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In the handful of years since generative AI became both a zeitgeist technology and common dinner table conversation topic, people across the design industriesranging from independent graphic designers to tech executiveshave landed on a curious mantra to justify its use: its just a tool. In this very publication, in 2023, designers Caspar Lam and Yujune Park, wrote that if we see a designers role as communicating and connecting ideas to humans in meaningful ways, AI image-generation becomes another tool and avenue for creative expression. This perspective is not unique to them. Josh Campo, the CEO of Razorfish, extolling the virtues of AI for creatives in Forbes, wrote that, beyond enhancing efficiency, AI is opening doors to possibilities that creative teams didnt have previously, but he cautions readers to remember that AI is just a tool. As part of a CNBC feature on graphic design and AI, Nicola Hamilton, president of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers (Canada), says that one of the most repeated statements about AI by designers is, indeed, that it is just a tool. She precedes this observation by noting that dealing with new technology is nothing new for designers. Some have even gone so far as to suggest AI is like a pencil. In a LinkedIn post, Peter Skillman, the global head of design for Philips, tells us that Al is just a tool, and then offers us to engage with his post by asking: What’s your take on Al in the context of humanity-centered design? My take, if youre not going to read the rest of this article, is that AI is very bad for the world, Peter. Very, very bad. I think its important to note that not everyone who is excited about AI (nor the folks who are concerned about it) is an adherent of the just-a-tool logic. Theres also the its not just a tool! Its even better! crowd. Ill refrain from engaging with this form of AI boosterism because I think that the just-a-tool logic is more difficult to dismiss. The its not just a tool crowd also includes folks circulating other AI promotional discourses such as, AI isnt just a tool, its a creative partner and its not a tool, its a paradigm shift. These and other superlatives, however, like the just-a-tool logic, mask the material and ideological realities of AI, as well as its class politicsthe way its use furthers the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class. The great AI ‘panic’ One of the pillars of the just-a-tool logic is to suggest that those who are skeptical or worried about any new technology are simply panicking technophobes or just dont understand it. Using this approach to accuse the more deliberative and discerning members of society of being somehow opposed to progress is much more effective than the paradigm shift or its more than a tool approach to talking about AI. It might seem reasonable to be apprehensive of a paradigm shift, but it feels much less reasonable to have reservations about something that is just a tool. Indeed, if, as Hamilton said, designers have been dealing with new technologies for as long as the field itself has existed, then any apparent panic by a designer to AI must be an overreaction. New technology, says Hamilton, is an evolution, and, by this logic, to resist an evolution that is itself merely a tool is to be construed as opposing progress without reason. And even if one is panicking, the adherents of the just-a-tool logic might remind us that technological panic is not new. To construe resistance to new technologiesregardless of their real impactsas panic is designed to frame any kind of skepticism as unreasonable. But panic is precisely what we should be doing. We should panic about generative AI, in part because its harms far outweigh any benefit to any designer or any member of the working class. When one looks at the landscape of the actual uses of AIfrom political disinformation campaigns to AI CSAM to non-consensual sexually explicit material, to voice–cloning used to scam people out of their life savingspanicking seems pretty reasonable. Even if the aforementioned panic appears reasonable, we supposedly have nothing to worry about when it comes to concerns about job loss. Hamilton tells us that [AI] will likely make some designers redundant. . . . In the same way that Canva made some designers redundant, or the introduction of computers pushed some folks out of the industry. Its all the more reason . . . to look for ways we can make it work for us. Many in the capitalist classsuch as the World Economic Forum and Price Waterhouse Cooperhave gone as far as telling us that AI will create more jobs than it eliminates. Though some folks who are invested in the maintenance of the status quo have attempted to substantiate this claim, there are three issues that I think complicate it. First, some job loss attributed to automation, as Aaron Benanav so elegantly demonstrates, is the result of deindustrialization and a shift to a much less employment-stable service sector, with underemployment and underreported unemployment becoming significantly more commonplace. Second, innovation under capitalism is characterized by a race to the bottom, or attempts to cut costs at every turn. Today, technologies such as genAI often serve to lower operational costs in a quest to juicequarterly earnings and ensure that the stock buybacks offered to shareholders are as lucrative as possible. And lastly, technology does not operate within a vacuum. It does not operate along some predetermined line of development, and it doesnt just *poof* appear without people determining its design criteria, meaning how it functions and who benefits