Magic or Disillusion — Vol #4 of the SUX Newsletter
Hello everyone! 🌿
welcome to this month’ edition of the SUX Newsletter. This month we have a bunch of things, resource recommendations, a new podcast episode and a bunch of upcoming events for you. So what can you expect to read today:
- One personal impulse about the AI-race and that we hail it a little too much without asking about the consequences
- Three handpicked reading- and resource-recommendations 📚
- Our latest episode of the SUX Podcast with Tom Greenwood 🎙
- A Recap of the SUX Community Get-Together in Amsterdam in April 💫
- The upcoming SUX Masterclass in Aarhus at UX Connect 🎓
- The latest news from the SUX Network 📯
- Further upcoming public events where one of us will speak or facilitate a workshop 📆
- We are looking for supporters or partners 💚
- And we round up with a little “Did you know” 💡
🌿 Thought of the Month: GPT-4o is not human-like, let’s not forget this
What happened last week? OpenAI was calling (and Google was calling as well) — and the tech world is hailing… As we can see again right now, especially after OpenAI’s announcement about GPT-4o yesterday.
It makes me sad… I saw videos of so many people treating ChatGPT as if it were already a human. The terms „natural“ and „human-like“ — everywhere. This is not only sad, it’s dangerous. It is pretending to be human. It is addressing our wish for a a human-life tech-companion. The digital friend with super powers, like Data from Star Trek, K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider (or Samantha from the movie Her). It is a clever marketing trick — to make the public using it even more. To use the fascination for „human-like“ behavior. And we see exactly this. Hailing the new human-like behavior everywhere.
But what about all the downsides?
❌ The massive energy consumption of training and running these LLMs?
❌ The massive water consumption of the data centers running the servers?
❌ The (sometimes underaged) people who are training the LLMs and need to filter all the horrible things such LLMs can make up?
❌ LLMs training done with public data causes privacy and copyright violationsSomeone or something is always paying the price.
And it’s worth: Hallucination is the romantic term for what LLMs do regularly: lying or making things up. Well documented for many many cases. Or all the biases that are woven and manifested in the LLMs.
I am not saying ChatGPT is useless. It is a wonderful tool for certain things. And it is a very bad tool for others. Why are we hailing to too much for what it is bad at and for what is it not at all? We shouldn’t hail it for pretending to be human-like.
It is a tool, with some pros, but also many cons. We should use it for what it is good and helpful, but we should not fall for the (clever) marketing of pretending to be human-like. We should discuss wherefore and how it is useful. We should discuss when we should use and when not. We should put it in relation to all the downsides that come with it. We should work on how we can use this technology for good and for useful things instead of hailing it for recognizing my dog or telling me, that my dad-jokes are great dad-jokes.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments. 🙌
📚 Recommended Reads and Tools:
This month we have three recommended reads for you. My friend Mansi just released her Women Centric Design Framework — a fantastic set of tools and principles, and it is all for free. As the second resource I want to recommend a short read about GPT-4o, because I think we need much more critical discussion about all these things. And at last I want to point to you the current issue of the branch magazine., I was invited to contribute a piece, to reflect on the importance of imperfection and I used that
📚 Framework/Toolset: Women Centric Design Framework by Mansi Gupta
“How might we actively and intentionally co-create a future that serves women? → A toolkit for impact practitioners to build products, services & systems that center women.”
Check out this wonderful toolkit and learn how to build gender equal and fair digital products.
📃 Article: GPT-4o Is OpenAI’s plan to win friends and influence people by John Herrman
“The new voice features aren’t widely available yet, but what the company showed off was powerfully strange: a chatbot that laughs at its own jokes, uses filler words, and is unapologetically ingratiating. To borrow Altman’s language, the fact that Monday’s demo “feels like magic” could be read as a warning or an admission: ChatGPT is now better than ever at pretending it’s something that it’s not.”
📃 Magazine: Branch Magazine #8 with the main theme “Finding beauty in the imperfect”
The latest issue of the branch magazine was curated by the Green Web Founation in cooperation with Wholegrain Digital. Hannah Smith and Marketa Benisek brought together a wonderful line-up of authors. And I had the huge honor to contribute a piece to the latest issue of the Branch Magazine. The main topic was “Finding beauty in the imperfect” and I wrote a reflection about how imperfect design could be key for a better future and why we all should drive for more imperfection — for us and for the future. Check out the latest issues of the branch magazine with wonderful contributions — for example by Tom Greenwood with “The Wabi Sabi Web”, Mary Pitt with „Rabbit holes of perfection”, Melissa Hsiung with „One Movement, Four Wings: Connecting climate strategies“ or have a look at my piece “Imperfect Design for a better Future”. But honestly: every single piece in the magazine is wonderful and you should definitely have a look.
Find more than 120 (and growing) various resources, tools, frameworks, talks about sustainable UX and design but also digital sustainability in the SUX Ressource database: https://suxnetwork.notion.site
You developed a tool, or found an interesting resource? We invite you to add it to the SUX database.
🎙 Latest episodes of the SUX Podcast:
I had the honor to welcome Tom Greenwood for the April episode of the SUX Podcast. You probably have heart of Tom as Founder of Wholegrain Digital and Author of “Sustainable Webdesign”.
We spoke about digital Sustainability, and how Tom’s Journey into it already began 2004. And we discussed the challenges of advocating for digital sustainability and where we are at the moment and what we actually can do as designers on various levels.
In the second half of the conversation we were diving deep into AI, its impacts and if AI can help us saving the world or not. We were discussing if AI is creative and what the use of AI does to us as humans.
