Large groups of well-dressed people walking on the street during the Paris Universal Exhibition … [+]
It often seems that there is a general consensus that human content is “real” content, with AI-generated content being a sort of derivative “copy” of what humans do.
Despite the rapid transformation of simple GAN network models into dynamic generative AI, we still want to consider humans as the best creators. But this may not be the case for long and this consensus could, in some ways, collapse.
I took a look at this recent X post from Aidan McLaughlin of Mediaite Famewho indicated that he would prefer computers to design buildings.
“The proliferation of fun, perhaps impossible, surprisingly tasteful, and deeply soothing AI architectures is really cool to me,” McLaughlin writes. “AI should commodify beauty. I think there’s a happy chance that things like this will raise the standards of my generation and that my children will grow up with less human waste.
Human shit?
This contrasts with so much commentary about LLM products being based solely on the human content they reflect and the need to place human content at the heart of training systems. Many analysts have suggested that without original human content, AI becomes a scavenger of its own products, a recursive shuffler that ultimately delivers a watered-down mush of bloodless products.
In terms of architecture, the examples shown in McLaughlin’s article look good – a warm collection of living spaces, with warm colors providing respite from a snowy landscape – and it all looks very well laid out, but the results of Is AI “better?”
Architecture, of course, is one of those fields where quality is quite subjective and taste (along with utility) is the main guide, but there is also McLaughlin’s characterization of AI designs as “maybe impossible”, which means they have not been verified. fully compliant with the laws of physics, and that an AI architect is subject to certain hallucinations when designing it. As for “deeply calming,” many people find generative AI products seductive, seductive, tranquil, or otherwise appealing, but just as many are somehow nervous when browsing these types of images, at least in part because They worry about how genAI fits into our world.
But there’s also McLaughlin’s suggestion that AI designs are simply more beautiful than those written by human hands. Granted, many of us talk about AI visuals as being too flawless, or “cool”, as some sort of drawback, but what if that ends up being what we prefer?
What’s in a game?
For a good example of AI leading the way in design, let’s look at the digital spaces in which people play.
GenAI has become so good at creating its own game content that we developed a term for it: procedural content creation – where game environments are created with algorithms, rather than manually by humans.
The result is infinite worlds – in Minecraft, Roblox games or any other type of digital construction. It appears that the Metaverse will largely be designed by artificial intelligence creators. Will they have names?
The foundations are already laid: the rise of no-code on platforms like Roblox dates back a few years.
“Earlier this year, Roblox said it was testing a tool that could speed up the process of creating and editing in-game objects by having AI write the code.” reported Marcus Law in AI Magazine in 2023. “The tool allows anyone playing Roblox to create elements such as buildings, terrain and avatars; change the appearance and behavior of these things; and give them new interactive properties by typing what they want to achieve in natural language, rather than complex code.
These ideas are being implemented in bold and new ways.
“PCG provides technical artists, designers and programmers with the ability to create rapid, iterative tools and content of any complexity, from asset utilities, such as buildings or biome generation, to worlds whole » writes an Unreal Engine spokespersondescribing these support processes.
How long will it take before AI erases the human in the loop?
Tools, Architecture and Architects
In a Google search on the displacement of architect jobs, a series of articles promise that “AI will not replace architects”, although many of these authors admit that lower level tasks will be automated, reducing the demand for labor. Then there are the architects themselves, who report from the trenches, for example, that they are being asked to use something like Midjourney for renderings. Check out the tool itselflf and what it can do to turn words into visuals.
It’s also not difficult to find stories from architects explaining how they use AI. A Reddit thread gives particular insight into how the tools work as support for human developers.
All of this illustrates how technology is rapidly revolutionizing this part of the business world.
The material revolution
As businesses prepare to take advantage of these new capabilities, the hardware industry is evolving at an unstable pace…
I’ve written about the rise of Nvidia and other chipmakers, the realities of TSMC’s supply chain, and how countries like the United States and China are vying for geopolitical positioning in 2025.
Simply put, the capacities themselves will create enormous demand. Whether AI actually designs “better” than humans is a separate question – but the world is going to see a change unprecedented in all of human history – for the first time, there are entities, even digital ones, that , in many ways, are smarter than us. As humans, we were intelligent enough to exclude ourselves almost completely from the food chain. AI entities are even further removed from biological processes that involve mortality. If they can live forever, how intelligent can they become?
I leave you with this question, as we all continue to respond to these kinds of pioneering advances in the new year.
