Building intelligent infrastructure: Assoc Prof Peer Sathikh

Many artificial intelligence (AI) assistants can now speak in more natural-sounding voices. But users may still find them awkward as their speech often lacks context and the appropriate emotional tones of a real person.

Industrial designer Assoc Prof Peer Sathikh from NTU’s School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) wants to change that by developing more personable and relatable AI assistants that have a persona for self-driving cars. This would help people feel at ease when interacting with them.

“For passengers to consider using an autonomous vehicle, they need to trust the technology. If people can interact with the vehicle’s AI naturally, this may improve their trust in it,” says Assoc Prof Sathikh, who is also Director for Industry Engagement and Cross-Collaboration at NTU’s College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

To this end, he is working with other NTU researchers to train OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude AI to speak more naturally, like how typical taxi drivers in Singapore would interact with a passenger. The AI assistants will be capable of adjusting their tone and choice of words in response to a passenger’s mood and circumstances.

Assoc Prof Sathikh’s research on refining people’s experience with AI interactions stems from his interest in improving how people interact with different things through design, especially in transport.

For example, Assoc Prof Sathikh’s design inputs shaped office workflows within the metro control centres in Singapore, Thailand and India. He optimised the seating arrangement of the personnel managing train traffic to improve how they communicate within and between teams, while being alert to train movements and happenings in the stations.

He is keen on infusing culture into design too. He worked with a former colleague to incorporate Islamic and historical elements into a garden in Iraq that filters wastewater before it flows into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The project, called Eden in Iraq, is in the process of being realised.

Besides teaching design at NTU, Assoc Prof Sathikh has held positions on advisory committees to guide the development of design courses at Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Nanyang Polytechnic. For his contributions to design education, he was awarded Singapore’s Public Administration Medal (Bronze) in 2022.