From the course: Generative Design Foundations

Artificial intelligence in design

From the course: Generative Design Foundations

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Artificial intelligence in design

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- A key aspect of generative design is its ability to automate certain parts of the design process by making some of its own decisions. This places generative design within the broader field of artificial intelligence, or AI. While popular perceptions of AI often involve computers who become smarter than people and take over the world, this sci-fi vision is actually very far from reality. If we look at the technology that actually exists today, it's all about using computer algorithms to understand complex systems and then make predictions about them. Although this is very far from the complexities of our own intelligence, these algorithms can be very effective, and in some cases can make decisions faster and more accurately than we can. Today the most developed field of AI is machine learning, which uses advanced algorithms like artificial neural networks to understand patterns in large amounts of data, and then make predictions based on those patterns. To make machine learning work, you not only need powerful computers to train the neural networks behind them, but also large amounts of well-structured data about the process that you're trying to predict. However, design is not a very standardized process, and we don't have huge sets of well-structured data representing all the decisions that designers make day to day. That's where generative design comes in. Using generative design, you can still benefit from automation in a way that doesn't rely on existing data sets. Instead, we can create automation workflows from scratch, in a way that's unique to every designer and every design problem. This allows us to leverage the best of both artificial and human intelligence, and gives us the tools we need to solve the most complex design challenges of the future.

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