from those functions. The reality is that any efficiencies gained from the use of AI are not beneficial to anyone that doesnt already have power and privilege in society. For the working class, it doesnt really matter if more jobs get created, or if we are more productive, because most of the benefits will accrue to a shrinking number of capitalist oligarchs. Meanwhile, everyone else still suffers under conditions of decreasing real wages and increasing precarity. The class politics of this situation are crucial for clearly assessing advances in AI. The myth of human centricity The just-a-tool logic resonates with the idea that designers can be liberated to concern themselves with the choreography of systems and not pixels. In its 2025 Future of Jobs Report, The World Economic Forum pegged Graphic Design as the 11th fastest declining job per the predictions of employers (emphasis mine). UX jobs, along with Service Design, Customer Experience, and other more systems-oriented roles, will continue to grow. So while the nature of design jobs might be changed by AI, maybe the number of jobs wont really change. And perhaps theres a mutually-beneficial trade off, in which people who otherwise wouldnt be able to afford high quality bespoke design work can use generative AI, enabling professional designers to focus their creativity on wicked problems. Such a perspective, however, is a privileged one and does not take class, capital, or the wellbeing of the planet into account. A systems-level approach to designone that looks at the journeys of users through product-service ecosystemsshould itself take into account the deleterious effects of AI on individuals, societies, and the environment, instead of accepting the purportedly benevolent purposes to which we are told it is put. Lets take a moment and look at the Adobe Express commercial about the founder of Yendy, a skincare brand that seeks to challenge the exploitative nature of supply chains and support small-scale farmers in Northern Ghana. Sounds like a pretty cool company, as far as one can glean based on the information on its website and social media. Adobes commercial, however, is effectively instrumentalizing folks from the African continent to promote a technological tool that is itself inherently racist and colonialist. Designers who see genAI as just a tool might be relatively unbothered by Adobes genAI, and might see this commercial as benign, if not heart-warming. But if such designers are truly human-centered (or humanity-centered) as they might claim, how could they watch that commercial and not think about the people in the Global South being exploited by the very technological developments that enabled the founder of Yendy to use Adobe Express in the first place? What about the colonialist history of AI itself and the ongoing neocolonialism of tech corporations? What about the global flows of wealth to companies in the Global North from the Global South? Or the environmental implications? Furthermore, suggesting that AI is a tool that enables non-designers to make their ideas into reality while enabling designers to think at a higher level, contributes to the obfuscation of AI (and designs) real issue: Technological innovation under capitalism is at odds with a just and sustainable way of living for everyone. Why a tool isnt just a tool The last thing that I want to say about the just-a-tool logic is that the word tool itself is not inherently bad. But to suggest that something is just a tool is very problematic, indeed. In 1973, Ivan Illich put forward what is to me the most compelling approach to thinking about tools, which he understands in a broad and far-ranging sense, with tools including everything from hammers to highway infrastructures. Tools enable us to do things, but they also constrain our activities. They shape what is possible and the effects we can have on the world around us. On this account, tools are understood with a nuance that the just-a-tool logic itself negates. Tools, argues Illich, should be contextualized, understood through their relationships to the people that use them and who are affected by that use. Most importantly, writes Illich, the design criteria for all tools should be democratically determined. This is the opposite of the situation in which we have found ourselves today. In our modern world, AI tools have been foisted upon us by tech oligarchs hellbent on squeezing every last cent of surplus value out of the working class, and because our understanding of the nature of tools is so deeply impoverished, we feel as though we must accept them on their terms. But history shows that this also doesnt need to be the case. Any further developments in AI must be met by resistance like that of the Luddites, who sought to destroy technologies that undermined their craft, exploited and endangered their comrades, and augmented surplus value for the capitalist class without enabling those who lost their jobs to share in the supposed wealth creation. And the working class must demand that the design criteria for any new technological innovation be democratically determined. Advances in computing could genuinely benefit the international working class if those very people were able to determine the design criteria for those innovations, taking into account the systemic interrelationships of labor and environment. What those technologies, those toolsincluding those used by designersmight look like is nearly impossible to imagine today. But if, as Father John Culkin wrote in 1967, we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us, we better start reshaping our tools, and we must do so by any means necessary.
