A new challenge is arising: creating meaningful interactions between humans and machines, in both personal and automotive spaces. Moderator Nina Matzat (Plan.Net) joins MIT Media Lab professor Pattie Maes and Stephan Durach, SVP of connected company development at BMW Group, to explore the evolving relationship between humans and artificial intelligence.
Stephan Durach shares BMW’s philosophy for the company’s Neue Klasse vehicles, emphasizing that cars represent a unique environment with specific interaction needs. “The car is your last private space, it’s your living room, and you don’t want to sit in the living room only with the television,” he explains.
BMW’s approach involves their panoramic vision system – a pillar-to-pillar projection surface that maintains their philosophy of “hands on the wheel, eyes on the road” while displaying “the right information at the right point in time, at the right location.”
Pattie Maes argues that AI development should also be viewed as a design challenge. Her research at MIT reveals concerning trends: While chatbots are designed “to help people and augment people, in our studies at MIT, we see that they actually often have the opposite effect”, she says. “People no longer think critically and think for themselves when they have an AI readily available to delegate their thinking to.”
Such insights show that “it’s critical that we think about the consequences of using AI pervasively in our lives”, Maes argues. “How can we design interfaces to AI so that they encourage us still to think for ourselves, to understand our world, to develop our own skills and expertise, and to be creative?”
Watch the video for further expert perspectives into human-centered design, putting users at the center of design considerations, and AI’s potential negative effects on emotional and social well-being.
