June 30, 2024 • 60 mins
Can AI transform the architecture industry? Join us on this episode of the Design Principles Podcast as we unravel the dynamic interplay between artificial intelligence (AI) and architectural design. We’ll kick off by breaking down AI into digestible bits, distinguishing it from machine learning and discussing the elusive concept of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Discover how tools like ChatGPT are not just boosting efficiency but also pushing the boundaries of creativity in the design process. We’ll also tackle ethical concerns and real-world applications, pondering the profound impact AI could have on the way architects and designers work.
Is AI a creative ally or a potential threat to unique architectural visions? Gerard joins us to express his concerns about AI diluting originality, sparking a lively debate on the moral responsibilities of architects using these advanced tools. We’ll dissect practical applications like compliance tasks and quick concept renders, while wrestling with the unpredictability AI introduces into design work. The focus remains on striking a balance between leveraging AI for efficiency and safeguarding the creative integrity that makes architecture an art form.
Looking ahead, we investigate AI’s broader role in architecture, from automating detailed drawings to managing projects. Despite AI’s impressive capabilities, we highlight its limitations, especially its inability to replace the innovative spark that human designers bring to the table. The discussion zooms in on how AI’s reliance on existing data might stifle originality and the crucial need for architects to balance innovation with practical constraints. As we envision the future of AI-driven architectural firms, we'll reflect on how the roles of professionals may evolve in a landscape increasingly dominated by AI, ensuring a thought-provoking conversation on the future of architecture.
Please note the introduction to this episode and this summary have been AI generated to fit with the theme of this episode.
0:00 - The Intersection of AI and Architecture
15:30 - AI Ethics in Architecture
30:01 - The Role of AI in Architecture
46:46 - Exploring AI Applications in Architecture
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sam Brown (00:00):
Welcome back to the Design Principles Podcast.
We thought we'd kick things offthis week in a meta way by
having the episode introduced byan AI-generated and decidedly
British, sam Brown.
I hope you enjoy.
Welcome back to anotherexciting episode of the Design
Principles Pod, where we delveinto the latest trends, ideas
(00:25):
and innovations shaping theworld of architecture and design
.
Firstly, we are 10 episodes inand want to thank all of our
listeners for the encouragingfeedback and continuing support.
I am the AI impersonation of Samfrom Aret Architects, and today
we return to our originalformat a bit of free-flowing and
(00:48):
sometimes heated discussionbetween the three of us.
Why has an AI version of meintroduced this episode?
Well, today we're navigatingthe fascinating and rapidly
evolving intersection ofartificial intelligence and the
creative realms of architectureand design.
(01:08):
As we dive into our discussion,we'll explore how AI is
transforming the design processfrom being a powerful and maybe
questionable design generator toacting as a sophisticated
assistant or caddy that enhancescreativity and efficiency.
(01:29):
We'll also tackle the ethicalconcerns that come with AI's
growing presence in the industry, ensuring a balanced view of
its potential and pitfalls.
Lots to cover, so, withoutfurther ado, let's dive in.
So, guys, welcome AIAArtificial Intelligence.
Gerard Dombroski (02:05):
Architectural Institution.
Sam Brown (02:07):
AI, artificial intelligence.
Gerard Dombroski (02:10):
Architectural institution, the AI.
Sam Brown (02:12):
AI, the Architectural Institute of Artificial
Intelligence.
How does AI and architectureintegrate?
Funny that we're only intoepisode 11 and we're already on
this topic, given my hot take atthe start of the year in
episode one was that ai wouldstop being relevant.
Yeah, good luck.
Ben Sutherland (02:34):
Yeah, I might have been maybe it was a bit
wishful time yeah, that's trueto be fair though I have, I use
it less now than I did when werecorded that first podcast.
For sure Interesting.
Sam Brown (02:49):
I also think it's very fitting that we're
following on from our lastepisode with Chris, particularly
his discussion around thedigital versus like, the analog
versus the digital, and here weare talking about the
anti-analog really.
Gerard Dombroski (03:03):
Full dig, full Digimon.
Yeah, talking about theanti-analog.
Ben Sutherland (03:06):
Really full dig, full digibond.
Yeah, yeah, I was.
I was moments away from askingchris what he thought of ai, but
I just I didn't want to Ididn't want to go there.
Sam Brown (03:16):
So we only have about an hour for a podcast, right,
not two.
