presenter

  Zeng Zhen, Associate professor and Dean of Digital Media Art Department, School of Design, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, member of Visualization and Visual Analysis Professional Committee of China Image and Graphics Society。His research interests include intelligent design, interaction design and information design，Long-term focus on design thinking and intelligent technology cross integration innovation，It is particularly focused on the collaborative design of human and artificial intelligence，Interdisciplinary research and teaching practices based on "artificial intelligence + design" have been carried out in the fields of traditional culture innovation, Chinese character art and generative art。

Whether artificial intelligence will replace designers?On the afternoon of December 4, the sixth lecture of the second season of "Chuanmei Lecture Hall" was held jointly by Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and Chongqing Daily。Zeng Zhen, associate professor and director of the Department of Digital Media Art, School of Design, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, walked into the studio and shared her cutting-edge observation of "AI + Design" with the title of "From Dominance to Dialogue: Design with Artificial Intelligence", attracting 27.More than 80,000 people watched it。

▲ Live broadcast。Wang Muhan for the picture

"I'm sure you've all seen some science fiction movies about artificial intelligence, but what's the impact of artificial intelligence technology on art and design in the real world?"At the beginning of the live broadcast, Zeng Zhen asked straight to the point, immediately aroused the vast number of netizens keen interest, have followed her ideas to open a journey of" artificial intelligence art "exploration。

Zeng Zhencheng，Development history of artificial intelligence art，There are three landmarks，即1967年，计算机图形学专家弗里德·纳柯(Frieder Nake)创立的基本算法《矩阵乘法》;1972年，艺术家哈罗德·科恩创立的复杂算法“徒手画的不规则性”;2014年——2022年，Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) and Diffusion Models (Diffusion) generated in the field of Art and Design。Among them, the excellent performance of generative and antagonistic network in visual images has brought a great leap forward in the field of art and design, while the diffusion model has achieved a leap forward development, providing a very large creation space for the generation of text to images, making it possible for ordinary people to create AI art。

其中，2016年，It took 18 months for big data scientists, software engineers and artists from Microsoft, the Delft University of Technology, the Royal Mauritshuis Museum and the Rembrandt Museum in Amsterdam to work together，Artificial intelligence was used to create this Rembrandt-style painting，And called it "The Next Rembrandt."。The work uses big data, 3D scanning and machine learning to analyze Rembrandt's works, which are the main figure of Dutch Golden Age painting in the 17th century. The painting habits and details of Rembrandt's works are converted into a data training AI system. After deep learning, the "new work" of Rembrandt is "created".。

▲ Live broadcast。Wang Muhan for the picture

In 2018, the artificial intelligence work Edmund Bella made AI art go out of the laboratory and enter the real art market. It was auctioned for more than $430,000。And this year, in the Colorado State Fair Art competition, a work named "Space Opera" won the first prize in the digital art unit competition. The "creation" of this work was actually generated by text input, which greatly lowered the threshold of AI art, so that everyone can become a creator。

So, will AI replace designers?

"I think if we think of the designer as someone who sits on a computer drawing board and does drawings, it will be replaced by artificial intelligence, but if the designer solves problems in a creative way, no matter what technology comes along, he can't be replaced。"Zeng Zhen said。

In her opinion，Evolution of man-machine relationship in design，There are roughly three stages，In the first stage, people operate physical machines，为单向的命令与服从;第二阶段的人与计算机交互，为双向的交流与驱动;第三阶段是人与人工智能协同，For the human machine as a whole to perceive and understand the external situation。

The degree of collaboration between human and artificial intelligence is positively correlated with the degree of creativity. The more open the attitude towards artificial intelligence, the deeper the understanding of creative activities, and the deeper the degree of collaboration with artificial intelligence, the more prominent the novelty of creative results。

"However, in collaboration with AI, designers face three major role shifts: from executor to planner, from solver to reflector, and from coordinator to enabler。In a word, when we let the machine generate, we need to manually modify some local features, strengthen some features we need, and eliminate some bad features, so as to realize the mutual iteration and mutual promotion between designers and artificial intelligence。”她称。

In the future, she said, artificial intelligence will not replace designers, but will provide the opportunity to rethink design, not push it to cold machines, but inspire new design concepts and forms。"As Kevin Kelly, a well-known technology thinker, has said, it is truly an astonishing breakthrough when it comes to the use of AI on a serious scale。However, it will not replace people's jobs. Instead, it will open up opportunities like photography. There may be new jobs and industries。"Said Zeng Zhen。

The whole live broadcast took about one hour. Zeng Zhen used vivid cases and simple explanations to attract 27 people.More than 80,000 people watched。“真个讲堂的是太好了，让我收获满满”“我想报考川美了”……众多网友纷纷留言。

Golden sentence sharing

● As designers, before we say "NO" or "YES" to AI, we need to really understand what artificial intelligence is, and what kind of relationship we have with machines, with design tools during the design process。

●One day in the future, we will no longer be able to distinguish between the active and passive relationship between the designer and the tool, we may be one, we shape our own tools, tools will also affect our design ideas。

● Designing together with artificial intelligence is actually one of many design methods. It is not inconsistent with existing design methods, but it is an inevitable product driven by the development of big data。Such inevitability comes from the limitation of design efficiency in the big data environment and the lack of design creativity in the personalized demand。

● In art activities, designers and artificial intelligence create together, which can integrate the perceptual divergence of human thinking and the rational convergence of machine calculation, forming a new way of creativity。

● Give play to the cognitive advantages of both human and machine, discover the blind spot in the design concept level, break the inherent creative restrictions, and form breakthrough results。

● The collaboration between designers and artificial intelligence is the reflection and differentiation of the existing design methods and purposes, the mutual game and absorption of the design thinking level, breaking through the existing creative space, and then forming subversive creative results。