AI systems such as GPT-3, Dall-E, and smart home assistants come with high environmental costs in fossil fuel consumption and resources for computational systems to sustain them. Designers do not always play a role in the early development of these systems and when they do, the ecological impact is not considered in the product design. By including design from the beginning of this development, we can use design research and impact assessments and speculative approaches on looking at the ecological impact with developers to build a common framework for long-term AI sustainability.
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Jana Thompson
Jana Thompson is currently a graduate student in a doctorate program in design at North Carolina State University. Previously, she completed her master’s in UX Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art and is an affiliate researcher at NYU’s Machine Learning for Language.
