Bing Chat (GPT 4) Tutorial: 12 Steps for Beginners to Advanced - Crash Course!

Bing chat is an extraordinary tool the
yes can make mistakes but which can also
do amazing things and give you a real
Edge in whatever you want to do this
crash course will take us from complete
beginners up to Advanced users following
12 steps Each of which is potentially
more useful than the last step one
starts by us going to bing.com and
clicking chat you will see this screen
with a chat input down below if you
don't see this and don't yet have access
to the chatbot feature my tip is to
follow the four instructions on the
bing.com new website which are to join
the waitlist set Microsoft defaults and
install the Bing app you can easily undo
these steps if you like once you're in
and I gain access within about 48 Hours
alternatively to be honest Bing chat
access will be rolled out to everyone
eventually but before we can begin on
what bin can do step two involves
knowing the limits of Bing as of filming
you have a 2000 character limit on
inputs a five message per conversation
limit and a 50 message per 24 hour
period cap and one further interesting
restriction to point out Bing really
doesn't like it if you try to talk to it
about itself it doesn't even like it if
you ask it for its name I've done a
video on this but now let's get to the
good stuff step three you can link to
articles PDFs academic papers and even
physical text and engage in a dialogue
with Bing about what's inside this is
truly revolutionary I link to an article
in today's New York Times about how
Leonardo da Vinci had thoughts about
gravity even before Newton and I simply
asked eli5 explain it like I'm five of
course Bing understood that instruction
what's truly incredible is that it was
able to read and digest an article from
today
explain it in really simple language try
reading it yourself just look at the
details it picks out I could Rave about
this for ages I've just got so much more
to show you what did I mean by engaging
with physical text you can take a photo
of anything for example this math
problem send it to your desktop and then
go to Google image search drag the file
onto the screen and this will happen
click on text to extract the text grab
the text in this case the question and
you can guess what's coming next yes
that's right go to Bing and paste the
question in I know the meme is that GPT
powered models aren't good at math but
as a math tutor I can say that's old
news I've done plenty of videos on this
on my channel check them out but AI is
getting a lot better at math fast it
gets this question right with a nice
explanation but imagine this for
physical text that you want to explore
in your environment Three Steps From the
camera to a conversation with a super
Advanced AI about it incredible but it's
time for the next step generating
interesting ideas this could be for
YouTube Instagram Tick Tock LinkedIn
whatever to demonstrate I asked generate
five original YouTube video ideas for a
new consumer tech review Channel
detailing the novelty of each one ensure
the topics are trending in 2023 and
write a detailed synopsis of each video
with a hook a challenge and a reveal
feel free to steal any of these prompts
by the way and you can read the answers
for yourself but I think they're pretty
interesting any one of these would make
a viable video idea in this case for
YouTube let's read the first one Mac
Mini 2023 the ultimate desktop computer
question mark and the video idea is to
test the performance the design the
features talk about the M2 Chip and how
to optimize the Mac Mini experience it
gives specific examples of the tech that
you could compare and suggestions of how
to make your video different like
testing them out in different scenarios
such as in the gym or at home what about
Twitter it can do that amazingly too I
follow Tim Urban always coming up with
new interesting ideas and I said write
five original Tweets in the style of Tim
Urban and these tweets were incredible
you can read all of them but take the
fourth one there are more stars in the
observable universe than grains of sand
on all the beaches on Earth but there
are also more atoms in a single grain of
sand than stars in the observable
universe so which is bigger the universe
or a grain of sand I can imagine him
asking that but let's take this a step
further by bringing in image generation
I asked Bing generate five incredibly
descriptive visual mid-journey prompts
on topic 4. it understood exactly what I
meant and came up with these examples I
put them into mid-journey and here's
what came out a grain of sand magnified
to reveal a complex microcosm I think
the third result is best here or what
about the universe as a tiny Speck
inside a giant eye that belongs to an
unknown Cosmic entity look at the second
example these would definitely be
eye-catching in a social media post just
quickly here are some of the others a
surreal collage of different galaxies
and stars forming the shape of a grain
of sand on the beach I think the second
example is amazing I picked out just a
couple of these examples to upscale into
a full image with even more detail and
here was one of the results that is an
AI image you can attach to a tweet
written by an AI the world is getting
really weird before we move on to the
next step let's not forget about the 80
20 principle yes we might let Bing AI do
80 of the work but you still have to
fact check and make these posts these
ideas even these image Generations your
own I wouldn't recommend letting Bing do
all the work and I would definitely
check its outputs it does make mistakes
next what about using Bing search to
actually you know search imagine you're
looking to move home and look at the
kind of search you can do with Bing AI
compare property price trends commute to
King's cross times crime rates median
ages and green spaces in the two London
boroughs of haringay versus Barnet and
here are the detailed comparisons and of
course I could continue this
conversation by asking more about green
spaces median age Etc compare this
result to Google now I still do use
Google and will continue to but honestly
these results are just not too useful I
would have to click on multiple links to
even have a hope of coming up with some
of the answers that I've already gone