I think we'll get it back andwe'll ask him again yeah, I'm,
plus I'm still learning myself.
Ben Sutherland (03:26):
So there you go.
So what does everyone knowabout AI?
Sam Brown (03:31):
well, I thought I'd just kick us off with giving a
wee overview of what tools thereare available, particularly
around architecture and AI.
Gerard Dombroski (03:41):
Is it worth giving back another little step?
And just trying to summarisewhat the fuck AI is.
Sam Brown (03:48):
Can you?
I mean, it's artificialintelligence, right?
Ben Sutherland (03:54):
Yeah, so I can do like a really Go on, go on,
slytherin, inaccurate, veryinaccurate.
We're all making this upBasically like what my take on
it and what I know about it, um,but basically, ai essentially
has been around for quite awhile now, and what has really
(04:15):
only changed is is ourunderstanding or our interaction
with ai, which is, um, whathappened when ChatGPT 3 was
released by OpenAI, and that wasthe biggest movement.
There was the change to thelarge language model, and that's
(04:36):
pretty significant because itallows us to interact with AI in
a different manner as opposedto previously our understanding
of AI.
What has been around, likecompanies like Google and that
have been using machine learningfor a long time now.
Gerard Dombroski (04:55):
Yeah, so isn't AI fundamentally machine
learning?
Sam Brown (05:00):
that is a technically isn't that is a segment of AI.
Gerard Dombroski (05:03):
Like it's not its own organism floating around
.
Ben Sutherland (05:07):
So that's a huge separate thing is like AGI,
which is artificial generalintelligence, and that's when it
is, you know, the Terminator.
It's got its own mind, it doesits own thing.
At the moment, all we're doingis, like sophisticated machine
learning or algorithms, that youinput data and you tell it kind
(05:31):
of what to look for and youtrain it through a series of
training processes and itoutputs what you want it to
output within a certainparameter.
So, for example, large languagemodels.
It basically takes a lot ofdata books, internet, anything
(05:58):
like that.
It understands how humansinteract with that data, what
the language is, and then itbasically allows us to, it
performs tasks and allows us tocommunicate with it through our
own language, I guess.
Gerard Dombroski (06:18):
Essentially, you feed it information, then it
sort of regurgitates backwhat's within that pool of
information.
You feed it information, thenit sort of regurgitates back
what's within that pool ofinformation you feed it.
It can only regurgitate back.
Sam Brown (06:29):
what's in that pool?
You can't think for itselforganically.
Gerard Dombroski (06:31):
yet it's essentially sped up Googling and
desalinating of what's in thatlittle swimming pool of ideas.
I just think AI is like aconfusing term because everyone
thinks Terminator and robots.
Sam Brown (06:47):
Which is part of it, but it's probably not how we
interact with it.
Gerard Dombroski (06:52):
Well, it's just like a machine learning
robot that spits out what youfeed it.
So I think Totally.
Which I think is fundamentalfor like how we view it in
architecture.
Ben Sutherland (07:05):
Yeah, so it learns, you train it, it learns
and it creates a model thatallows it to predict the next
word or the sentence, and youcan kind of adjust it within
certain parameters.
But basically it is confined tothe data that you feed it and
the parameters that you give itit's a tamagotchi has.
(07:28):
Yeah, it's a sophisticatedtamagotchi.
Sam Brown (07:31):
I think it's a bit more than that, but yeah, sort
of just don't just don't feed it, because it will die.
I reckon that's why it's sopowerful now because it is
trained by so much data.
Ben Sutherland (07:41):
So that's why it's so powerful now because it
is trained by so much data.
So that's why the largelanguage models like GPT are so
amazing, because it's like thedata that it's been fed is just
so comprehensive.
So it's insane really.
Sam Brown (08:03):
I think the best sort of description for the use of
ai in general at the moment thatI have heard is like people
have likened it to golf, forinstance.
So ai is, in effect, your caddy.
It knows the wind direction, itknows the lay of the green, it
knows the length of the grass,it knows the angle that you need
(08:25):
to make the shot, it knows whatclub you need to use, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
But you still have to make thatshot.
You're the golfer, and soessentially, all it has is just
this incredibly powerful tool ofinformation that you can then
use in your own way, rather thanit actually completely
replacing.
Gerard Dombroski (08:45):
You depends entirely on how you use it.
