DESIGNING WITH AI

How does AI force you to rethink the design process—and the role of the architect, in general?

“We began to understand that despite our critiques of AI’s outcomes as being different than our design expectations, no matter what the AI produced, it was never necessarily “wrong”.  In communicating with AI, we need to learn to write very differently. There is a temptation to criticize the AI for “misunderstanding” a prompt. In reality, the issue is that the author may not know how to accurately communicate with the machine. By understanding the frames of reference from which the AI is drawing data, we realized that certain words or proper nouns produced images that were not useful to us. AI has transformed into an assistive technology that helps us, as humans, reach beyond what we would otherwise be capable of in terms of making connections between text and image data. In the context of architecture, AI can be an effective design tool as we reflect on the role of the modern architect. We have the ability to control AI, but it's most productive when we disregard concepts of authorship and prioritize collaboration between humans and machines. Through understanding how the machine creates its images and critiquing it, we can learn how to strengthen both our own design process, and our relationship with artificial intelligence.”