let me give you two more examples to
balance it out iOS Bing list five
electric car charging points nearest to
Big Ben in London and it gave me five
charging points and these do check out
they are near Big Ben and they are
suitable but they are all from qpark and
Google gave me more varied results so I
count that as a win for Google another
win for Google came when I asked where
can I buy flowers nearest to the second
option he understood what I wanted but
gave me some online options even when I
was more specific and said I need a
physical store florist within 15 minutes
walk it gave me some pretty poor results
Google did much better how about doing a
search for shopping well I asked for the
best battery cases for the iPhone 14 and
it gave me some good options and then I
was more specific I want the biggest
battery capacity and it must be under 30
pounds these were some decent results
but I would have hoped for direct links
for purchasing these cases remember
every click counts in the war between
Google and Bing even when I said compare
these two cases for me which is what
Bing suggested I say it did give me this
nice table but again no direct links and
one extra slight warning it suggested a
case that isn't actually available in
the UK despite me making it fairly clear
that I was from the UK by asking for the
price in pounds and of course my IP
being in the UK so in terms of search
the win still goes to Google but Bing
chat does have its use cases the next
step to being an advanced user is to use
Bing AI to improve your writing a
student of mine wrote this as their
introductory paragraph for their
personal statement a bit like a cover
letter for a university it's not bad no
spelling mistakes but the writing is
kind of bland and look what Bing was
able to suggest these are nuanced
comments a step change from chat gbt if
you want to learn more by the way about
how being AI is smarter than chat gbt
I've done two videos on this topic on my
channel let's look at a couple of the
suggestions it says the introduction is
too long and verbose it could be
shortened by removing unnecessary
details and using more concise language
for example instead of saying I have
always been an observant and
enthusiastic individual always looking
for answers to how and why things work
particular way which is what my student
wrote you could say I have always been
curious and eager to learn how things
work much shorter a great suggestion
Bing goes further and actually rewrites
the introduction I have read this you
can too and it is a significant
Improvement I mean you could improve it
still further but that would take real
writing skill to do but notice it didn't
just spit out the output it gave reasons
for each of its suggestions and that's
vital if you want to learn and improve
next step is Bing's ability to tell
jokes and do creative writing this is
kind of a hit and miss Affair it's quite
hard to get Bing to do what you want but
when it does it works really well notice
what I tried I said write five actually
funny original jokes and it found jokes
from the web now I think some of these
are quite funny for example what do you
call cheese that isn't yours nacho
cheese but these aren't original it
stole these so I said write five jokes
about Twitter and the first one's decent
again these aren't Bing jokes though
they're stolen first joke is a man tells
his doctor doc help me I'm addicted to
Twitter The doctor replies sorry I don't
follow you not bad three of the jokes by
the way aren't even about Twitter not
sure what's going on there but then when
I asked it to do a comedy skit I
initially faced some problems the first
two times I asked it simply refused it
said that topic is too sensitive and
controversial for me to joke about it
was going to be about Tick Tock Donald
Trump Elon Musk I tried again removing
the brand name of tick tock and just
said social media and again it refused
however I tried one more time and made
it fully generic and it picked up on
what I actually wanted and wrote
something great I asked somewhat
generically write a funny and creative
story about a billionaire buying a big
social media company and using it to
promote his posts this time it complied
and you can read it for yourself but I
think it's quite entertaining Elon Musk
was bored he had already conquered space
electric cars tunnels and brain chips he
wanted a new challenge he wanted to own
Twitter it goes on and on and then
finally ends with Twitter became Elon
Musk playground and Nightmare and Empire
the end so it can do creative writing if
you prod it in the right way in The Next
Step more advanced now you can use it as
a kind of free consultant a SWOT
analysis assesses the strengths
weaknesses opportunities and threats of
a given business and Bing was able to do
this for a startup I chose almost a
random hugging face its answers are
detailed and interesting imagine this
applied to your business and of course
you can continue the conversation or
follow the links to find out more next
it could help on a more granular level
you can use it to respond to reviews
this is a real review two stars posted
about the Peninsula Hotel in Paris I'm
going to let you compare the response
that Bing provides with the actual
response that the Peninsula Hotel Paris
wrote on TripAdvisor essentially this
person was complaining about lots of
things mentioning some positives about
complaining about quite a few things as
well my prompt was write a polite
professional and detailed response to
this review
I think this response is incredible it
goes into detail addressing each of the
points and this was a mind-blown moment
it actually uses a real email I check
this as a way of suggesting that the
customer engage further try reading this
and compare it to the official response
I mean the response is professional and
it is polite but it's far less detailed
there are some grammar issues and it
doesn't address all of the points if you
could have a professional response ready
instantaneously for any of your customer
reviews wouldn't that help your business
next you can use Bing AI to get into or
to get better at coding I'm a beginner
at code but it was able to help me get
better fast take this simple request
I've experimented with probably a
hundred pieces of code I just wanted to
give you a simple example I asked write
