079. AI is at its best when you don’t even notice it

What can tech learn from the film industry?

Film

When I think of visual effects in movies, my mind jumps to superhero movies and big action blockbusters.

But did you know that The Social Network had more computer-generated imagery (CGI) than Godzilla?

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David Fincher, the director of The Social Network, believes that CGI is best when it’s unnoticed. This carries over to his other films too, such as Gone Girl and Zodiac, where CGI is used for mundane tasks such as bouncing gummy bears off Ben Affleck’s head or adding period-appropriate cars to the backdrop.

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For Fincher, visual effects are not meant to impress. Rather, they are always in service of the story.

The UI of AI

Golden Krishna has parallel thoughts for the design world in his 2015 book The Best Interface Is No Interface. For example, when your hands are full with groceries and you need to unlock your car, do you really want to:

1. Put down your groceries on the asphalt

2. Pull out your smartphone

3. Wake up your phone

4. Unlock your phone

5. Exit your last opened app

6. Swipe through a sea of icons

7. Tap the app icon

8. Wait for the app to load

9. Search for the “unlock” action

10. Tap the “unlock” button

11. Physically open the trunk

Or would you rather just wave your foot under the car and have the trunk open?

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We’re at a similar point in time with AI as we were with mobile apps a decade ago. And just as the go-to question back then became:

“Do I really need an app for this?”,

an increasingly common question will become:

“Do I really need to chat with my app for this?”

There’s a lot of cool stuff happening right now with AI, but we’re limiting our potential if the best interface we can come up with is a text input box. Just as CGI should serve the story a movie tells, AI should serve the solution the software enables. The user shouldn’t even be thinking about how their problem is being solved.

Right now it’s cool to slap the “AI” label on whatever your company is working on, but Fincher understands that what technology you use is never important as how you use that technology to communicate your vision.

It takes titanium and aluminum and steel and glass and lasers to do one thing: impart feeling.

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1. The Social Network: ~1000

Godzilla: ~400

2. David Fincher - Invisible Details | kaptainkristian

3. David Fincher: A Life In Pictures