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E-Commerce
It is 6 p.m. You have logged off from work and are unwinding with a glass of wine. You turn on the TV, but instead of Netflix, you click on a new app called 6pm in Paris, and spend the next 30 minutes learning French. Not on your desk. Not on your phone. But on your couch, watching a short movie. This is the vision behind a new language learning platform that recently launched. 6pm in Paris merges Netflix’s addictive streaming format with the short lessons style of Masterclass. The concept is simple yet effective: Each week, you pick a short film from a curated collection of French licensed movies. Then, you dive into the story and language through an informal video lesson called After Short. You can watch the films with dual subtitles and adjust the playback speed to your preference. Diligent learners can also review a phrasebook of key words and idioms, then take a short quiz to reinforce their knowledge. While apps like Duolingo are pouring resources into AI and gamified learning, 6pm in Paris is choosing cultureand therefore the human experienceas its primary lens. A big part of our vision is to be a window on the language, and the people, and the culture, says CEO and cofounder Lea Perret, who dreamed up the company with cofounder and COO Julien Frei. If people take to the format, you can soon expect 6pm in Tokyo, and 6pm in Rioand basically 6pm anywhere. Julien Frei and Lea Perret [Image: 6pm in Paris] Learning as a lifelong journey Perret imagined 6pm in Paris as a way to help students learn French beyond the classroom. Most people will sell you methods to learn French in three weeks, but it doesn’t work like that; it’s a lifelong endeavor, she says. And if you want to spend a lifetime learning a language, it has to be entertaining, or else you will throw in the towel. Originally from Toulouse, France, Perret moved to New York 17 years ago and has been teaching French in the U.S. since then. In 2013, she cofounded Coucou French Classes, which provides in-person classes in New York and Los Angeles. Since the pandemic, her team also launched online classes to over 50,000 students. Today, the company remains profitable, but 6pm in Paris is here to fill a gap that Coucou couldnt: to help people immerse themselves in French culture. While Perret was at Coucou (she left to run 6pm in Paris) students would often ask her for additional resources to help them improve their French. In response, she would send them a 17-pager recommending, among other things, French books and TV shows to watch. (Yes, Call My Agent featured on the list.) These shows, however, can be too long, which can wear out the learner, and the subtitles can be either inaccurate or incomplete, completely skipping quintessentially French filler words like euh or eh ben. This approach, she says, can take learners away from real language experiences and make it harder for them to connect the spoken word with its written form. [Image: 6pm in Paris] The 6pm philosophy With 6pm in Paris, the team is hoping to address many of these challenges with shorter, more digestible films and customizable subtitles that were crafted in-house to perfectly match the dialogue. For now, the team has licensed more than 60 short films by local filmmakers. These range from sci-fi to rom-coms to documentaries. The shortest lasts a mere two minutes; the longest clocks in at 25. (My personal favorites so far are Cloud Paradise, and Amoureuxse, both of which boast excellent storytelling.) By next yearif the team can raise the $1.2 million they need to growthey want to start producing films in-house, which would allow them to tailor the content to various levels by, for example, streaming down the dialogue so actors don’t talk over each other. They also expect to launch a whopping 170 masterclasses covering grammar for all levels. The series will feature short, digestible episodes delving into French conjugation. We believe in grammar, we just think there is entertaining efficient way to bring it to people so it doesn’t feel like a chore, says Perret. The current selection is more suitable to someone with an intermediate understanding of French, but the team maintains this shouldn’t preclude anyone from subscribing to 6pm in Paris. In fact, they believe that segmenting learners by levelsand tailoring content accordinglyis the wrong approach. The 6pm in Paris philosophy is that one of the most essential ingredients to learning a new language is exposure. Sure, you can