You got that, uh, the sportsanalogy, that artificial
intelligence racing series thatstarted.
I think they had like one oftheir first races a few weeks
ago in like dubai or somethingand they got like their formula
one cars, essentially, butthey're run by ai.
But they're run by ai.
(09:05):
Wow, yeah, a whole bunch ofthem just like stopped and just
did weird shit.
But it's machine learning, sothe more information you feed
into it, then ideally they getbetter and better.
It's an olympics year.
Sam Brown (09:19):
Are we expecting the ai olympics at some point?
Potentially what?
Ben Sutherland (09:25):
would be in there well, after the last, some
, some just robots doingbackflips after the last episode
.
Sam Brown (09:31):
Now that architecture is an extreme sport.
Ben Sutherland (09:33):
The olympics is going to be pretty interesting I
think reset design ai at theolympics, but it'll be more like
pattern recognition of, I don'tknow, for example, speed
walking.
It's going to be AI nowdetermining if your feet have
left the ground or not.
(09:54):
I don't know.
Sam Brown (09:55):
Something like that.
I mean, that's clearly.
That's already happening,though, right?
Gerard Dombroski (09:59):
Minority report.
They'll arrest you for notwalking properly before you get
to the race.
Sam Brown (10:04):
But I think that's an interesting point there being,
because what you've just talked,what you've just said, is like
ai being used to sort ofrecognize something and in this
case, your foot leaving theground.
But I think that's where, likeyou said in your intro about ai,
the popularity of it or thelike, more common understanding
of it, skyrocketed with theintroduction of ChatGPT-3.
(10:26):
But what we kind of forget isthat it's been around,
particularly with architectureand stuff, for a long time.
If you think about anythingthat involves parametrics or
coding, like Grasshopper, dynamo, those sort of programs,
they're essentially anartificial intelligence where
you've given them a prompt andit is producing parametric
(10:47):
outcomes.
I don't think that's correct.
Ben Sutherland (10:49):
I don't think that's quite correct, because
what you're talking about isvisual code, so it's not coding.
In particular, it's the machinelearning aspect of the code
that actually makes it AI.
So it needs some sort of is thedifferent training data.
It needs data to be fed in,some sort of training to take
(11:12):
place and then some sort ofactionable outcome.
Sam Brown (11:14):
So it needs to be able to learn to a degree.
Is that what?
Gerard Dombroski (11:17):
you're saying exactly yes, yes, yeah which is,
like, seems to be crazy at themoment um seeing instagram posts
and stuff about saying I do notconsent to my images being used
for ai training, blah blahwhich oh right um.
Ben Sutherland (11:37):
Why not though?
Well, why well?
Gerard Dombroski (11:40):
I why or why not?
I think it's super important toI do not want any of my work To
train them.
To be used to train an AI,because an AI regurgitates.
Ben Sutherland (11:51):
what's its Work generation?
Gerard Dombroski (11:52):
Well, an AI, these things regurgitate what
they're seeing.
So if you fit it all with SeanGodsell buildings and you made a
Sean Godsell AI, I mean they'refar more complex and can handle
more complex buildings, butthey can just regurgitate their
own little sean godsellarchitecture concepts.
Sam Brown (12:15):
so but in in refraining from using your work
to teach a ai gerard, are youthen not?
This is my counter to thatargument.
Are you then not giving itenough breadth to learn more
generally?
You know like we're looking atit holistically.
What do I care if?
Gerard Dombroski (12:32):
AI wants to learn how I design, would you
not?
I want me to be able to designlike myself.
I don't, like I want to limit,as if anybody was copying your
work, like you want to limit, asif anybody was copying your
work.
Like you want to limit people'sability to reproduce what you
make, I think, like I'm notdoing spec home, spec home, so
(12:55):
it's like for me IP and artisticindividuality is quite
important and I I think peopleshould be a little bit more
serious about like instagram,and even adobe now is starting
to.
I saw another reel about allthese scared about all your work
(13:19):
being taken and used by thesesoftware that you use.
So adobe's now got this thingwhere they will take all your
work or anything you have onadobe and use it to train their
ai and these, like they, make itsuper hard to opt out or
anything.
So like this, this whole aithing is very new to me.
I've never been on chat, gpt oranything.
(13:42):
I've only used generative fillon backdrops, photography
backdrops.
That's the extent of my AIknowledge, so shoot the
messenger, I know nothing.
