What Happens to Design After AI?

According to a new a16z podcast conversation between Microsoft's John Maeda and Paul Bakaus of Impeccable, AI is fundamentally reshaping what designers do. Rather than replacing design entirely, the technology appears to be raising the floor—automating routine execution—while simultaneously raising the ceiling on what's possible. Maeda and Bakaus discuss how AI-powered creative tools are shifting focus away from pixel-pushing and toward the harder, less automatable skills: taste, creative judgment, and craftsmanship. They explore agentic workflows and the future role of designers in an AI-native world. The insight: as AI handles more of the mechanical work, the value of human judgment and vision becomes more, not less, critical.

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