start by learning the phrase, ‘je m’appelle Lea et j’habite New York,’ but what’s point of knowing how to say that if you don’t understand what the person replies to you? she says. According to Perret, Americans are obsessed with talking, but even more important are listening and comprehension. By watching a short film in French, even with English or French subtitles, you can slowly soak up the language, notice how words are spelled, and train your ear before ever uttering a single word. As someone who moved to a French-speaking country at age 7 and was encouraged to sit at the back of the class and just listen, I can attest to the efficiency of this method. (I was fluent in less than a year.) [Image: 6pm in Paris] TV as a learning tool Research backs this up, and many studies show that watching TV shows, especially with O.G. subtitles, can be a surprisingly effective way to build your real-world language skills. According to a 2022 study from researchers in Turkey, 44 participants from Kosovo who watched Turkish TV series with subtitles for one to two years saw measurable improvements in all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing.) Another study from Spain shows that university students who watched Friends over the course of seven weeks, and with English subtitles, learned more informal English (like slang and idioms) than those who used Spanish subtitles. Television might be the greatest source of first language input, and learning a foreign language by watching TV is more common than it might seem. According to a recent survey performed by the research platform AtomRadar for Fast Company, 43% of participants have tried to learn a foreign language by watching TV shows or movies. Of these people, 60% found it effective. AtomRadar, which surveyed a representative panel of 300 American adults over 18, also found that younger people are substantially more likely to have tried learning a foreign language through movies and TV, with 55% of 18 to 24 year olds having tried it, compared to only 30% of 55 to 64 year olds. (Once again, I can relate as I distinctly remember looking up the definition of rooting for someone after a love triangle materialized on the teen-cult TV show One Tree Hill.) 6pm in Paris isn’t the first company to recognize the potential for cinema to double as a learning tool. FluentU uses beginner-friendly movie trailers and music videos to teach you vocabulary and grammar in context. Lingopie offers a streaming library of foreign-language TV shows with interactive subtitles. And France Channel, which lets you stream French films and series otherwise unavailable in the U.S., markets its platform as a way to learn the language through immersion. Earlier this year, Duolingo, too, recognized the power of cinema with a Korean campaign in collaboration with Netflix. Korean course sign-ups had jumped 40% after the first season of Squid Game aired in 2021, so when season 2 rolled around in 2025, Duolingo launched Squid Game-themed vocabulary lessons, a TikTok filter that could test your pronunciation skills, a K-pop music video, and a music video featuring Duo the owl suited up as a Pink Guard. Is 6pm in Paris worried about all the competition? Not in the slightest. She notes that her team wasn’t inspired to start a new company to fill a gap in the market, but to meet their students’ needs. The outputs may be similar but the motivations are different. The company is still too young to gauge success, but the first few months show promise: After a beta run with Coucou students, the team opened up the platform to the public and leaned heavily on a marketing campaign to attract subscribers. So far, 1,300 people have joined (and 70% of users who started with a free 7-day trial have converted to a paid subscription). Three quarters of subscribers log in every week to watch the weekly film, followed by the after short. For now, you can only watch on your laptop or by casting to a Smart TV. But once the team secures more backing, they plan to upgrade to a more robust (and pricier) streaming platform that supports native TV apps. Some years down the line, you could soon turn on your TV, click on your 6pm streaming app, and choose which language you want to learn based on the culture you want to discover. I want it to be as easy as ‘you turn on TV, go to 6pm in Tokyo and discover many things about the Japanese culture, says Perret. I do believe there would be lot more understanding, and the world would be a better place if we knew more about each other.
