How Can We Teach More Students How to Design With AI?

How a handful of traditional design programs are staying ahead of the curve

By Margaret Andersen

The fear that automation is replacing actual design skills has been widely debunked. AI is still coming, of course — it’s just not coming for our jobs. Rather, it will provide designers with a 21st-century skill set, allowing them to integrate applications of AI like machine learning into their current practices. But in order to really explore the possibilities and limitations of a data-driven design process, it’s crucial that designers not only understand but actively engage with these emerging technologies as they continue to evolve. So how is the next generation preparing, and crucially, how are they being prepared by their four-year institutions?

With experimental web projects like Google’s Teachable Machine available for free online, designers don’t need engineering backgrounds to train a neural network. However, those who get hands-on experience with AI while in school will have a better understanding of its creative possibilities as well as its ethical implications on culture and society.

Levin has been heavily involved in the open-source community for the past 20 years and has worked with the founders of arts programming toolkits like Open Frameworks, Processing, and p5.js. His campus laboratory also supports several open-source arts and…

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