It was a very deep and inspirational conversation and if you want to learn more what you should ask yourself when using AI, tune in to this episode of the SUX Podcast. Listen to this episode and also check out some of the latest episodes below:
- with Tom Greenwood: AI and digital Sustainability
- with Don Norman: Changing Design toward a better world
- with Elizabeth Rosenzweig: World Usability Day and a Usability Revolution
And a little teaser: the next episode will be released this week. I had the honor and the pleasure to speak with Hannah Smith from the Green Web Foundation.
💫 RECAP: SUX Community Get-Together in Amsterdam in cooperation with The Craft
In April I went to Amsterdam — for a client talk as well as for being guest the wonderful podcast of Sera Tajima. And Sera and me used the opportunity to do a joined community meetup of local SUX community member. We had a very nice evening with lots of inspiring conversations and we already started to make plans about the next time.
Do you want to start a SUX local Chapter in your city? Get in touch and we are happy to start it together with you. 🌿
💫 SUX Live-Masterclass “Become a Sustainable UX Designer” at UX Connect in June in Aarhus, Denmark
On the 10th of June I will give a live Masterclass in Aarhus as part of the UX Connect Conference. This one will be an in-person masterclass in Aarhus. In six modules you will learn about how to integrate Sustainability in every step of the design process with lectures and practical exercises. You will learn practical tools from the upcoming SUX Playbook as well as how to utilize the Web Sustainability Guidelines- all ready to use in your own design work. As a bonus we will speak about the business side and how to convince stakeholders. And we will have a short look at how to use AI sustainably.
And I am not only looking forward to give the Masterclass, but also to the UX Connect Conference. As some you you might know, UX Connect is one of the must be conference every year — since I love the boutique style and the full focus on sustainable UX and Design. This year, I got invited to open up the conference with my good friend Kristina and give a workshop. But I can highly recommend to have a look at the full line-up: wonderful speakers from various directions. I personally already look forward to all the wonderful and inspiring conversations.
Find all information and tickets for the Conference as well as the Masterclass here: https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/uxconnect24
📯 News from the SUX Network:
- 🎙 SUX at Honest UX Talks — I was invited to the episode #100 of the wonderful Podcast of Anfisa and Ioana to speak about Sustainable UX → Honest UX Talks #100 — Sustainable UX Design w/Jonas Thorsten
- 📃 SUX at Branch Magazine — I had the huge honor to contribute an article to the new issue of the branch magazine: “Imperfect Design for a better Future”
- 📕 SUX Playbook — still working on: We are currently structuring tools and frameworks and are determining how to publish and make it available for the community in the best way. So, stay tuned.
- 🎓 SUX Academy / For individual Designers — at the moment we are preparing the course “Become a sustainable UX Designer” — we will release a full curriculum and dates soon. We are a little delayed — due to to many things going on and the fact, that we did not finish the video production yet. If you haven’t yet, you can signup for the waitlist here: Course “Become a sustainable UX Designer”. And for everybody who has signed up the waiting list: we will provide a special Masterclass for you in June — for those who do not want to wait until the full course starts.
- 🎓 SUX Academy / Masterclass for Design- and Product-Teams — for teams we developed this special Masterclass format, which teaches Sustainable UX within a condensed 4–6 hour format, with lecture and practical parts. For more information and a detailed curriculum please get in touch.
📆 Upcoming Events:
Find below a list of upcoming events, where I speak. You will be at one of the events as well? Drop me a message and we can have a coffee/tea and a chat. ☕️
June:
- Masterclass “Become a Sustainable UX Designer” at UX Connect Aarhus, 10th of June (english), Tickets and detailed information
- Opening Panel at UX Connect Aarhus, 11th/12th of June (english)
- SUX Copenhagen Meetup, second half of June
- SUX at UX Festival, 29th/30th June, Erfurt (german)
Later in the year:
- Talk at Prompt UX in Hamburg, “AI in UX: Can we be trusted with the magic lamp”, 1st/2nd of October (english)
- 3 hour Workshop at UX Leadership Days, “AI in UX: Can we be trusted with the magic lamp”, 8th/9th October, Berlin (english)
- Talk at World Usability Congress in Graz, “10 principles for responsible & sustainable AI integration in UX”, 15th-17th of October (english)
- Masterclass “Sustainable UX” in Budapest, September (exact date tbd)
💚 Support and Funding:
We are looking for partnerships to support our work and to be able to provide even more to the community to drive Sustainability and Responsibility in Design, UX, AI and Digital in general. You want to support us or setup a partnership with the SUX Network or want to be the supporting partner for the SUX Podcast? Please get in touch. 🌿
💡 Did you know:
“Microsoft released its 2024 Sustainability Report on Wednesday, and it’s mostly bad news. Last year, Microsoft’s emissions went up 29%, and it used 23% more water, primarily due to “new technologies, including generative AI.”
PC Mag — Source
Thank you for reading all the way down here. 🙌 The next edition of the SUX Newsletter will be published mid of June.
Until then, join our community (Slack , LinkedIn ) and keep changing the world: We all can have an impact. No matter how small it seems, every action is better than doing nothing and will make an impact. 💚
And if you have any feedback, please reach out to me in Slack or on LinkedIn. 🙏
See you,
👋 Thorsten
Founder of the SUX Network & Co-Author of the Web Sustainability Guidelines, Keynote Speaker, Sustainable UX Trainer, Digital Sustainability Trailblazer. Get in touch if you want to work with me or book me for a talk. And follow me on LinkedIn, where I share frequently tipps, resources and thoughts about Digital Sustainability, Responsible AI and Sustainable UX.
🌐 Our website: https://sustainableuxnetwork.com/
📧 Get in touch: info@sustainableuxnetwork.com
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