The tubular steel chair is surely rational from technical and constructive points of view. It is light, suitable for mass production, and so on. But steel and chromium surfaces are not satisfactory from the human point of view.
Making AI more sensitive to the full scope of human thought is no simple task. The solutions are likely to require insights derived from fields beyond computer science, which means programmers will have to learn to collaborate more often with experts in other domains.
I think the biggest problem with 'industrial' architecture is that it's lost its sense of humanity. Minimalist stuff drains all the humanity out of it. That idea works great for the money thing, but it doesn't work great for the feeling thing.
I could do a whole talk on the question of is AI dangerous.' My response is that AI is not going to exterminate us. It's a tool that's going to empower us.
The biggest ethical challenge AI is facing is jobs. You have to reskill your workforce not just to create a wealthier society but a fairer one. A lot of call centre jobs will go away, and a radiologist's job will be transformed.
Since Stonehenge, architects have always been at the cutting edge of technology. And you can't separate technology from the humanistic and spiritual content of a building.
Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them.
Truly smart technologies will remind us that we are not mere automatons who assist big data in asking and answering questions.
True architecture exists only where man stands in the center.
You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.
The only important thing about design is how it relates to people.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Design, in its broadest sense, is the enabler of the digital era.
Accessible design is good design.
I often tell my students not to be misled by the name 'artificial intelligence' - there is nothing artificial about it. AI is made by humans, intended to behave by humans, and, ultimately, to impact humans' lives and human society.
We should work for simple, good, undecorated things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street.
Design is a response to a specific problem. You are given a problem to solve, and then you let the problem itself tell you what your solution is.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.
Maybe, just maybe, we shall at last come to care for the most important, most challenging, surely the most satisfying of all architectural creations: building cities for people to live in.
Modernist architecture and town planning is inimical to human beings... based on the Darwinian concept that evolution is open ended, that there must always be something new and better.
Only by developing a deeper understanding of AI systems as they act in the world can we ensure that this new infrastructure never turns toxic.
Most people privilege the technology, almost as if actors are in service to the machine.
For many years, I have lived uncomfortably with the belief that most planning and architectural design suffers for lack of real and basic purpose. The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind.
There's a fundamental problem with how the software business does things. We're asking people who are masters of hard-edged technology to design the soft, human side of software as well. As a result, they make products that are really cool - if you happen to be a software engineer.
While technology is important, it's what we do with it that truly matters.
