artificial intelligence

The 2019 edition of the Prix Design Science brought together 35 students from ENS Paris-Saclay, CentraleSupélec, Télécom and ENSTA ParisTech schools and from the Strate design school. 

For 5 months, they developed as a team, thanks to AI, an innovative project in the fields of culture, health, education, energy and mobility.

Challenges of Artificial Intelligence

With artificial intelligence, (AI)our needs in terms of knowledge and expertise, as well as memorization, will never be the same. We humans are used to considering ourselves superior to animals for our cognitive abilities. But compared to machines, we already come up short for many tasks involving information processing and it won’t be long before they outperform us for knowledge-related tasks as well. As such, AI will radically alter our expectations in terms of professional practices and requirements, and have a profound impact on our life in society more generally. Teaching methods at all levels of education will need to be wholly recast, if not revolutionized.

As an AI-fuelled future looms large, the challenge for humans is to develop and enhance our unique capacities of sensitivity, imagination, intuition, creativity, even generosity— qualities that are nurtured particularly in arts programs. This is no doubt why science programs seeking to broaden their students’ skills base are increasingly implementing exchanges with art and design schools.

The Prix Design & Science is based on this approach. Every year, it motivates future engineers and designers to collaborate on projects with a high social impact, thereby reconciling science and creativity, technology and imagination.