1. Become AI literate
Learn about the different forms of machine learning and logic.
Go to AI meetups, learn to speak to data and ML scientists, engineers, business leads and lawyers.
Understand the role data plays for learning. Google has great public tools, Lobe.AI is a great tool. Andrew Ng’s AI For Everyone Coursera course is good. Fast.AI if you want to be technical.
Subscribe to a news service like the daily curated Inside AI - get alerts on Artificial Intelligence from your favorite publication.
We will be offering a new course entitled “AI for Designers” in June that will cover all aspects of design for AI.
If you are interested in the future of work - check out this paper from Tom Mitchell in Science that includes “8 questions to ask if a task in Machine Learning ready.”
And we need more of these tools. Perhaps you’ll build some with your new knowledge?
2. Link business goals to societal ones
I always say that “Context drives curriculum.”
Learn about and develop socially-aligned learning outcomes.
Learn the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Read the Declaration of Human-rights.
Get a copy of the Wisdom Economy Card Deck, to understand multi-capital approaches to impact measurement and understand basic human needs.
Then map these societal goals on to the mission statement of your company and get creative with business leaders on how to rethink the profit formula.
This is the kind of work I do in my consultancy and that I teach to my graduate students. Its not terribly hard. But it is what business people call “out of the box.”
3. You are modeling
As a teacher of machines you are modeling the way to be and your consciousness matters.
First do no harm:
Since we are human, we are biased. Understand your biases and how you can overcome them.
There are lots of tools on the web. Ask your HR person about the D&I tools you can use.
Hire and work with diverse teams.
Then Embrace Optimism.
Identify the changes you want to see in the world.
Align your work and surround yourself with others that want these changes too.
The machines you help create are going to amplify what you do.
Strive to be a better person.
4. Define dynamic learning objectives
Be a great teacher of machines. Great teachers think in terms of learning objectives and they don’t limit students by what they know. Learning objectives are dynamic.
As you apply your mapping from societal need to learning objectives, focus on verbs and not just nouns. Nouns have time limits, especially in our business.
My mentor Bill Moggridge gave me this great advice as I was building the IxD programs at CCA.
For example, we don’t teach specific design tools, we teach meta-learning and how to approach any tool to get what you need.
Much of our curriculum is defined by verbs that don’t change.
You can find those for your ML objectives too, they will depend on your domain.
5. Stand up for brave conversations.
Working together, People can do wonderful things. Difficult conversations take skill. An amplifying wisdom technology to learn and practice is what I call “brave conversations.” This is about effectively speaking the truth in order to have a stronger voice at the table, a voice that points out common needs and can be heard.
Crucial Conversations is a fantastic book.
Learn Nonviolent communication to understand basic human needs, starting with understanding your own.
If you are in SF, Newt Bailey runs an amazing NVC dojo at The Center.
Practice in your daily life.
One of the most critical missing skills from the standard design toolbox is forecasting (also called foresight, scenario planning, futurism). Designers often have useful tools to look 1-5 years out, e.g., through extremes, trends, unmet needs, but beyond that, we tend to get lost.
Strategic forecasters have many rigorous ways to forecast 10+ years out by looking at social-cultural, political, technical, political signals and trends and developing forecasts.
In addition to forecasting, taking the future back to the present is called backcasting, which is critical to making the forecast actionable.
Institute for the Future (IFTF) has some great courses and tools
The UN has a foresight manual guide for policy makers
Strategic Scenario planning is also a robust method.
Stuart Candy keeps a vibrant blog of tools for futurists
6. Develop forecasting and backcasting capacity
7. Beyond shame and drama and have fun
We don’t move forward by pointing the finger. As soon as we identify a Hero, we become Victims, and we give up our power. Instead, we need to find commonalities and motivations for why things are the way they are. Then we can move into systems thinking and bring people along to change.
Move beyond finger pointing
Try playing games, such as Red Teaming, to better understand consequences
“Beyond right-doing and wrongdoing there is a field, I’ll meet you there. ”