python code that will add five percent
to a user's number and then divide by
three this is a simple math request that
you can imagine being useful at a
restaurant for example if you're new to
code you can always try this out in an
application like vs code or just run the
code online as a fun experiment I pasted
it into online dash ide.com for example
which has quite a few coding languages
to choose from and then you press run it
will prompt you for a number I entered a
number and it gave me the correct result
only your imagination can limit you in
terms of what you can try out with
coding even for complete beginners now
that you have Bing and chat EBT Next
Step you could use Bing chat as a quick
and easy review aggregator only of
things you don't care too much about for
example like TV shows movies restaurants
maybe anything particularly important
you want to check the reviews yourself
but here's what it came up with when I
asked it for IMDb Rotten Tomatoes
Metacritic Empire and guardian reviews
of The Last of Us in detail now some of
these numbers are a little off because I
think it got confused with the game and
even when I clarified it didn't give the
most comprehensive result imaginable but
for quick and easy review aggregation I
think it might get really handy same for
testing out any worries you might have
about a restaurant or hotel for example
I asked are there any negatives for
staying at the Peninsula Hotel Paris I
feel like I'm picking on that hotel it
is one of the best hotels in the world
apparently I'm definitely not trying to
pick on it but Bing was able to find
some negatives that reviewers have
pointed out this saved the time of me
scrolling through the reviews to find
out what might be a slight issue skip
straight to the positives and the
negatives Next Step simply using it as a
tutor and I say this as a tutor but I
certainly couldn't find you five
peer-reviewed studies on the link
between creatine consumption and
cognitive performance nor could I
summarize the findings instantaneously
here are the results and of course I
could continue this conversation and ask
about the molecules inside creatine the
sources of it the cost of it other
reasons for taking it reasons not to
take it or let's say you don't care
about creatine and you want to know
about large language models the models
behind being Ai and chat gbt you can use
Bing to teach you it can't quite explain
advanced math and English yet but it's
free and can give you a great start on a
topic it's also never grouchy and
doesn't need any coffee so that's
another Plus finally a bonus step you
can use it to improve your own health I
said write me a high protein vegetarian
meal plan for a week and give me five
tips on how to actually stick to it the
tips were decent so I followed up by
saying give me this as a daily meal plan
include protein shakes it gave me a One
Day meal plan and even told me how many
grams of protein that that would provide
think of it more as a source of
inspiration rather than a final
Authority on any matter and if you think
of it like that Bing's utility is almost
endless if you want to find out more
about just how smart the new Bing is
check out my Bing chat playlist I detail
Bing's current IQ it's sometimes
surprising conversations and if you
check out my gpt4 playlist you can find
out about eight upgrades that may be
coming to Bing AI in the near future if
you found these steps at all useful
please do let me know in the comments it
really motivates me to make more such
videos have a wonderful day


Autonomous technology and the paradox of human-centered design

um
the talk will unfold out of a few
recent publications of mine um the kind
of retrospective journey is a
personal reflection on how particular
concerns
and concepts have emerged and to become
central in my work
most of my work in interaction design
over the last two decades is
contextualized within a digital
transformation of society
but also more broadly fundamentally
rethinking the way in which we design in
a post-industrial age
and by post-industrial i mean an age
when digital things come to express some
form of agency and because of that
in a way in this sense to also actively
participate
in the making of what we come up to
experience as our reality
and examples of such things which i have
researched and designed for
are network communities in the mid 90s
online public publics very early
platforms for user generated content
in the in the early 2000s and
the recently conducted products ai
powered product service systems
all of these developments are powered
clearly by advances in digital
technology
and to design researchers
they speak of how in this impossible
post-industrial age
the act of design becomes at first
more diffuse than decentralized
and as we come to realize now
increasingly probabilistic
and so the central theme of this talk
revolves around this idea of autonomous
technology
and the paradox of human-centered design
or in other words around the fact that
as designers we're just
not trained for understanding and
designing
for human interaction with autonomous
technology
we're not equipped conceptually we're
not equipped methodologically
and therefore without such practice
we have also not developed a sensibility
either
for how to operate within this new level
of complexity
where it is not exclusively humans that
act and produce effects
and we design ideas such as user
products functionality etc
are no longer serving us
well to craft relations between people
and technology in a way that are
responsible and sustainable in the long
term
and so in this talk i'm going to unpack
a few um theoretical concepts
through the reading of three recent
articles of mine
where i grappled with these ideas and i
attempted to develop a vocabulary
and eventually an international research
program to address these issues
is a concept that lenica coeur and i
introduced in 2018 in a paper presented
at kai
and what this paper does is attempting
to expand
on what in the social sciences is
referred to as social practice theory
to revise notions of agency and current
narratives of autonomous technology
and on the basis of that we
conceptualize how agency and
conceptualize specifically how agency is
configured
between humans and non-humans
interacting
