I Should Learn to Use AI

My software engineer partner comes into my office, sits down on the sofa bed (it's also the spare room), and tells me I should learn to use AI. I guess I knew this was coming. It's hard to have listened to podcasts, read articles and spoken to people in the last year or so without the topic of AI eventually coming up. But I've just trained to be a graphic designer and I want to do something creative. It was hard enough to learn to use my computer to design things, I say. Can't I just take a minute?

The fact is though, I can't. I've looked at the jobs that are out there. I want a general graphic design job which involves doing a variety of print, digital, spatial (and so on) roles, so I can work out which specific area to specialise in and grow my career. But every job I look at says I need to know how to take and edit videos, show an understanding of social media algorithms, or incorporate AI into my workflow.

Not being funny, but I didn't even know I had a "workflow" a few months ago. That is not, of course, to say that I haven't had a workflow in each of my previous jobs. It's just that we never called it that! I've only ever been adjacent to the business or tech speak that makes up a lot of modern jobs. My roles have tended to focus more on helping people in various ways, with some admin, marketing, events or working with my hands thrown in the mix. I had to spend quite a bit of time thinking about what my workflow was, before I could even begin to comprehend how to improve it!

I push back at first… It's not really me… I'm not a tech person (you know that!)... I don't have the first clue about how to talk to a computer. The problem is, he has a point.

This is where the world is going, and the industry that I want to get into is, perhaps even more than most, an area where AI will likely make a huge impact. Hopefully not in what makes good design, or how to personalise and humanise design. But certainly in the undeniable fact that technology is behind almost everything we do as designers these days, and ignore that at your peril.

So I resign myself to saying I will look into it. And here begins my journey into the 21st century, not quite kicking and screaming but certainly (it feels at first) less than fully enthusiastic about embracing this "new" technology that people are raving about.

Am I a luddite? Well, I can use a computer for most day to day things, and I love having a phone with easy access to knowledge in my pocket. But I don't much like social media, never have got on board with it really (just ask my school/uni friends), and I would often prefer to write with a pen and paper or read a physical book than the digital alternatives. I may be in my early forties, but I sometimes think I might have a technology age of 70!