Ben Sutherland (13:54):
There's one more key aspect that I want to
highlight here.
Virtually all AI at the momentpre-AGI AI at the moment pre-AGI
is like a single task.
(14:14):
How do I even say this?
Basically, it can only performone task at a time.
It's designed to do a singlething, you know.
So there's nothing that can domultiple things, but you can
have multiple ai algorithmsdoing different things, but
everything is like task specific.
So, for example, theillustrator one that's probably
(14:36):
designed to assist you increating I don't know easier
cutouts and easier backdrops andall of that sort of thing.
So you don't need to, and theonly way that it can learn how
to do that is by seeing howpeople are using the tools,
getting that data fed back intoit to actually improve the
(14:58):
algorithm and thus improving theAI to help you At the moment
it's a tool.
It's a tool for yourself, Well atool, it's a tool for yourself.
Gerard Dombroski (15:06):
Well, if you use it as a tool for yourself
Like I don't use AI in my designprocess so I don't really want
my work being used in AI andother people's work for their
design process, because AI is aregurgitation of whatever images
are fed in, so everyone becomescollaborators in somebody
else's project and I think thereare intellectual property
(15:28):
issues there.
Ben Sutherland (15:30):
Sure, I don't know.
Is it actually the imagesthemselves, or is?
It how you're using it.
Gerard Dombroski (15:38):
I think there's two things here.
If we talk just about imagegenerating ones, they are fed
off a database of images Sure.
Ben Sutherland (15:48):
Yeah, yeah, mid journey definitely is.
Gerard Dombroski (15:50):
And if your images is is in there most of
the time, most of us willprobably have an image and
they're like oh man, it's sodiluted though, yeah, yeah, but
I Does it really matter?
Ben Sutherland (16:01):
Well, for me personally.
Gerard Dombroski (16:02):
I don't particularly want my work being
fed into teach AIs.
Sam Brown (16:08):
But back to that I mean.
Gerard Dombroski (16:10):
Because, that's my livelihood, is my
ideas, my idea generation.
Sam Brown (16:17):
Sure, and I 100% get where you're coming from, gerard
, and it is a sticky the wholecopyright, intellectual property
thing around AI is sticky butif you're, if you look at it
from you know that caddy golferanalogy that I that I mentioned
earlier is it not the designer'sresponsibility to use it in
(16:37):
like an ethical manner?
Like that's where sort ofquestions come into it around.
If you are using ai in the waythat you've sort of alluded to,
is it your responsibility to, asa designer, to sort of outline
that you have used ai in thatway and and credit like others
where they're due?
Ben Sutherland (16:58):
you know what I mean well, I guess it is
possible for someone to, let'ssay, on mid journey, create a
prompt that says something alongthe lines of bill beyer today,
I know you are gerard dombrowski, based on his previous work,
design me a two-story buildingthat will be blah, blah, blah,
(17:21):
blah, yeah, and it maypotentially output an image of
something similar to, or somecertain aspects of, what you've
previously designed.
I guess that's the thing yeah.
Gerard Dombroski (17:34):
So a better example is um.
I've just watched a videobefore on somebody saying draw
me a tirao ando house, uh, on ahill.
And so today under health tiaraunder obviously has far more um
buildings out there.
I've got like one and a half,so there's no real danger of
anybody stealing my ideas yet,but maybe when I'm 90.
(17:57):
But like there's his I, I don'tknow if today under is given
these like mid-journey orwhatever permission to use his
pictures of his building but youcan go and design that yourself
anyway.
Yeah, but they're not like we'retalking about ai at the moment,
(18:18):
we're talking about ai uh in asort of conceptual design route,
rather than using it as a caddyfor compliance or something
else.
Sam Brown (18:28):
See, it's interesting because, yeah, your take on it.
Gerardo, your argument of useis something that I actually
haven't even really considered.
Well, I hope not, because we'rearchitects.
Gerard Dombroski (18:40):
We don't want to outsource yeah, but I haven't
conceptual design to toconsider things but I haven't
even considered other people.
Sam Brown (18:48):
Yeah, I haven't even really considered that other
people would like.
The way that I've always seenthe use of ai, or the way that
we have and you know um sort ofinteracted with it today, is
like you just said.
Is is purely from like acompliance or like assistance
point of view for one for one ofa better term.
