AI Development Design: Constructing a Design-Target Space for AI Future Studies

This paper proposes AI Development Design as a distinct approach within AI future studies and develops Design-Target Space as its central methodological construct. Rather than forecasting what AI may become, or prescribing rules that actors ought to follow, AI Development Design organizes inquiry around explicitly specified candidate design targets for AI development. Design-Target Space provides a structured space in which such targets can be formulated, distinguished, and examined independently, allowing alternative directions of AI development to be studied without requiring a single forecast of the future or a prior commitment to a preferred outcome. The construction of the framework is grounded in the existing literature: concepts are adopted where established formulations are suitable, revised where modification is required for the present framework, and newly formulated where no suitable prior formulation is available. The paper thereby treats the construction and examination of design targets as an object of methodological inquiry in AI future studies.