Making sense of AI

New ideas do not come from the ether; they are based on existing concepts.

Some assignments ask students to “cheat” by having the AI create essays, which they then critique—a sneaky way of getting students to think hard about the work, even if they don’t write it. Some assignments allow unlimited AI use but hold the students accountable for the outcomes and facts produced by the AI, which mirrors how they might work with

By the mid-1990s, calculators were part of the curriculum and were used to complement other ways of learning math. Some tests allowed them, some did not. A practical consensus was achieved. Math education did not fall apart, though debate and research continues today, a half century after the calculator appeared in classrooms.

To some extent, AI wil

The distinction between design as mindset versus output matters more than ever—whether you are a designer or not. As AI reshapes how we create, we face uncertainty about which human capabilities will endure and which will transform.

So how do we do it? Let’s imagine that we want to come up with 20 ideas for marketing slogans for a new mail-order cheese shop. The AI can generate those for us, but we will get even better quality if we remember the principle of telling AI who it is: You are an expert at marketing. When asked to generate slogan ideas you come up with ideas that ar

So how should we use AI to help generate ideas? Fortunately, the papers, and other research on innovation, have some good suggestions. When you do include AI in idea generation, you should expect that most of its ideas will be mediocre. But that’s okay—that’s where you, as a human, come into the equation. You are looking for ideas that spark inspir