The AI Aesthetic / AI 的美学

Every zeitgeist comes with new design idioms unique to its challenges. Many of them disappear as fads change, but others bake themselves into deeper parts of existing software interaction paradigms. 每一个时代精神（zeitgeist）都会伴随着应对其挑战的独特设计语言。其中许多会随着潮流的更迭而消失，但另一些则会融入现有软件交互范式的深层结构中。

For example, there’s the hamburger menu (≡) which saw a proliferation during the rise of mobile due to the constraints around screen size. It has since spread to many other parts of software interaction design and will likely remain prevalent for a long time as a terse way of indicating “more menu-type content here”. 例如，汉堡菜单（≡）在移动端兴起时因屏幕尺寸的限制而广泛普及。此后，它扩展到了软件交互设计的许多其他领域，并很可能作为一种简洁的“此处有更多菜单内容”的指示方式，长期流行下去。

As another example, before AI what were the connotations of the sparkle emoji ✨? Personally, I don’t know, but now it means AI. (AI = sparkles and rainbow colors — it’s funny when you think about it. They should’ve just thrown unicorns in there for the trifecta. AI = sparkles, rainbows, and unicorns ✨🌈🦄. Apt.) 再举个例子，在 AI 出现之前，闪亮表情符号 ✨ 的含义是什么？就我个人而言，我不知道，但现在它代表了 AI。（AI = 闪光加彩虹色——仔细想想挺有趣的。他们本该把独角兽也加进去凑成“三件套”的。AI = 闪光、彩虹和独角兽 ✨🌈🦄。很贴切。）

Some patterns are very specific to the interactions inherent to the nature of AI as a technology. For example: streaming text. This is a pattern made for and refined by chat interfaces, so it may not have tons of utility for reuse across other software interaction paradigms. 有些模式是 AI 作为一种技术其本质所固有的交互方式。例如：流式文本。这是一种为聊天界面而生并经其优化的模式，因此它在其他软件交互范式中的复用价值可能并不高。

Then there are other patterns that’ve been refined by AI interfaces and are starting to spread to other places in software. For example, the “shimmering text” which in AI land implies a kind of “thinking” but is being repurposed to indicate any kind of asynchronous task (thinking, fetching, computing, etc.). 还有一些模式经由 AI 界面优化后，正开始向软件的其他领域扩散。例如“闪烁文本”（shimmering text），在 AI 领域它暗示着一种“思考”状态，但现在正被重新利用来表示任何类型的异步任务（思考、获取、计算等）。

Then there are other influences my subconscious is picking up on. For example, a lot of AI apps use tiny icons. These are most obvious (to me) in desktop Electron apps because they clash with the system-level grain of applications. Take a look at this screenshot, where you have desktop AI apps on the left (Claude, Codex, Cursor) and macOS apps from Apple on the right (Finder, Photos, Mail). You can see how the AI apps all have much smaller, thinner icons than their native counterparts. Are tiny icons our collective future in interfacing with computers? (Personally, I hope not.) 此外，我的潜意识还捕捉到了其他一些影响。例如，许多 AI 应用使用微小的图标。这在桌面端 Electron 应用中表现得最为明显（对我而言），因为它们与系统级的应用风格格格不入。看看这张截图，左侧是桌面端 AI 应用（Claude, Codex, Cursor），右侧是苹果的 macOS 原生应用（访达、照片、邮件）。你可以看到，AI 应用的图标比原生应用要小得多、细得多。微小图标是我们与计算机交互的集体未来吗？（个人而言，我希望不是。）

There are other aesthetics my brain associates with AI, like beige/cream colors, orange accents, and serif typefaces as well as whack-a-mole UI controls (you know, the ones where you click the toggle and the entire UI repaints and you have to move your mouse somewhere else in the UI to click the toggle again? The non-determinism of AI’s grain has seeped into its UI/X). 我的大脑还将其他美学与 AI 联系在一起，比如米色/奶油色、橙色点缀、衬线字体，以及“打地鼠”式的 UI 控件（你知道那种点击开关后整个 UI 都会重绘，你必须把鼠标移到 UI 的其他地方才能再次点击开关的情况吗？AI 的非确定性本质已经渗透到了它的 UI/X 中）。

It all makes me wonder what other aesthetics are being born out of this AI moment and how many will spread, take seed, and become part of common software interaction paradigms for years or decades to come? 这一切让我不禁好奇，在这个 AI 时刻，还有哪些美学正在诞生？又有多少美学会传播开来、扎根，并成为未来几年甚至几十年里通用软件交互范式的一部分呢？