It is a scary prospect to think that Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) could soon be about to steal your job. So with huge corporations like Microsoft, Apple and Amazon all pumping millions of dollars into AI-driven platforms that are designed to operate like humans, could it be that skills like UX design quickly become a thing of the past?
In the UX world, we do a massive amount of research into our audience’s requirements, from physical research to virtual testing. All this analysis allows us to better understand our audience’s mindset and make critical design decisions based upon fact. This raises the somewhat prickly question, could AI perform these same tasks and make conscious decisions based on the research that it carries out? My answer to this question is I believe so; in fact I think Artificial Intelligence could do a better job than any human could!
Now I am not saying Artificial Intelligence is going to take my job tomorrow but in the near future I anticipate that we will see an inexorable push towards using AI for user research, reporting and testing. This can surely be an advantageous situation to be in as I for one would be happy to have answers to the questions I am yet to ask, thus allowing me more time to design bigger and better projects. However, what if Artificial Intelligence doesn’t just stop at just research and testing? What’s to stop it from building websites and apps based purely on the data it has collected and thereby cutting out any human input? It is this unknown territory that is possibly the scariest aspect of this subject.
In all likelihood Artificial Intelligence will be an amazing leap forward in helping UX designers better understand their audiences, however, there will always be the potential for it to take over our jobs if allowed unlimited freedom. I look forward to the day AI is able to complete many of the more time consuming tasks I regularly perform but I will always be wary of how much of my role will be issued to a machine!
