No one’s going to invite you to the AI table. Go anyway.

I recently watched a designer on my team accept a data dump labeled "moments of satisfaction and frustration" from our AI-powered analysis of our customers' calls between their staff and guests. Their response? "Great! I'll design a dashboard to display this."

No questions about how AI analyzed human conversations. 

No validation that these "moments" were real. 

And, I said nothing.

We've both failed here. We've become decorators of AI output instead of advocates for human understanding.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: In AI-powered products, the model IS the interface. Your beautiful UI means nothing if the underlying AI is trained on biased data, excludes entire user groups, or makes decisions that offer no value to the people (worse, even harm them) you're designing for.

We're entering a new paradigm after GUI, Web, Social, and Mobile. And, we can't afford to arrive late to the conversation. 

Stop waiting for an invitation to AI strategy meetings. Start questioning:

• What data trained this model?

• Who's missing from the dataset?

• How do algorithmic decisions impact different user groups?

• What feedback loops help the AI learn ethically?

Our empathy and problem-solving skills are exactly what AI development needs. But, the choice is ours: Design interfaces for AI systems built without us, or help design the intelligence itself.

As far as I can see, the future belongs to designers who refuse to stay at the surface level.