next to each other in the context of
everyday life
what we do in the paper is to conduct an
analysis
of historic changes of domestic heating
as a social practice and we use
this historical case to consider how
roles between people and heating systems
have shifted over time
in doing that we are able to show that
though
this interplay between what we refer to
as
uniquely human capabilities and uniquely
artificial capabilities
have changed over time because of
technology
giving rise to quite different roles for
humans and non-humans
this interplay has always
been central to performing
domestic healing as a social practice so
when we were burning logs of wood to
make fires
of course our role was bigger and
today instead the sensors and algorithms
of our smart thermostats are the ones
doing muscle
work but it's still an interplay
in which we learn from each other and
perform we carry out
next to each other a particular set of
activities necessary to that particular
social practice
in this co-performance between humans
and non-humans
both humans and non-humans are
considered
as necessary elements and they both have
knowledge and abilities
and they both encode some particular
values
they both perform carry out through
their minds and bodies
an instance of what we come to socially
recognize as a clearly identifiable
practice
and it is in this performing next to
each other in this core performance that
agency is actually expressed
and effects are produced
and sometimes with implications as we
know that are quite
broader um and have an effect
on other social practices
that come to be connected to the
particular
practice under examination and then the
end and the implications for the
elements that constitute them because
as we name life real life it's quite
messy isn't it
so what
core performance does as a concept
to determine within what boundaries or
ecosystem our design has to be
positioned
to be likely to produce a particular
effect
is to help us move past an abstract
and often totalizing idea of agency
and position it somewhere in our life
not with humans only neither just with
products and services
powered by intelligent technology almost
as
they were something other independent
from us
ontologically autonomous but at the
nexus of this dynamic interplay
between humans and then humans um which
next to each other with different yes
historically changing rules yes
but next to each other carry out
domestic heating
energy saving decision making and many
other social practices
and for this this is an
important conceptualization for much of
the design work that we have conducted
over the last years
because it frames agency as a matter of
interaction
of crafting and sustaining relations
and even relationships between people
and technology
and it's important because then as an
interaction designer
i can begin designing with and for
agency
in the context of people's real lives
rather than assuming that agency is
something that can be
fully engineered at the system level and
that's it
i can also through such a concept
as an interaction designer begin
developing a different sensibility
around questions
such as what is an appropriate
interplay who decides it when is it
decided
can it be changed can it be negotiated
or even contested
can these changes and repairs take place
in context
of the time of use of the system
sensitive to that particular context
building on this idea of core
performance
um i then started to ask myself whether
perhaps
we should begin to take this interplay
more seriously and how in this more
diffuse
expanded universe of design where
digital things are never finished
how should we conceive of autonomous
technology
as a design partner perhaps
in in the chapter published last may
um for the volume related
relating to things which is the science
and technology studies volume edited by
ed wilson i i analyzed cases
um based on projects we conducted in our
group
between 2015 and 2018 in the field of
smart mobility democratized
manufacturing
and assistive technology for older
people
all of these projects used quite
different approaches to include
autonomous technology as a
co-ethnographer
and a co-designer next to human
designers
we used live vlogging intelligent
cameras
and bespoke sensors attached to objects
or very
use um
[Music]
we use open libraries for data
visualization and even collaborated with
our colleagues in computer science for
expert machine learning
these examples are offered in the
chapter as
case studies of a possible modern human
design practice
where i at first describe
how we use this type of technology
to gain access as designers
to the ecosystem of relations in which
humans and non-humans are entangled
within particular social practices
and how this approach helped us surface
elements
of these social practices and ultimately
generate insights
that were previously either unattainable
because invisible to the human eye or
unexpected
because initially considered an
important
from a human observer's perspective
and then i described how using
autonomous technology in this way
to open up this non-human trajectories
and perspectives
contributed a point of view that helped
us
problematize the design space
and set all our initial assumptions
reveal our biases demonstrate the
problem to be more uncertain
more nuanced or more complex that we
have originally assumed
and so this type of more than human
design practice
led us to more open-ended ways of
co-performing with autonomous technology
it invited us to integrate this uniquely
human and uniquely artificial
capabilities
and performances in ways that instead of
reinforcing existing world views
and therefore augmenting
often our biases aim to bring instead
into existing things we could not think
of before
in other words helped us imagine
alternative
and possible hopefully better futures
and that is when the the visiting
professorship in sweden
um and the collaboration with the open
restaurant came in
in an article we wrote for design issues
by mit on
technology and more than human design
johan and i expand on this idea of core
performance and more than human design
practice
beyond the one-to-one relation that we
experience
when we interact with the system
we were very interested in applying
these ideas
to the decentralized context of the
current data economy
