Alien Intelligence: AI and Architecture

​This lecture takes you on a roller coaster looking at the extraordinary – but often somewhat terrifying – potential of what is arguably the most significant invention of humankind. The lecture concludes that we are about to face a radically different form of intelligence – an ‘alien intelligence’ – that will far exceed human intelligence, and completely transform the discipline of architecture.

Neil Leach is an architect and professor from the UK. He currently directs the Doctor of Design program at Florida International University, and has also taught at the Architectural Association, Harvard GSD, Columbia GSAPP, Cornell, IaaC and SCI-Arc. He is the co-founder of DigitalFUTURES, an online educational platform that operates in 10 languages; a former researcher for NASA, where he developed 3D printing technologies for the Moon and Mars; and a member of the Academia Europaea, Europe’s leading academy with over 50 Nobel laureates. He has published over 40 books on architectural theory and digital design, translated into eight different languages, and is the translator (under Joseph Rykwert) of Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books (MIT Press, 1988). He is currently working on artificial intelligence. His most recent books include Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction to AI for Architects (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Machine Hallucinations: Architecture and AI.

Image: Neil Leach

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