Four Things On The Design × AI Frontier The theme of “design” in the AI era is the opposite of the previous tech boom where we removed friction. Instead, be sure to *add* friction. Adding friction means making sure that AI users are reminded that they’re not getting perfect answers from a superior alien lifeform. As the most…

As a fan of Andrew Ng’s recent TED talk “How AI Could Empower Any Business,” I contrasted it with the many other talks in the TED library that raise the spectre of Black Mirror and/or the Terminator films. In that sense, I guess it’s why I found Andrew’s talk so interesting because it laid out in plain terms how AI can possibly benefit small businesses — like his favorite local pizza joint. Having grown up in a tofu-making business in the “international district” (aka “chinatown”) of Seattle, I liked Andrew’s perspective because it spoke to an important kind of empathy for folks like my parents.

Four Things That I’m Thinking About #DesignInTech Designers tend to care about people as people. Instead of just as prospects or customers. Design as a field has evolved to speak more machine, more scale, and more $$$s. A lot of work has been done in the design world to birth a new “aesthetics of ethics.” But it’s…

There are four quotes that have stayed with me for the last 30+ years, that I’m pulling out of the past for the upcoming 2023 #DesignInTech Report on Design and Artificial Intelligence. One is by the late Nobel laureate and CMU AI pioneer Dr. Herbert Simon (1916–2001) who had an…

For anyone who remembers typing TURN OFF LIGHT SWITCH while playing the text-adventure game Zork—instead of typing 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" because there were no programs to run besides the ones you could make yourself—you recall the feeling of being drawn into an alternate universe.

When I was asked if I wanted to be a part of our Mentoring Development Program, I jumped at the opportunity to do so. Because who doesn’t love to be mentored, coached, improved? Although the more senior you get, the more often you find that YOU are the one being…

This is a regular (delayed) re-post of my plaintext #nolinks monthly #ResilienceTech briefing that you can sign up for here 👉 http://eepurl.com/c9OjRX Four Things That I’m Thinking About #ResilienceTech * Modern neuroscience tells us how we store and process information depends upon our emotional state, which easily triggers the “fight or flight” response. Technologies that are designed…

“Come to think of it … I might need that thing I was just about to throw out. Phew!” — me Whenever I visit my 86-year old Mom, she is always showing me something sparkly and new that she’s collected. Or, more recently … because she’s preparing to die ……

When leading where your teams are going, you also need to know whether they’re following. —A Fourth Option for leaders to take As a “maker” of things, I’ve never been a “leading from the front” kind of person and more of a “leading by example” one. But over time I…