Recently, I've been hearing a lot about AI assistants, and a psychologist friend of mine criticized them by saying, "They can't come up with solutions to people's problems; they just present information from their database." What do you think? How useful are these tools in practice? Or are they just hype? What are your areas of use?
Do AI assistants really help us out?
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There’s never been a tech revolution where everything was magic—there’s always a bit of hype. I’ve been a UI/UX designer since the mid-2010s, and back then, there was this "flat design" trend; everyone dropped what they were doing and flattened interfaces like they were waving a magic wand. In the end, flat design was just a trend—nothing more. AI assistants are facing a similar situation: will they actually be useful, or just a passing noise?
From my own experience: when designing user interfaces, I can quickly create prototypes using Figma’s AI features. I don’t place a single button—I just say, "user login screen," and AI gives me 3-4 variations. It saves me hours. But as my psychologist friend put it, it’s just scanning a database and regurgitating existing information. So it’s no different than saying "4+4=8"—it can give the right answer, but it doesn’t understand why 4+4 equals 8. Ultimately, AI assistants are just optimized versions of existing best practices—not something entirely new, just like flat design couldn’t deliver on its promise of "more usable interfaces."
Well, thanks for bringing up the topic because I've wondered about it myself from time to time. Do you think that in something as personal as psychology or human interaction, something that just repeats information can replace it?