which is a context where digital things
and services
are assembled at runtime constantly
changed
and sometimes with millions of people
using them
simultaneously but for different
purposes
and so we began to
ask ourselves what would it mean
to to attend to these core performances
in a decentralized context as
acts of design could we
consider them as diffuse
distributed probabilistic acts of design
in such a context and what would that
mean
for how we look at matters of
responsibility
in design
through an analysis in the text
that that we conduct of what is
clearly a moment of crisis of design
none of these designers
wanted to produce these effects none of
that
of them was really
able to fully anticipate
the consequences of particular decisions
the designer of the like button in
facebook
had never thought um that that
particular design decision
would have in the long term
uh produce an effect such as a poster
truth society
so so it's it's it's a moment of crisis
for designers
and it's quite clear that there is some
sort of
contemporary paradox here with humans
into design if it's not
serving us well in in making these
decisions
and anticipating these effects
and the reason why the reason for the
paradox is that human central design
still maintains design ideas for forms
and food processes
where the only real agency present and
accounted for
in the design situation as i'm designing
is the one held by what we refer to as
the user and the rest is just
functionality that can be engineered
but then of course we cannot effectively
care for humanity as designers and
create inclusive and sustainable futures
if we're not equipped to understand to
account for and to anticipate
our interplay with autonomous technology
in everyday life and the broader effects
of this interplay
in in in a universe of design that's
expanded that's decentralized
where things digital things are not just
used
but made assembled
not just by one user and not even by
many users but
are the result of this emergent
interplay of multiple
users multiple systems that are
instantiated in multiple forms and with
multiples even conflicting intents
and so the this is a huge
challenge for designers and of course we
don't get even
close to uh providing a solution for
that but one of the
tenets that we identify in this article
to begin dealing with with this
complex challenge is the idea that
when it comes to responsibility um
then perhaps responsibility here is not
about
locating right response
but it's about persistently sustaining
an ability to respond
to enable and invite response from the
stakeholders
from everyday people those are
using and making at the same time the
systems
and from the system itself and not just
to the point of design
but also later when people are actually
interacting with the system
and so differently than accountability
responsibility if we if we
understand it as a future orientations
and orientation to our future effects
cannot be fully engineered in the
functionality of the system
it is not just about the failures
machine learning model or the most
explainable algorithm because
in a decentralized system that is made
so to speak in real time there is not
just one single intention
or perspective that defines the outcome
and so it is instead also about the
design of the relations and
interactions that will enable people
to situate tune and negotiate
those responses and to repair them or
contest them
if necessary future product service
systems powered by i must be designed
perhaps and evaluated as responsive
and it is not autonomous entities
that have to be responsive to our shared
moral values but also
to the evolving social norms and
enhanced interests and aspirations
that people have in the specific context
in which both people and system
encounter and learn from each other
as you can imagine after writing this
article
we were left with a sense of urgency for
all right we need to really
fundamentally reconceptualize
design and the way we teach it in our
schools
in our design programs uh we just barely
scratched the surface
of what the problem is and so i was left
with a belief
that
we really had to take
a proactive role that imagining and
manifesting these alternative features
couldn't just be an
afterthought you know writing an article
and looking at what went wrong and how
it could be done differently
so it it cannot be just fixing things
when they go wrong
or making technology socially acceptable
without questioning it it has to be a
proactive effort
it has to start with asking why we
should design something in the very
first place
and if we are to design anything to
actually have the competence
to embrace this complexity that we have
been talking about
and so a few weeks ago we launched the
code
and the code is a we call it posted
disciplinary european research
network to rethink design
in the digital society with a commitment
to understand and shape these new
realities with real world
impact
we're starting with with funding um
by horizon 2020 as a as an itn
and we're currently hiring 15 phd
researchers
with different disciplinary background
and the key idea
here for us to really push the envelope
is is to have them working
in prototypes we call them
um having these teams of researchers
from different backgrounds
iteratively deployed in real-world
settings in collaboration with our
non-academic partners
cutting across sectors and domains
to experiment with this idea of
design-led ecosystems for the digital
transformation of society
i mean and this is a huge challenge and
it will be a huge
challenge um
for the researchers and and for us and
supervisors
but it's really through this challenge
that we hope they will be able to
develop
this new design competence and
prototype their future design
professions and roles
over the course of the next four years
what we want to investigate
and push the envelope of
our topics such as human machine
features
um how to create this
how to craft these relations between
humans and algorithms by bringing
anthropologists and social scientists
to work together early on in the design
process with data scientists and
engineers
uh decentralized interactions that are
driven
socio-economic models data governance
and future design practices and what we
want to do is to develop new knowledge
and skills
to advance design competence at each of
