Benjamin Bratton describes his current seminar at SCI-Arc as an exploration of the issues involved inartificial intelligence (AI) at urban scale. They investigate non-anthropocentric models of AI, attempting to model intelligence not in terms of human processes, but a wider array of what thinking may entail, as demonstrated in signaling, niche dynamics, non-anthropocentric human/AI interaction, machine vision, and other activies.

Bratton describes his concurrent work at the Strelka Institute for Media Architecture and Design, exploringhow emerging technologies define what urbanism is, in the specific context of contemporary Russia. In response to Jeffrey Kipnis, Bratton shares some impressions of present-day Moscow.

With input from the audience, Kipnis and Bratton discuss AI, touching on issues including sensation, cellular signaling, neo-Lamarkianism, protein epigenetics, humanist pushback against AI applications, Google’s Deep Dream, the limits of computability, and coevolution. Bratton argues that AI should not be applied to existing processes of architectural production, but human collaboration with AI has the potential to create new forms of production.