Why Artificial Intelligence Makes You a Little Bit Dumber | A Why Design Guide on AI

We bring together conversations about AI in hardware, robotics, medical devices, and product design. Over the 5th Season our guests cover areas where AI genuinely changes hardware work, why large language models struggle with the outliers that good design depends on, what a corporate AI mandate looks like from inside a design team with no training and no plan, and why the expert-in-the-loop principle keeps coming up as the one rule that consistently holds. No hype, no dismissal, just the people actually building physical products telling you what is real. Resources and Links Béa Fertility: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E1 Automata: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E2 Tympany Medical: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E3 Windfall Energy: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E4 Fieldwork Robotics: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E5 Koroyd: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E6 Phil Stauton: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E7 Instrument Industries: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E8 Flush-Locks: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S5E9 Bob Schwartz: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... Longbow Motors: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... iF Design ifdesign.com: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... Bill Liao: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... PARK: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... PENSA: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... Studio Fynn: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... Priestman Goode: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... Studio Wood: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... Kohler Mira: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S... 🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube & Amazon - https://whydesign.club/ 👥 Join the Why Design community - https://teamkodu.com/whydesign/ 📸 Follow @whydesign on Instagram:   / why.design_   📸 Follow @_whydesign on TikTok -   / _whydesign   📸 Follow @kodurecruitment on Instagram -   / kodurecruitment   🔗 Follow Chris Whyte on LinkedIn -   / mrchriswhyte   Timestamps 00:00 - Introduction 00:20 - Bill Liao (SOSV): why AI is not like any other tool 01:04 - Sid Shaikh (Fieldwork Robotics): when every edge case became a learning opportunity 02:02 - Floyd Freeman (FlushLux): learning AI fast enough to run a hardware project before CES 03:56 - Chris Whyte and Shaun Fynn (Studio Fynn): an industrial designer coding firmware with AI 04:48 - Chris Whyte on Alba Bayona's episode (Kohler Mira): AI unlocking data for women's health products 06:42 - Matt Batchelor (Instrument Industries): if you can write it in a prompt, you have solved it 09:29 - Chris Whyte on James Wood's episode (Studio Wood): when prompting costs more time than doing it yourself 10:10 - Bill Liao (SOSV): scary believable, not scary accurate 10:40 - Stephan Clambaneva (PARK): why large language models find the average, not the outliers 12:55 - Bill Liao (SOSV): what a large language model actually is, in nine seconds 13:19 - Lisa Gralnek (iF Design): the AI mandate that amounts to a terrible creative brief 14:16 - Matt Batchelor (Instrument Industries): the cost of slapping AI onto a workflow with no plan 15:29 - Chris Whyte on James Wood's episode (Studio Wood): big companies mandating AI with no training 16:07 - Dan Salisbury and Chris Whyte (Automata): the tell in an AI-written job application 17:27 - Dan Salisbury (Automata): the LinkedIn post that sounds the same as everyone else's 17:56 - Chris Whyte: why an AI hiring demo kept returning digital candidates instead of physical ones 20:14 - Bill Liao (SOSV): the expert-in-the-loop safety warning 20:26 - Chris Whyte on James Wood's episode (Studio Wood): AI as an assistant, not an authority 21:02 - Lisa Gralnek (iF Design): teaching design leaders to make confident decisions about AI 21:49 - Dr Liz McGloughlin (Timpani Medical): the vulnerability of losing hands-on product knowledge 24:47 - James Wood (Studio Wood): why physical design will outlast the AI disruption This episode is sponsored by Vax and TTi Floorcare. Kodu, is running the hiring. Recruiting for Vax for more than ten years, placing over fifty people including a VP of Engineering and a Head of Design. We know how they build. Right now they’re rebuilding their UK engineering and innovation function from the ground up: advanced development, design engineering and industrial design, all at once. We haven’t seen them move at this pace in a decade of working with them.