IDC Design Seminar Series - AI and the Future of Design

25 Feb 2021 4PM Online session (Zoom)

AI and the Future of Design

Promises and Pitfalls

Deep learning has opened a new chapter for artificial intelligence. Deep learning has been shown to be a foundational approach to the structuring of large amounts of data. This has resulted in the development of capabilities that outstrip humans in multiple dimensions. This talk will discuss how many of the capabilities needed to design can be augmented and even replaced by a deep learning-based Al.

In design, the generation of novel solutions was long considered to be immune to the kind of automation that ar tificial intelligence brings. Deep learning systems have been shown to have the capability of generating novel designs. With quantum computing there will be sufficient computing power so that computer processing will not be limited.

What are the promises of this for the future of design? Does this mean that the activity of designing will be able to be automated? Will designs be able to be produced at the press of a button? Will creative designs be able to be produced with the press of a button? This raises the fundamental question of whether designing is superposable, ie, is designing simply the sum of specific capabilities? Or is there more to designing? If there is what is the "more"?

Zoom link: https://sutd-edu.zoom.us/j/96246486153
Meeting ID: 962 4648 6153
Passcode: %?ey?18w
Speaker Bio

John S Gero

Computer Science and Architecture
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

John Gero is a Research Professor in Computer Science and Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Previously he was Professor of Design Science, University of Sydney.

He has been a visiting professor of architecture, artificial intelligence, civil engineering, cognitive psychology and mechanical engineering at MIT, University of California-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia and UCLA in the US and at universities in the UK, France and Switzerland.

He is the developer of the widely referenced Function-Behaviour-Structure ontology. He has published 54 books and over 700 research papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, design computing, design cognition and design neurocognition.

More: http://johngero.com/