Artificial intelligence in food system redesign – designing for the benefit of the whole
Creators: name: Camarena, Stephanie
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 330310
subject: Interaction and experience design

description: In an epoch when our environments are under threat from climate change, resource depletion and pollution, our food systems require urgent transition to sustainable pathways in order to feed 9 billion people by 2050. To do so in such a way that future generations’ social, economic and environmental realities are not compromised, the designers of the innovations and technologies deployed to transform the various socio-technical systems of food production and consumption have a critical role to play. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly disrupting food systems and redefining the practices of entire fields from agriculture, transportation and processing to retail and consumer behaviours. An automated, but not agnostic, analytical and decision-making technology, AI is key to designing more efficient food systems. However, it should be considered one element of designed transition strategies and evaluated within sustainability and ethical frameworks. Consequently this research addresses the question:

How might we design with AI for the sustainable and ethical transition of our food systems and practices?

The research, conveyed through a series of peer-reviewed and published case studies, focuses on how designers can use AI to transition to sustainable food systems by investigating the use of AI across food systems and its impacts on sustainability outcomes. A systems thinking lens and an action-research approach have been deployed to conduct case studies of different food systems – food rescue, child nutrition in schools, digital agri-food research and farmers’ markets – to explore how AI is applied, the consequences of using it, how designers of transitions work with AI and what sustainable outcomes may plausibly be achieved. Building on design for sustainability theory and practice, the research draws on qualitative primary data from fieldwork, interviews, active AI system design and evaluation, and literature from the field.

The research finds that designers of the transition required can use AI to support and scale up sustainable outcomes in food systems by drawing on the ethical and practice frameworks that underpin the field of design for sustainability. Transdisciplinary and participatory design methods integrated through agile iterative learning cycles are shown to support, and extend over time, the designer’s intent for both sustainable transition and the technical development of AI-powered tools. The research extends knowledge in the fields of food system innovation and design for sustainability by developing a method for and demonstrating the use of a bottom-up engagement framework for sustainable and ethical design with AI for sustainable transitions. Further, it presents a prototypical case and method for nuanced approaches to the relationship between AI and design so as to contribute a granular and practice-focused definition of designing with AI based on sustainable and ethical precepts. 


Finally, the research provides an ontological design reflection on what design with AI means in the context of being “designed by our designing” (Willis, 2006, p. 70) and the moral and ethical consequences of designing with AI and creating futures. It finds that design intent, and particularly the targeting of deep leverage points in systems such as goals, mindsets and paradigms, enables the designer to acquire agency within complex and increasingly automated systems of production, exchange and consumption.