Announcing the All-Member Book Read: Machine Learning
by Mary-Margaret Zindren, EVP/Executive Director
The age of AI has, until recently, been a blur on the horizon; something for future generations of architects, designers, technology leads, lawyers, and building industry collaborators to dig into and grapple with. But no more.
In less than four years, the forecasts of Metaculus – a well-respected community of professional forecasters – dramatically accelerated their predictions related to the most disruptive form of AI: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), defined as “a machine-based system that can perform the same general-purpose reasoning and problem-solving tasks humans can.” In fall of 2020, Metaculus forecast a 50/50 chance for an artificial general intelligence to be devised, tested, and publicly announced in the 2050s. As of today, that forecast has moved dramatically closer, to the year 2032.
This means that it is the current generations of architecture professionals who will need to understand and adopt the AI of today (AI that generates text, performs analysis, designs workflows, generates images, etc.) and the AGI of tomorrow in order to fulfill their responsibilities in protecting public health, safety, and welfare in the built environment – and to shape and sustain the future of the profession.
This is why we are encouraging all members of Minnesota’s architecture community – early career through seasoned professionals; practitioners, students, professors, and those who work in related fields – to read the book Machine Learning: Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Phil Bernstein, FAIA, between now and November’s AIA Minnesota Annual Conference on Architecture, where Bernstein will be one of our featured speakers.
We are encouraging this all-member book read because Machine Learning addresses a wide variety of ways that the work of architecture will be affected by the rise of AI. It is divided into three key sections – Process, Relationships and Results – and features chapters on:
- Professionalism
- Tools and technologies
- Laws, policy, and risk
- Delivery, means and methods
- Creating, consuming, and curating data
- Value propositions and business models
The cost of the book ranges from $25.83 on Kindle / $46.95 on Amazon, $37.56 on Routeledge. (It is on backorder on the independent website Bookshop.com)
If you aren’t familiar with Phil Bernstein, here’s a bit more about him: he is Associate Dean and Professor Adjunct at Yale University. Formerly Vice President at Autodesk and a principal at Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, he also wrote Architecture | Design | Data – Practice Competency in the Era of Computation (2018) and co-edited of Building (In) The Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture (2010 with Peggy Deamer).
If you want to join in the book read, please let us know by completing this form. We will add you to our outreach list for related future communications.
As stated in the book synopsis, “The profession is changing. A new era is rapidly approaching when computers will not merely be instruments for data creation, manipulation and management, but, empowered by artificial intelligence, they will become agents of design themselves. Architects need a strategy for facing the opportunities and threats of these emergent capabilities or risk being left behind.”
