Orlando and Oliver studied philosophy together 30 years ago. Their shared love for philosophy, design, and technology reunited them to discuss AI and

Design as Thought: AI and the Future of Design

submited by

Style Pass

2024-07-06 05:00:03

Orlando and Oliver studied philosophy together 30 years ago. Their shared love for philosophy, design, and technology reunited them to discuss AI and the future. This month, their exchange appeared in the Lucerne School of Art and Design magazine, where Orlando serves as Vice Dean and lecturer.

Prof. Dr. Orlando Budelacci is the author of Human, Machine, Identity, Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.1 His questions and comments are in bold throughout their discussion. Oliver Reichenstein, the founder of iA Inc., answered his questions from the practical point of view of an interaction designer.

Orlando: You’ve developed successful tools for creatives, the iA Writer for writing and the iA Presenter for presentations. These applications are quite unlike the conventional Microsoft products. Where do you see the differences? Why did you decide to strike out on a completely different path?

Oliver: Microsoft dominates the productivity software market and does everything it can to consolidate that dominance. We wanted to develop a tool for writing that could only be used for writing. So we based it on the typewriter. It could hardly be more different from Microsoft Word. No buttons, no macros, no frills. In iA Writer, you have no choice but to think and write.