines.ai/
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40102.Blink
- https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ai-paradigm/
- https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/designing-agentive-technology/
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63631742-frankenstein
Grab your headphones, and head to the snowy hills to walk with us!
Ps. If you want to chime in, DM us or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!
★ Support this podcast ★If you like this episode you’ll love
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