A client recently told me they have a post-it on their desk reminding them that “Compute doubles every 100 days”. She explained it’s her constant reminder that the rate of change is relentless and that there’s an urgency to taking action. 

We’re already half way through the year and it feels like time is accelerating. Stuck on fast-forward. No where does that feel more true to me than with genAI.

This urgency is picked up by Andy Budd in his article Design Leadership in the Age of AI: Seize the Narrative Before It’s Too Late. He makes the case that as a design leader “you likely have a narrow six-month window to act — and to influence what the future of design looks like in your organisation.” 

More broadly we’re detecting a shift in the conversation around genAI, with organisations under pressure to move from early experimentation to real world application. This creates a tension for many teams doing the work: they’re delivering genAI-enabled services but finding out that doing so effectively and responsibly requires them to adopt new tools, processes and ways of thinking.  

Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet. Success will depend on finding the right way to both deliver outcomes and build capability, in parallel. And doing so quickly. 

As teams learn to work with the new material that is AI, it will be interesting to see how their existing toolset is adapted and augmented. 

Let’s see what changes in the next 6 months. In the meantime, read on to find out how we’re already developing new AI processes with our partners. 

Helping cities explore AI-enabled services

For the last few months we’ve been supporting cities on the Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance (CDA) AI Track as they move from ideas to prototypes of AI-enabled services. The range of city ideas and contexts has given us a unique perspective on both the potential of AI to improve a vast array of public services and the challenges city teams face to deliver on this promise.

Providing guidance to empower teams to be responsible by default

For most organisations, genAI can increase capacity and add new capability – but how do you address the risks for high risk use cases? We’ve just wrapped up the latest phase of work with a UK public organisation and delivered guidance on the creation of trustworthy, controllable, safe AI-enabled tools. It’s a timely piece of work that will not only be used as a key input into strategic discussions but provides an exemplar that can be used with other teams. We hope to be able to share more details soon!  

Building capability through tailored training

Lastly, we ran a training session on building AI services that people trust and want to use for a really engaged design and product team at a multinational bank. As a follow-up, we’re going to run additional training across their wider team and stakeholders, to help build the broader understanding and expertise required to really prepare the organisation to deliver its AI goals.

We found ourselves nodding along vigorously to the insights from the ADA Lovelace Institute’s report Policy Briefing on Public attitudes to public sector AI. We’re big believers in transparency and explainability in AI enabled services, so it’s no surprise to see quotes like this “If we all know what’s going on, we can all be okay with it. If we don’t really know what’s going on, it just feels like Big Brother doesn’t it”. 

This summary of the report into Uber’s use of artificial intelligence to set pay and assign work by the Worker Info Exchange and Oxford University is good. It suggests those impacted by AI have every reason to be suspicious when there’s no transparency. And concludes that Uber’s dynamic pay has “reduced driver pay, increased Uber’s commission, and made pay more unpredictable and unequal”. 

Finally, this user’s cautionary tale of when Cursor’s YOLO mode tried to delete everything on his computer is a good reminder that putting too much trust in AI enabled services can be dangerous, especially when the onus is on the user to configure their own guardrails. 

We’re hiring into our permanent team and looking for two brilliant people to join us as we grow - a Product Lead and a Lead Product Designer. This next phase of IF’s journey is an important one, and we’re putting real care into shaping it, starting with these two roles. We’re looking for people deeply aligned with our philosophy, purpose, and ways of working.

To share more about what it's like to work with us, and how to apply, we’ve published a new Working at IF page:.

Know someone we should speak to or interested yourself? Send them our way, or apply!

Until next time, 

— Mark Priestley and the IF Team

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