Ask Slashdot: Could An AI Conceivably Create Futureproof Product Designs?

dryriver writes: Whether you are into consumer electronics, cars, furniture or other manufactured things, one aspect of them doesn't change -- the physical design or "look" of the product tends to age badly in our perception as newer products are released. When you first buy the product it looks "sexy and new"; 5 years down the road, it just looks kind of "old" or "less sophisticated" compared to the newer, sleeker products. To the question: Could you get an artificial intelligence powered by a neural network to train on hundreds of product designs created over the last 20 years -- possibly by laser-scanning products in 3D or providing 3D CAD files -- and learn with great sophistication how product design or "product looks" evolve as time passes? Could that AI then be coaxed into making fairly educated guesses about how a particular product might look if it were designed in the future, in say 2030? In other words, could a suitably trained AI give a laptop, car, or designer chair to be manufactured in 2020 the "design look of the 2030s" ten years early by extrapolating forward from the training dataset of past product designs?

Comments

Still would get a Yugo

[PKI Champion]

AI still would have given us the Yugo. Sometimes, you just don't produce something good. AI will not change that.

Is this the trend, then?

[DulcetTone]

Do we all just assume AI can do what mankind cannot?

No need for an AI

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Men can create future-proof designs also. In fact, that's exactly how most everything was designed before planned obsolescence was invented in the beginning of the previous century, and consumers started to get brainwashed into wanting the new model of the year of things they already had in perfect working order by automobile manufacturers.