ACTIONING SUMMIT 3: AI ACTIONING SUMMIT

One-day summit (9AM-6PM) organized by Laura Kurgan, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Design Practices Program and co-sponsored by the AI Activation Network and the Data Science Institute at Columbia University.

Widespread access to generative AI is changing design practices as we speak. In this summit we will ask how this is happening and how to evaluate it – politically, socially, technically.

Although the question of artificial intelligence has a long history, things have changed so dramatically in recent years that some thinkers have suggested that we have entered an era of post-human design. We will focus on the short history of generative AI, machine learning, and predictive algorithms and the explosion of tools and methods which open access to them has produced. Thanks to diffusion and large language models, which have become regular collaborators in many design processes, designers have the ability to talk to computers in ordinary language and ask them to do complicated things, like code, draw on archives, analyze and optimize data, even build new models and worlds.

We will consider the implications of this explosion across all scales of practice at GSAPP, and the difference it is already making, in a day-long (9AM–5PM) gathering November 1, 2024.

In a series of panels, participants will present their work and discuss how their methods and practices have altered with new AI tools. We will ask about the difference between human and algorithmic intelligence. We will see how AI can be designed locally with local knowledge. We will address the systems architecture and politics behind AI in a more-than- human world. We will speculate on future modes of design practice that generative AI allows, or does not allow. We will query our queries – text to image, text to code, text to video, text to the unknown in the future. We will assess quantitative versus qualitative measures guiding AI policies in urban contexts, as well as what might motivate parameters in urban design.

By the end of the day, we hope to have introduced and interrogated the affordances of these new tools in relation to what we do as designers. The conference will include participatory methods intended to gather the perspectives of the audience and the speakers. It is our hope that the findings can be used as the basis for future discussion about AI and its impact on design environments.

The ACTIONING SUMMITS are an unprecedented effort to affirm how architecture, planning, development, and preservation are anticipating desirable and alternative futures. During a period of eight months, these summits will convene activists, architects, artists, designers, developers, ethnographers, historians, planners, policymakers, politicians, thinkers, and community organizers from around the world to address together eight crucial methodological shifts in the way the disciplines of the built environment operate and collaborate with each other.

The summits will offer a space and opportunity to situate specialized knowledge within specific histories and contexts. During the ACTIONING SUMMITS, participants will discuss a concrete methodological shift elaborated through the tools, practices, protocols, and forms of engagement that have unfolded as part of specific projects or processes they have actively participated in.

Please visit GSAPP’s event calendar to learn more about each ACTIONING SUMMIT. All summits will be live streamed on GSAPP’s YouTube channel.

The ACTIONING SUMMITS are curated by Andrés Jaque, Dean, and Bart-Jan Polman, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programming and Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery.

Co-sponsored by the Masters of Science in Computational Design Practices Program at GSAPP, The AI Activation Network and the Data Science Institute at Columbia University

Columbia University campus access is restricted to Columbia affiliates (with a valid CUID) and to pre-approved guests. To attend an event at GSAPP, please register through the link below at least two business days in advance of the event to request campus access and bring your ID. Learn more about the current Columbia campus access.