Design and Artificial Intelligence: how scenarios are changing according to Massimo De Santo

Artificial intelligence has now forcefully entered the daily lives of each of us, touching practically every sector. Even in the world of design, this revolution has taken hold in an important way, radically transforming sectors such as architecture, fashion and automotive. Architects and designers are successfully experimenting with the integration of artificial intelligence into their projects, managing to create great interest around all this. Pianetadesign.it interviewed the professor Massimo De Santo, full professor of computer science at the University of Salerno, author together with four other friends of the book “Uno Nobody ChatGpt”. The intent of this book is to tell about this very rapidly evolving phenomenon of these AI generative tools.

“One nobody ChatGpt was born from the encounter between an experience of observation on the impact of the reality of digital technologies in relation to the Italian reality, that of the Digitalia.fm Podcast of which I am part – began Professor De Santo -, which has always had this curious eye on what happens when digital technology becomes pervasive, becomes important in our lives. With other friends who later became co-authors of the book, they paid maximum attention to the purely social consequences. From this mutual curiosity was born the idea of ​​writing this book on this phenomenon which truly has an exponential speed of diffusion in all sectors, including furniture and design. The book was written between March and May 2023, released in July of the same year, while the ChatGPT revolution is essentially from December 2022, so the idea was to say: let's see something that is spreading in such a fast way that it will shock most people. Let's try to give some reference coordinates, thanks to the fact that we have experiences to report. And so this text was born from this meeting, and is written in five voices where there is a more technological contribution in the attempt to make people understand what the basic mechanisms are, and then there are the economic, psychological and social points of view which according to we must keep an eye on this very rapid evolution of these AI generative tools”.

In design, but also in fashion and automotive, AI allows you to quickly create modifiable projects that adapt to people's needs, also satisfying tastes and often anticipating future trends. But how will the Italian scientific community be able to compete on a global level on the new challenges launched by AI?

“The Italian scientific community – underlined De Santo – of which I am honored to be part, therefore my opinion is a bit biased, has always been within the global scenario of artificial intelligence, from the point of view of the contribution theoretical and the ability to introduce innovation. It is no coincidence that many of the research on artificial intelligence, the very idea of ​​neural networks essentially originate in Italy, but they are part of this great heritage of the international community. Certainly the discussion on artificial intelligence also comes into account with some industrial choices, where evidently not only Italy but Europe is struggling to compete. The great American and Chinese giants, who today dominate the world scenario of research and applications of artificial intelligence, benefit from a structure and a breadth of means with which we as Italy cannot even think of comparing ourselves, while as Europe we must still make a big effort.”