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E-Commerce
Near Atlanta, the diverse suburb of Morrow, Georgia, is an EV charging desert. If you live in an apartment in one neighborhood and own an electric car, you might have to drive 20 minutes to get to a public charger. Thats why a local green bank wanted to support a new charging station in the area. It should have been a simple project, beginning with a small group of six chargers. Then came Trump. Were talking about a project that could have been up and running by now, says Reginald Parker, president of Freedmen Capital Foundation, a green bank in Georgia. It had a months delay. Over the last month, prices have gone up. The market has changed tremendously. And that type of uncertainty for the project adds costs that small businesses, in general, are not ready for. Exactly the type of project that the green bank wanted to support Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan bill that Congress passed in 2022, there was funding for the work. Last year, the first national green bank opened with $5 billion in funding from the IRA. The organization started creating a network of state and local green banks. (Despite the name, these arent typical banks with deposits. Instead, they’re institutions that make green loans for projects like community solar installations or green building retrofits.) Freedman Capital Foundation, named after a late-1800s bank established for formerly enslaved people, was chosen to be part of the network. The new charging station was exactly the type of project that the green bank wanted to support. The communities that are EV charging deserts are the first and hardest hit by climate impacts, Parker says. Helping residents switch to EVs can help cut emissions. It can also reduce air pollution and help people save money on fuel. It also builds energy independence, he says. Oil and gas are derived from some foreign sources. Electricity is all domestic. One part of the charger project had already been funded. A grant from the Department of Transportation helped cover the cost for the local utility to set up the electric infrastructure needed for the chargers. The small organization that will operate the charging station, called TABT, is paying to install the chargers. The last piece of the fundingthe money to cover a loan for the equipmentcame from the EPAs Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program created by the IRA. Trump pauses IRA funds On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order telling agencies to pause all funds under the IRA. At first, grantees under the EPA program could still access the money sitting in their accounts. But in February, Trump-appointed EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said that the EPA would revoke contracts for the fund. The agency made baseless accusations of fraud. It froze $20 billion in grants. Citibank, directed by the government, froze the money in the account of Coalition for Green Capital, the nonprofit running the national green bank. Freedmen Capital Foundation was able to get its funds from the nonprofit just before that account was frozen. But the EPA warned it not to move forward on projects. “Everything had to stop,” says Parker. At the same time, some of the EPA’s grantees, including the Coalition for Green Capital, sued to force Citibank to unfreeze the money. A federal judge blocked the freeze. Appeals are still underway, and the money at Citibank still isn’t accessible. But the first court order meant that Freedmen was able to begin using the money it already had. (Another piece of its funds, for technical assistance, got stuck in the freeze.) In March, the utility finished upgrading the electric infrastructure needed for the chargers. If the project had happened normally, TABT could have ordered the chargers in advance. Installation could have started right away; the process could have taken as little as a week, and the chargers could be in use now. But because of the delays from the EPA’s actions, nothing was ready to go. ‘Instead of making investments, we are wasting time and resources’ Freedmen Capital Foundation has been scrambling to finalize the loan for the project. Trump’s chaotic rollout of tariffs means that the cost of supplies for making EV chargersfrom steel to electronicswill jump. “If we weren’t able to move within the next week or two, the owner would be subjected to higher prices,” Parker says. Despite the delays, the project is unusual in that it’s able to move forward. Most projects that were set to receive funding through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund are now stuck in limbo, waiting for the next stage in a lawsuit. A judge may issue a preliminary injunction this week that allows organizations to access their money, though the government will immediately appeal and could try to claw the money back. From solar energy in Arkansas to hydropower in Alaska, local projects that lower energy costs and support domestic manufacturing arent currently able to move forward, forcing communities to wait for the jobs and economic opportunity theyre counting on,” says Brooke Durham, a spokesperson for Climate United, a nonprofit that received a $6.97 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grant that was frozen. “Instead of making investments and delivering on those promises, we are wasting time and resources fighting an unnecessary battle in court. This program isnt about politics; its about saving money for hard-working Americans who are struggling to pay for groceries and keep the lights on.
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E-Commerce
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