How Al Helps Humanity Get Over Itself

How Al Helps Humanity Get Over Itself Podcast conversation about my recently published book, Material and Artificial Intelligence in Architecture. We discuss ecology, materiality, architecture, and why AI may help us rethink humanity’s place in the world. https://open.substack.com/pub/robots4... "Jonas Coersmeier is an architect, designer, and educator with a radical take on artificial intelligence. In his book, Material and Artificial Intelligence in Architecture, he argues that AI is neither a tool that only does our will, nor a rival come to steal our place. Instead, he sees AI as a collaborator -- an entity that’s no more or less important than human beings in the work they all share. In reality, Coersmeier argues, architectural creation emerges from networks of interacting agents. Some are human (like engineers, construction workers, miners) but many aren’t (they’re rivers and lakes, steel and stone, wind and rain patterns -- and, now, the AIs that architects increasingly engage in their work). Artificial intelligence, he argues, helps humans to see this, if we use it well -- that is, if we let it surprise us, influence us, and remind us that we aren’t the center of creativity’s whirlpool. Coersmeier believes that decentering humanity will help us treat the planet, and each other, better than we do today. We have been arguing about these ideas for some time. And that’s what we did during this conversation in his studio. We talked about how he and his students subvert AI tools (fewer predictable dull results, more weird surprising ones); why decentering humanity isn’t inhumane; how he reconciles the value he sees in AI with its ecological costs; how visual and geometric AI differs from the kind that makes texts -- and a lot of other topics." – David Berreby #MaterialAI