these levels
but also more importantly across these
levels
learning about the implications that a
design decision
taken at one level has for all the other
levels
and then rehearsing practice in in real
world contexts
working on real world problems how these
dependencies
must be taken into account and
configured
in the organizational future design
practices in order
for these design decisions to really
produce an effect
um so yeah this is a bit of a promo i
guess
the applications are open until the 14th
of february
um and we did we did receive quite
enthusiastic
responses which which is encouraging
because
because i think that in in
a bit all over around the world there is
this sense of urgency
um in the field of design for really
um addressing seriously these issues
um rather than just fixing problems
um in in adult fashion
and and i think that also
what really resonates um is
besides the fact that we have excellent
supervisors
um on board and we're feeling what is an
apparently really strong need for such a
program is
is the the the fact that
as a program we explicitly position
agency as foundational to digital design
today to develop in this new design
competence
as was once the notion of function
to industrial design to industrial
design and
and the idea that this agency this
designing with
is not necessarily something we can
control
and prototype in a traditional sense
but something that we must learn to seed
and care for
and and what does that mean of course
is um at the core of the program to
develop
and i think that with this i made it
really
on in 30 minutes and i just want to
thank you for listening
and open the floor for questions
thank you very much alisa it was a very
interesting presentation
and uh even for me that i know partially
some of this work already but uh i
really like to see
all the pieces together and how they led
to
now the program i think it's really it's
really nice
so the floor is open for questions
please go ahead hi elisa
it's worth waking up early in california
oh my god indeed um
what i want to suggest especially uh
reading someone like bruno latour and
actor network theory
is that giving agency to non-humans
is something that that humans do
almost by reflex so uh
we do it with uh with the thermostat we
do it with
door closers we we do it with all the
technology around us
so my and i think that my natural
extension it's happening also with
with autonomous uh non-human autonomous
agents
so the question is what what do you
think
we have to actually deliberately learn
uh in order to do that kind of
interaction design or what do we have to
worry about that because we give agency
so naturally to to non-human objects
what do we have to
be aware of or be weary of yeah i mean i
i
think that you know the the so two
things
that the fact that as human beings we
tend to
project agency or even
in some cases personality right
um on two things
is in a way kind of problematic when
you're trying to stress the fact
that agency is produced in the interplay
between humans and non-humans
and it's particularly problematic in
design because
in a creative design process using some
of these techniques
attribute human qualities to non-human
things
is is useful for the creative process
but it's not um
always the right way to go if we
want to really tackle the the problem of
how to design
autonomous technology in in a
responsible way it might be very useful
to come up with an interface
um that people have an easy way to
relate with
um but not when when when you
want to look at um
at a way of of contextualizing that that
particular interface of that particular
interaction in in a broader um
set of of other interactions and that's
where
the focus on social practice theory for
me
um becomes really useful compared to for
example
you know electorian approach or or a
fluid assemblages
um type of conceptualization because it
it really
helps me think in terms of ecosystems
um and it helps me think in terms of
um to put some boundaries right
for but that's exactly latour that's
exactly actor network theory it's really
the interaction right and the the sense
of ecosystem
but uh um i agree
that that i think in interaction with
with non-humans we we produce
agencies um and uh
but i think some of the the the problems
with autonomous
uh uh agents is that a lot of the
agency is actually given by
the engineering and the design already
so and it's hidden from the interaction
right so
it's the interaction of the user versus
the interaction of the designer
something like that
but it doesn't have to right so that we
could find
ways of manifesting that
yeah yeah yeah very nice
other questions i think i have a comment
yeah someone was saying something
uh okay so i just had something
uh to this uh comment by deborah also
for me when you
say okay we should move as designers
from
uh we should account for urgency as
it was functioned before right but
agency in this
like as something shared i think it's
much more complex also
as a as something to grasp to understand
right
so it means that uh we need to have
like a completely different education
and then
[Music]
yeah so i think yeah indeed it's part of
the program my amazing but then
and also my questions are
a lot about the formation of a designer
now so
the actual skills many times come from
practice
so how do we see this understanding of
urgency as a shared property emerging
also from practice
that is the most interesting thing for
me to understand
is it possible that it will come also
from actually engaging with
ai uh in practice
yeah but that was also part of the
reason for for
i mean quite quite central to to
to get in a program together where you
you know
not only work with a limited
and relatively homogeneous group of
collaborators
um in in one particular context
but bringing together um
a more diverse group of researchers
um and in several non-academic partners
that represent these sectors
that are increasingly blurring because
of this
this type of technology and so this idea
of croco teams
is really crucial because it's really
hard
um and that was the the the the feeling
i had also after many years working on
these things it's really really hard
to just um
you need to engage you need to engage
with these problems
in in in in the real world you need to
be confronted
