Updated introduction

DesAIⁿ 2036: Interpretive Exhibits

Introduction

This post will explore AI’s potential impact on the field of Interpretive Exhibit Design (IXD) over the next ten years. Ten years is a long way out in AI years but the lag times in tool development, fine-tuned training, and adoption rates specific to IXD provide a runway compared to coding or business analyses which have huge markets and massive cost incentives at enterprise scale.

My projections diverge from the larger view of AI’s impact on the economy where 50% job losses are predicted in the near future and 100% takeover by 2032^[33].

1.  ~25-30% of interpretive design through production tasks will remain strongly human-driven in 2036.
2. 1. The majority of human-centric tasks will remain in the technical design, production, and installation phases of a project. These could be negatively impacted by design styles favoring parametric and modular systems that are amenable to robotic labor.
   2. Creatives face an uncertain future governed by what clients will think is “good enough.” Nonetheless, I predict 10 to 15% of creative work will remain human-driven.
   3. Writers and administrators face the greatest negative impact however new roles such as curAItors, prompt engineers, culture bias detectors, and deep fact checking may offset losses.
2. IXD Job losses are ~10 - 12% assuming no new roles being created, no increase in potential design projects that would absorb efficiency gains, and no decrease of the fabrication bottlenecks.

I created several models to test my assumptions and to see if there were correlations:

1. Adoption Rate Model estimates current and projected adoption rates across ~150 IXD tasks including media. The model allows tuning of AI capability as it impacts adoption rates.
2. Efficiency Rate Model uses the same tasks and estimates human-only vs. AI-assisted hours.
3. Job Loss Models estimate impacts on design and production, excluding media.
4. Industry Scale Model estimates number of firms, staffing, projects, fees, and economic impact.

There isn’t much solid IXD data to build on, so I have used my experience-based priors to establish baselines to shoot at.

While John Crox has written that the next year or two is “crunch time” with the possibility of AGI looming and full automation of goods and services predicted as early as 2030¹⁷, IXD’s interpersonal development process, the product being an audience-oriented experience, its real-world spatial parameters to factor in, and the ideas needed for creative storytelling, will prove a barrier to AI being more than an associate across many tasks.

The post is (will be) organized as follows:

1. Interpretive Exhibit Design: What is it?
2. Is “taste” the last stand for humans against AI?
3. Estimated AI adoption by interpretive discipline
4. Integrating a new team member
5. Workflows and the “democratization” of design
6. Conclusions

I look forward to your comments.