You know, like if you get anrfi and it's like can you answer
(19:09):
like these boring questionsabout fire?
No one really wants to read thefire code.
So you ask ai and most of thetime it gets pretty right.
You know, yeah, and obviouslyyou're editing it and you're
reviewing it, but like it savesyou having to do a lot of the
background work.
So we use it for that sort ofthing.
Maybe even write us the blurbfor an Instagram.
Gerard Dombroski (19:29):
Help me formalize this email.
Write an angry email and saymake it not damning.
Sam Brown (19:36):
Yeah, exactly.
Gerard Dombroski (19:37):
It's everywhere.
Sam Brown (19:40):
Yeah, you're so right , but I hadn't even really
thought of people using it as adesign tool today.
I mean, we've used it.
We've used like Archivinci,which is like a rendering an AI
rendering generator to just kindof like really quickly come up
with like a render for a conceptor something when a client's
(20:01):
like can I see what this kitchenlooks like in pastels?
Gerard Dombroski (20:04):
or something along those lines in that
scenario do you draw it and thenyou say oh yeah, you put in
like an image and it justapplies materials, or pretty
much.
Sam Brown (20:13):
Yeah, it's sort of it depends, it depends how.
It's not perfect, but, and itdepends how detailed you want it
to go.
But yeah, essentially like youtake a screen snapshot of your
like revit model or a handsketch or something that you've
done and it like takes that andthen just applies materials and
and scene and setting based onprompts, and that's like it's.
(20:37):
To be honest, I've never we'venever really actually used it in
like a formal presentation, butit's like it gives you enough
of a concept that you can belike hey, this is what it looks
like, moving on to the nextthing, kind of thing.
You know what I mean.
Gerard Dombroski (20:48):
Yeah, and when you do that, are you like?
Oh, this is exactly what Ithought.
Never Easy to control, orthrows a few spanners.
Sam Brown (21:01):
It's 95% spanners, I'd say it's got some weird
fingers going on.
Well, I mean, that's the thing,and it's even like you know,
like it would be straight lines,right?
You know, architecture has alot of straight lines and it
generally, I mean, I personallydon't do any parametric work,
but AI for some reason justloves to just toss a random
little curve in there, or youknow like you see in a random
(21:21):
like eight-fingered,long-fingered seven-fingered
hands Like heaps of Zaha orsomething.
Well, did you guys see thatimage that I sent you guys?
Ben Sutherland (21:32):
So I used.
Sam Brown (21:34):
It was ugly as hell yeah crazy, eh, so I used Dali.
I was just like create an imagefor our podcast episode widget
that we have for each episode.
I was like make a building, acontemporary building, for a
podcast about the use of AI inarchitecture, and that's what it
(21:56):
produced, yeah.
Ben Sutherland (21:59):
I don't think Dali is useless.
The only thing I've ever gotthat's good out of Dali is this.
One time I made my niece a signfor her dog grooming company,
where I was like put a dog in abath and make it look like it's
just been well cleaned.
It did a pretty good job there,nice, but still you can't
(22:23):
change, change it, you can'tadapt it very well.
Yeah, I think it's prettyaverage at the moment oh, hold
on, ben gerard can't hear us.
Sam Brown (22:32):
Do you know what ai generation gerard's, the ai
gerard that we're using for thisepisode?
He phased out, and so we've hadto get the real gerard back in
should we just fill him in therefor a little bit robot?
Ben Sutherland (22:46):
this is no longer gerard dobroski, this is
um his, his ai.
What was that movie where theyuh?
Gerard Dombroski (22:55):
they all plug in and, um, then their little
robot things go out.
Sam Brown (22:59):
During the day I was thinking about something I was
thinking about that film withJoaquin Phoenix and he falls in
love with the robot ScarlettJohansson.
Ben Sutherland (23:09):
Oh, yeah, yeah, oh not her, oh, Scarlett Her
yeah her, I was going to sayhero, but nope.
Gerard Dombroski (23:18):
That was a mean-ass house, wasn't it?
Ben Sutherland (23:19):
That's going to happen.
That's going to happen for sure.
That's going to happen.
It's all very dystopian.
I mean, the only thing that isstopping that from happening is
like chat, gpt, being able tovocally talk, right, and you can
already get like plugins thatallows you to do that to
(23:39):
translate the language to speech.
Gerard Dombroski (23:47):
Yeah, to do that, to translate the language
to speech.