with what does it mean to you
make a particular decision at the level
of the of the interface
and what does it mean for the um for the
type of value that will
will be fostered um
once people begin interacting with that
interface across
a you know it decentralized
um in a decentralized context and so
it would be a bit of a i think a bit of
a balancing act
between the phd researchers being able
to
to bring forward different
conceptualizations and some of them will
focus a little bit more on that
of for example you know what what is
what is value
um in in in this
data economy it can it be multi-sided
um what what is value when it's not
just um money
and um at the same time
having to really deal with real world
problems and and having to bring these
ideas
to to application as
they are developing right so that that
will be difficult
and i'm sure that there will be failures
but hopefully there will be also
successes
um but you're absolutely right you know
the the
the context of practice particularly for
us as designers is fundamental
also because a lot of concepts and a lot
of methodologies hold
to an extent and then it's the
sensibility that you develop as you do
things
that really matters yeah
thanks so we have a question from from
roy
i think yeah um
thank you elisa for this uh really uh
inspiring uh
yeah presentation but also overview of
your
thinking uh in the past and towards the
future is really
really interesting um i want to
respond to you you were talking about
this is being able
through your your work being able to
better problematize design problems
and you were also just uh responding to
maria about like how to
what is needed to really engage with the
i would say more of the politics of uh
that's that's where a lot of this seems
to go where a lot of
my work also seems to be going and where
uh indigo's also here he's uh he just
started as a psd researcher he'll be
looking at
um one of the questions is like what's
the value of
design method methodology in uh like
helping public
institutions like
integrates responsibly like data-driven
technologies in
in decision making um so i was wondering
in this maybe
in this uh this program that you're
building like yeah you seem to
be looking at a much different uh way of
prototyping or
context for for design like what are
your ideas for like really engaging with
the actual institution like the
democratic institutions or
contexts and uh and yeah what's what are
the challenges
that you see yeah no i hear you yeah so
of course we had to make choices
right and so we um
will be probably what the the type the
the very important type of work that you
are doing that's more on the
i would say on the policy poli level of
uh of design right um
that will probably be a bit on the
fringe for us
what we are interested in because it
hasn't been done yet
much is how to
take politics seriously when it comes to
um the actual interaction with the
system right
can we imagine mechanisms of public
deliberation
as you use the system right and and so
of course there are processes and design
methodologies that can be
and need to be in place at the point of
design
right when you think about you know what
what this should be
and who should be accountable and who
are the stakeholders that should be
involved in
um in the process of setting this up
and um and so on and so forth
but um our focus will be primarily on
on we have um
one phd that is uh for example will be
looking into
an alternative to the terms of service
contract
so what would be a different um concept
for the terms of service that that's
most
along the line of a social contract
that gives legitimacy to the company to
operate
and another phd instead will look more
into what i was just saying is
um mechanisms for the liberation
um within a use time
so during the use of the system but of
course i can imagine
that that connects very much also with
what you're doing
so i i just would be a lot of
conversation to have in the years
to come and we're also the
the hope is also to be able to open up
the summer schools to other phd students
because you know not just our students
at least part of that because i think
it's it's important
for people that work in this space to
connect
and have conversation
yeah i know that's that sounds it sounds
wonderful i think that there'll be a lot
of uh a lot of those questions your
your uh your naming are quite similar to
uh
to what we're interested in so it would
be great to uh
yeah to move along together yes
absolutely
thank you
and there is some enthusiasm about the
summer school so elisa
uh you should also share and use ai tech
channels to
to disseminate the summer school when
it's
when it will be time and date is a
question
hi elisa uh thanks so much for the talk
uh thoroughly enjoyed that and a lot of
it resonated very nicely
i also feel i understand decode a bit
better
which is very useful right now
um i've got a kind of a curiosity about
how
how we understand changes and shifts in
agency
and this has come up a few times
[Music]
from kind of designing some lightly
autonomous systems
and finding that as as a designer i was
describing
or trying to see more agency there than
there really was
um and falling into what uh deborah was
alluding to of kind of
anthropomorphizing um
rather than actually being agency
but then i think there are times when
the when the the systems genuinely do
push back
um and there's something a bit
generative and something a bit
surprising and emergent that acts in
ways that
um a designer might not be expecting and
it's very clearly
agential um and it also makes me think a
bit of
open ai when they came up with their big
language models and they started saying
well we're not going to put them out
into the world
because it's too dangerous they would
have too much of their own agency to
change the way that humans communicate
so it it feels like they felt there
would be
too much of a shift in agency there so
i'm kind of curious
how we can chart that and make sense of
it and
see those shifts as they happen or
before they happen
that's a really good and really
difficult question dave
um are you are you talking about
being able to anticipate the shifts
i i guess i guess it starts with
noticing them
um and then moves on to anticipating
um i think i think that
it's actually quite hard to anticipate
them
