+HUMAN DESIGN LAB

About a year ago, before “AI” became the buzzword it is today, we did a deep-dive experiment exploring what was possible with generative AI at the time. We tinkered with two AI engines, namely, Dall·E 2 and Midjourney v3, to test their capabilities, limitations, differences, bias and real-world potential uses. The results were, in a word, incredible.

Besides the two OG image generative engines, we’ve also been playing around with a number of others such as Leornado.AI and Adobe Firefly. By comparing these models, we’re able to understand the different technologies that power them and the situations in which they shine best. As part of our 9-months later comparison, we compared the results of the two initial engines we experimented with a newer one, Adobe Firefly.

Chat GPT is a transformer that predicts the next word.
Midjourney is a generative diffuser that predicts the nearest pixel.

Midjourney’s diffusion process: alternating randomised noise deconstruction with nearest-neighbour reconstruction.

• Every image starts with a grid of random visual “noise”, much like the static you see on your old TV when there’s no antenna plugged in.
• The model then incrementally constructs an image that is visually similar to its original training data.
• This is done for every pixel on a grid, by altering the colour values of 8 “nearest neighbour” pixels around it.
• This process of adding noise and reconstructing images is repeated thousands of times for every image generated, until the final results are presented a few seconds later. 

• Users can select and upscale their preferred image to a very decent resolution.
• The random noise ensures that every image generated will be unique, and no two images generated will ever be identical, even if the prompt is exactly the same.

For more on how LLMs and Transformers work, we recommend reading this excellent Wolfram Alpha piece. If you’d really like to geek out, Attention is All You Need [PDF] is a great rabbit hole to dive into.

We’re not reliant or dependent on AI for anything, but we use it as an assistant to complement some stages in our strategic and creative processes – mostly to enrich conversations and enhance ideas.

In Discovery – We use ChatGPT to accelerate mechanical research breadth and speed (then spend some time fact-checking its otherwise overconfident responses, and going deeper manually – and more personally).

In Strategy – Again using ChatGPT and some 3rd party tools built on its API, we’ve had some mixed success at the business strategy stage of our work. Most responses have been generic and conventional – echoing some non-proprietary early thinking during workshops. What’s great however is they’re produced incredibly fast. It’s a case of more quantity than quality, and given that quantity can help experienced strategists and creators in divergent thinking, there is inherent value in sifting through these to spark unique combinations of ideas we wouldn’t have otherwise come up with that fast.

In Creative Direction – By far one of the most interesting ways it helps us today is kick-starting creative sprints. Any artist or creator dreads the “blank canvas” or “writer’s block”. Thanks to Midjourney and ChatGPT, we have a sparring partner to get some early and rough thought starters going to help us spark some divergent ideas, and kick-start some creative processes.

In Design Development – At the tail end of projects, ChatGPT has been a great tool to write some decent copy if prompted right. We also use Midjourney well in moodboarding, simulations and some ideation/concepting, as well as newer Music Generators for some thematic background tracks in simple or complementary multimedia pieces.

As AI accelerates some of these early-stage design phases, it allows our experienced strategic team more time to synthesize, frame, debate, problem-solve and set the right courses of action that resonate with people and business.

Work in Africa is depicted to look a lot more blue-collar/laborious and in less “prosperous” settings compared to the others. It takes you aback at first, and as much as it is true that some occupational settings in Africa would be typical to this image, is it really an accurate representation of the true representation of an average or typical setting today?

Understandably, the training breadth and depth of digitized subject matter on the African continent is less than that in Europe or the USA.

However, we’re at a point in time where we’re about to be more reliant on these models to inform and create for us. That information draws from what could be huge cognitive biases in the trainers’ views of the world and siloed datasets available to them – an ironic remnant of the colonial era’s selective erasure and suppression of African knowledge. But let’s get back to the subject at hand, for now.

Nobody knows what AI will be able to do or where it’s going tomorrow, even those at the forefront of creating them don’t fully understand their inner workings or capabilities.

We shouldn’t be overly guarded about what the machines might do by themselves, but rather what people might do with such capabilities at their fingertips, and whether those people’s value systems are aligned with our collective interest of protecting, improving and enhancing the good of humanity and our custodianship of the planet we inhabit.

The more worrying, and perhaps inevitable scenario – given human nature – would be bad actors using AI to gain more power and extract more commercial gain for their short term capitalist ambition at the expense of humanity’s social good. The ripple effect of this extends beyond furlough, and may well be the genesis of an existential threat to meaningful life as we know it.

As designers, we’re great at imagining possibilities and creating the future.

Those two little superpowers of ours coupled with wisdom from anthropologists, technologists, ethicists, scientists, policy makers, thinkers and specialists across broad fields, can be used…

…to shape a future where AI’s power and potential brilliance is used for good, to be applied responsibly to enhance our quality of life and equitable prosperity for the many, and perhaps help us re-balance this intricately natural Earth we live on.