AGI Intrusions and Humankind's De-Centralization
This current era of geological history, in which human beings are the dominant force shaping the Earth, has been deemed the Anthropocene. As Dipesh Chakrabarty points out in his essay The Climate of History in a Planetary Age, modernism’s empty promises of endless growth and mastery over nature have led us into an age of stark environmental degradation and genuine danger. Humans need to acknowledge the non-human forces our agency is intwined with and furthermore foster a new planetary subjectivity to counteract the negative effects of the Anthropocene. This new point of view would collapse the distinction between individual humans and the planet as a whole. This revelation, among others, becomes evident with the advent and incorporation of Artificial General Intelligence(s) into the built environment and society itself.
Jo Choon-Man, Heavy Industries
The introduction of another intelligence forces us to reconsider our place in the universe as no longer the sole propietors of sentience and agency. The arrival of AGI de-centers us in our understanding. Furthermore, this shift is beneficial in that it allows for the rise of Chakrabarti’s planetary subjectivity in addition to a multitude of other insightful frames of thought.
The contingency of our lived experiences, for example, has been a talking point since Jakob Von Uexkull’s coining of the term Umwelt in the early 20th century. As he points out, our understanding of the wold is relentlessly founded in subjectivity due to the limits of our senses. Thus, the presence of an AGI affords us the opportunity for a more reality based understanding of our surroundings rather than our human-bias fueled delusions. The design challenge then comes down to exposing us to this perspective without disrupting our lives so much to the point of antagonism.
Another design challenge to account for is resisting making presumptions about the AGI’s behavior. In lieu of Emmanuel Levinas’ concepts of Totality and Infinity, classifying the AGI to a set of known human characteristics risks carrying out a violence of reduction against it. We cannot presume AI would act in a human manner, nor should we ask it to do so for our own comfort. It’s worth stating, however, that there are still examples of non-human architecture we can draw inspiration from. The data center, a building governed by automated logistics rather than human inhabitation could shed light upon the architectural forms which may intrude upon the cityscape. We cannot assume the AGI would want to be sequestered to the small towns of Oregon where power is cheapest [and where most data centers currently exist]. And we furthermore cannot assume that the AGI would care about us or our existing infrastructure at all. Thus, it’s important to consider possible “intrusions” into our built environment as a new architectural feature to account for.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1969), p. 303
Bratton, Benjamin H., “Outing Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning with Turing Tests”
in Matteo Pasquinelli, Alleys of YourMind: Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas (Lüneberg: Meson Press, 2015), 69-80.
LeCavalier, Jesse. “Human Exclusion Zones: Logistics and New Machine Landscapes.” Further Trace Effects of the Post-Anthropocene, John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2019, pp. 48–55.
The daily life of a de-centered human 50 years from now may look dramatically different from our lives currently. The world they walk through is no longer entirely theirs. Parts of the city have become a wilderness of machines, wrought with unknown force and motive. The de-centered human is disoriented in the built environment, but tries their best to accept this as a collective trait of humankind and thereby grasps a more accurate understanding of themselves and the world. The architecture they inhabit promotes this revelation, while maintaining a sense of affirming humanization.
AGI Intrusions is a perplexing project to materialize due to its speculative and abstract subject matter. Precedents for the design of the project were difficult to conjure beyond the realm of science fiction. Thus, the project must take considerable assumptions into hand for the sake of ensuring the material produced is grounded in enough reality to be compelling.
For example, the scope of the designed portion of the project is limited to the Gas Company Tower in DTLA and the proposed structure built on it by Artificial General Intelligence(s). This presumes that the AGI would not build (or intrude) upon the other infrastructure in the immediate area such as Pershing Square or the adjacent US Bank Tower that would jeopoardize the very concept of the project. Of course, there is no way of knowing if it would happen this way in reality - but by focusing purely on the Gas Company Tower, the project is able to develop to a level of immersive detail which provides aesthetic gravitas and transformative experiences of perception.
This sense of immersion dictates the primary representational strategy of the project: renders. As Jacques Ranciere points out in his essay The Politics of Aesthetics, change - specifically changes in politics and power dynamics - are possible through exposure to transformative perceptions rather than solely conventional methods like party politics or government legislation. An image contains power in that by showing something new it affords for a dissensus, a challenge to our perceived understanding of how things ought to be. AGI Intrusions aims to promote the notion of de-centering as a beneficial revelation by providing a dissensus of it as such.
This is achieved in the renders by captivating the viewer through the atmosphere and tactility of the new de-centered typology. The human pods, which eventually co-habit the AGI infrastructure atop the Gas Company Tower, are designed to appeal to humankind’s biological sensibilities. Walls are soft, adorned with shag carpeting. The contours are colorful and visually stimulating. The pod form itself is ergonomic and organic, with no decipherable beginning nor end. The pods are not designed to emphasize basic survival necessities, but rather frame the AGI infrastructure as new beneficial cohabitants. This is primarily done by encouraging a sense of playful circulation about and around the pod through its form. The pipes which interject and cohabit the space have turned it into a jungle gym, encouraging the occupants to climb around and enjoy existing amidst it. Occupants can drum on the pipes, turning them into instruments, further stimulating the senses and reinforcing the sentiment of beneficial de-centralization. Music is a human pleasure outside basic survival necessities and indicates a thriving of humankind beyond coexistence.
The circulation between pods also employs “jungle gym logic” in that its irregular and lofted nature is enjoyable to walk. In a similar way that a mountain or the Eiffel Tower is enjoyable to climb, the Gas Company Tower Station is so to circulate. This is foregrounded by the path’s outside exposure and intwined looping form amidst the AGI Infrastructure. The museum visitors likely become disoriented while ambulating between pods, while beguiled by the views provided. This is a measured and intentional effect which affords a new re-contextualizing of themselves amidst the AGI once they arrive at a pod.
The task of speculating a typology for circumstances we are not yet familiar with remains difficult, though AGI Intrusions provides us with one possibility of what the future holds and how we may respond architecturally to promote the advent of AGI as beneficial.
Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Translated by Gabriel Rockhill. London: Bloomsbury, 2004.