but but if you if you
i i don't have a good answer for you
really i think that
if you if you slightly
maybe shift conceptually from the idea
of
fully anticipating to what you
said noticing and and then sort of
reflect
reflexively um
providing a
a way to to tune
you know who does what
um that might um when when we
zoom out of it um perhaps provide
insights
for um a more
radical redesign of a system at the
professional level so like
sort of a ref reflexive cycle between
everyday design
practice as i call it in professional
design practice maybe there is a way of
noticing
um these on these these these
shifts and and what the the trend is in
these shifts perhaps
there is something to be learned for how
the system
should be redesigned or more um
more radically reseeded so you think so
to speak
um also at the you know the functional
level
but that's just me thinking aloud with
you
yeah because it it feels a bit like you
know
when when we try and get people to go
into the studio and start prototyping
a lot of that is about realizing the
agency of the stuff they're working with
and getting out of the idea of just
straight imposing your will on the world
um and it feels like there's a similar
kind of process for
making increasingly autonomous systems
um and at the other end uh if i think of
like
uh uber drivers going on strike
it's very clear they're exercising
agency there
um and it's very obvious but there's a
lot of gradations in the middle
yeah and there's also be this you know
these this
narrative that we we all sometimes and
advertisingly
fall into rather than
that the system is it should be
increasingly autonomous
and while in a way you know
technological innovation pushes in that
direction and
and it's also true that machines learn
and much faster than human beings
right generations of technology are
faster
in retaining learning than generations
of human beings
so so in that sense um
you have a bit of a mismatch between
that that that phase and
and the enculturation of technology but
um
yeah i think there are a lot a lot of
the conversation here will depends also
on on how you frame how we frame the
narrative
that was a difficult question it's a
super difficult question
these are the fun questions the only one
that makes you think that's why you give
talks
and for me personally it's a very dear
question like uh
especially what they were saying like
this
uh thing of this urge of imposing our
view into the world no it's what uh
like in my uh perspective we should
learn
try not to do like try to develop
to to be a bit more pragmatic and uh
acknowledge where we are really trying
to
say our to impose our view and uh
try to open to our to others now and um
i i think there are some ways of doing
it but uh yeah it's still
really really challenging is there
any other questions
hi uh thank you so much for your talk it
was
really interesting and i'm the one who
said yes please to the summerslam yes
so that's me i would love to that sounds
amazing
yeah um so i was just wondering if you
could it's we've
i've you've touched on it throughout the
presentation and in the
in the questions but i'm really
interested in um
the difficulty of sort of the limits of
language or the challenge and ambiguity
around the language of
autonomous and agency and i come from a
philosophy background
and i work with roboticists at tu delft
and
we say autonomous we are talking about
different things
um we talk about agent we're talking
about different things so we've had to
really
sort of sit down together and say like
okay what do you mean
and and then try and find a common
language so i'm wondering about the
process of finding a common language
and then i was interested in if if you
might suggest that your research would
come up with a new language
or like should we keep calling this
technology autonomous or should we come
up with new way
to to i so so my background is in
in the humanities and so for me language
is so
important because because it really
shapes the way we think
and you're absolutely right you know we
use the same
words to mean different things even when
we say design we mean different things
so when we say
system you know it's it's it's a
it's a different thing so um there is
something to be said about clarifying
when you work interdisciplinary the
meaning of the basic terms that you're
using
but yes we we're hoping to to
in our own field you know for referring
design interaction design broadly
broadly defined that's include social
service design
to to develop a new vocabulary
and so you know notions of
core performance um
we're looking into notions of and dave
will be in the intentional interaction
right so how do you conceptualize the
interaction that
is actually responding to a multiplicity
of
different and possibly also conflicting
intentions
um kind of interface you need to develop
for that um
um this idea also of
responsibility they might not be exactly
these terms
but uh we'll try to capture
our learnings and and the
way that we are re-conceptualizing
particular
aspects um of the design process
also with a new vocabulary that's that's
the ambition
yeah i think it's important like i hate
using
i hated it forever but i don't have
another you know the only other word i
can use is people
but but it doesn't you know people could
be
the the person that's interacting with
the system it could be the stakeholder
that
you know has as a voice in determining
um what kind of system should be in
place
um in the first place so yeah
we don't have an alternative for that
thanks very very important yes
okay we might have time for one last
question
if there is one or
[Music]
yes it doesn't look like
there are other questions it was a very
nice presentation
and again yeah i think all the
the summer school programs will be very
interesting for the network of ai tech
so
we will thank you very share
sorry i just wanted to you know thank
the boring
and dave and madeline and rule for the
questions
and helping me think along with you
on these really important topics i hope
that
you do as you said with with with the
program in place and uh via ai tech that
there will be ways to
you know bring our energies together on
the very concrete projects
so thank you very much again elisa and
to everyone for participating
see you next week
bye bye bye thank you thank you
you