Art, design and AI - how do we look at it?

Pieter Wels and Chris Geene are lecturer-researchers at Fontys ICT, but secretly also design artists (or artful designers) under the shared name welgeen. Like no other, they know how artificial intelligence (AI) and design/art intersect. In this episode of Updates Available Online, Erdinç Saçan talks to them about this complicated topic.

Artificial stupidity
"We always talk about artificial intelligence, but never about artificial stupidity," jokes Chris Geene. He raises a point; AI produces, accelerates and does things, but often still lacks the possibility of originality. Precisely in the creative process is a pleasure in exploration, failure and futility. Those steps are part of the search, and that is exactly what AI can do nothing with. Pieter Wels describes it evocatively, "Wouldn't it be nice if your AI navigation just sent you the wrong way for once?" Humor, and meandering in conversation are exactly the things an AI skips. Of course, both recognize that there is justified anger when AI reproduces, but the fun in design is in the process.

Fontys ICT InnovationLab
The conversation takes place at the Fontys ICT InnovationLab, a place where all those principles of creativity, technology and design-thinking come together. That also means sometimes thinking about the nature of what you do; what is design anyway? And how big a role did technology already play in it? By applying, we learn more about this, and that is exactly what the duo is doing here. 

Open Learning
Geene and Wels are teachers within Open Learning. That means that they guide students within the open learning process, in which the student himself sets the course. That also means exploring and asking questions about new applications and opportunities. No wonder, then, that there is a lot of experimentation with AI here.

Updates Available Online is part of the Fontys ICT InnovationLab at Strijp-T knowledge sessions, entitled Updates Available. Here, experts are invited to share their knowledge but also to hear what is going on within specific themes. More information can be found here.