The main purpose of modernism is to reach perfect objective efficiency. All major contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) projects are modernist.

In all major projects AI is used to replace human decision making by reducing it drastically to the most efficient decision making parameters. Remaining parameters benefit the centralized power which designed it, maintaining the main functions of the decision while removing parameters which provided benefits to the members of the system influenced by the decisions. Removed parameters were based on empathy and other human behaviors.

Example is credit score rating which included a human-to-human interviews, but is now completely automated by AI. Human-to-human interviews still included, to some extent, higher level functions such as empathy, wisdom, compassion, relationship. Once automated credit score rating has been reduced to only a fraction of parameters a human used. Such reduction in the decision making process increased the efficiency of the process in the short term.

Mechanical automations applied, for example, in factories, copied and added to human processes increasing efficiency and benefiting all members of the system. However, AI does not copy the whole decision making process, but actually reduces it drastically by removing higher level human thinking. Such thinking was developed in humans as a safety precaution and a relationship element. Once such thinking is removed, such decision making processes drastically loose value and potentially cause damage.

This is a problem metamodernism and openness should address. Metamodernism as a design method should allow AI designers to fully understand the decision making processes – it their entirety. Such understanding would allow them to prevent or minimize damage by pure modern design.

Openness applied to AI design should be used as a continuous improvement method which minimizes further damage once AI starts engaging.