In a big week for AI, a different question from John Thackara: Can it help us see that everything is connected?
A lot of discussion this week about LaMDA, the Google chat-software that one of its engineers believes - to much scepticism - has attained a form of sentience (see our co-initator Pat Kane’s "E2" Substack for more). We’ll engage fully soon…
But in the meantime, an excellent and alternative angle on our relationship to AI from a great friend of the blog, the green designer John Thackera. From his most recently presentation to a Shanghai audience, embedded above, he asked how AI as “a form of relationship” can help us live well with ecology and environment - amplifying our kinship with the “more-than-human world”.
MAIN POINTS IN THIS TALK:
Ecological restoration is the new development paradigm. Technology can help us discover a sense of shared aliveness in more-than-human lifeworlds. Ecological restoration involves multiple practices: Science, Art, Social Innovation, and Design. AI, as a medium of experience and learning, can that enable these practices to interact. The true potential of AI is to help us reconnect with the living, and the real.
00:30 Ecological restoration: the new development paradigm
02:24 New ways of knowing
03:54 danger of the ‘global dashboard’ metaphor
04:53 Bruno Latour on the ‘Blue Marble’
05:17 Critical Zone Observatories
06:20 AI and the experience of interconnectedness
07:30 soils - a fantastic example of kinship in nature
10:10 urban forests and trees as infrastructure;
12:00 microbial infrastructure
14:05 sake brew house, example
15:44 designing with microbes in landscape restoration
17:36 AI and indigenous knowledges
19:30 multiple scales - from microbiome to bioregion
TRANSCRIPT
http://thackara.com/development-desig...
REFERENCES
Beyond Calculation: AI + Sustainabilty | John Thackara lecture 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R84rq...
Planet Labs https://www.planet.com/Microsoft
AI for Earth https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai...
Lab Restor https://crowtherlab.com/restoration/
Trees AI https://treesasinfrastructure.com
Blue Marble Bruno Latour https://s-usih.org/2019/02/a-new-view...
Julian Liber soil animation https://liberjul.github.io/projects/
Deer Trees Microbes: Microbes and Social Equity, Ishaq Lab https://sueishaqlab.org/microbes-and-...
Dr Jake Robinson https://www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
Sake Brew House Dr Maya Hay https://sueishaqlab.org/tag/microbes-...
eDNA metabarcoding https://www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
Decentralisjng Digital (DEDI) https://www.decentralising.digital/
CONTEXT
Quantum(Quantum(Quantum()))): Artificial Imagination aai International Conference on art(ai) May 28 – May 29, 2022 Hosted by Tongji University Organizer: Art & Artificial Intelligence Lab, College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University Aiiiii Art Center Academic Hosts: Filippo Fabrocini, Kostas Terzidis, Zhang Zhoujie https://inf.news/ne/tech/0b86eff1b845...
BACKGROUND TO THIS TALK
In Shanghai, at the invitation of Prof. Dr. Yongqi Lou (Vice President at Tongji University) https://www.iasdr2021.org/team/yongqilou I’m developing the agenda for a Thematic Cluster around the agenda of Regenerative Design. This agenda identifies opportunities for design where climate finance, artificial intelligence, ecological restoration, green infrastructure, and agro-ecology, intersect. The work builds on our bioregioning investigation https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... and the Urban-Rural expo we did at the end of 2019. https://www.slideshare.net/johnthacka... ]