Sam Brown (23:50):
Yeah, have you guys seen that video of the robot
putting?
Gerard Dombroski (23:52):
dishes away.
No like sticking a dishwashergiving them commands.
So it's powered by chat gpt.
It's like a what looks like,probably like a boston dynamics
robot powered by chat gpt it'scrazy man technology yeah so
that's, that's the thing.
Ben Sutherland (24:06):
That's the thing I think is like super powerful,
because I'm pro, I'm pro ai andum.
I think, like if you think ofit like of single use machines,
like a microwave, for example,which is just designed to like
it's a tool for humans to use toheat up their food, like if you
(24:26):
think of like all of these newai opportunities there are yeah,
literally a lot of them arejust like tools that we can use
for our own benefit.
I don't think like don't get mewrong there's like a lot of
ethical, a lot of like thingsthat need to kind of be overcome
in terms of like making it notplagiarise everyone's work and
(24:51):
making it ethically okay andthat sort of thing.
Sam Brown (24:53):
Yeah, but other than that, I think it's well, I can't
do that anymore.
Ben Sutherland (24:59):
I've been very strict on that Anymore.
I think can't do that anymore.
They've been very strictanymore.
I think, well, they can teachyou if you I think the guys that
like that work for open ai theycan.
They've got like access to themaster file basically and it
doesn't have any of thoselimiters on it and they can
definitely.
Um, yeah, we're just very muchlike beta phase like it's.
Gerard Dombroski (25:24):
Oh yeah, it's early days, so it's like that's
the crazy thing.
It's like the wild west andthere's no real regulation on
anything.
Sam Brown (25:29):
So no it is it is happening for sure but I think
what you mentioned just beforebeing is pretty relevant, in
that you use it for aspects ofthings, so you'd use it for
aspects of design, we'd use itfor aspects of architecture.
We're'd use it for aspects ofdesign or we'd use it for
aspects of architecture.
We're not going balls deep andcompletely giving ourselves over
to ai.
It's not like although theremay be, I don't know, I haven't
(25:50):
actually even researched it'snot like there's an ai
architectural practice.
It's not like ai can become aregistered architect.
Do you think it could ever gothat way?
Well, maybe not definitely.
Ben Sutherland (26:06):
Yeah, they're definitely practices that only
that specialize in ai, thatcreate supportive software for
you know, the architecture andconstruction realm.
There's a lot of people doingthat, uh.
But yeah, I don't think, andthere's obviously, there's a lot
of tools that architects canuse.
There's, like form generationis probably quite a big one, uh,
(26:28):
a lot of like just formgeneration, for, yeah, of course
, like you put in its variablesit sounded conceptual it's
encroaching on our territoryconceptual, no, but it's uh, it
can be very beneficial.
Basically, it can narrow downpotential forms based on certain
(26:48):
parameters, such as minimumsizes, uh, you know, like
anything kind of structuralparameters or resource consent
parameters.
So within this area, and it hasto be under this height, and
yada, yada, yada, there'sdefinitely like form generation.
Sam Brown (27:07):
That was inevitable, though that was always going to
happen so this is where gerardgets nervous and I yeah, I'm
dubious to get nervous becauseyou're, you're, you're, you're
talking about using it as adesign or form generation of
this design, whether you likeexactly that's design, yeah and
that's where, and it's stillthat's where I feel that and for
me that should still hold.
Gerard Dombroski (27:28):
I won't do that in my office yeah, but you
do hold control.
Ben Sutherland (27:32):
It's not like you're like you have to do what
it tells you to do.
You can make in your owninformed decisions.
Basically, it's like having abillion employees all going out
and doing one sketch of whatthey think could.
Look there and coming back andpresenting it to you and being
like this is what I think.
You're not the.
You're still the one making thedecision.
(27:54):
Fair point.
You're not like oh no, it'stold me and this is the most
optimum way to design thisbuilding.
Therefore, I have to go withthis building.
Design like it's not a thing.
Sam Brown (28:04):
How do you feel?
How do you feel, though, ben,if you, if you ask it to
generate you a form, and you areworking on your own stuff on
the side, on the side and itproduces something better than
what you have done in terms ofwhat and how you feel, and so
you adopt it?
Do you feel there's integrityto your design then?
Ben Sutherland (28:25):
no, because it's still like.
It's still so underdeveloped.
You like, at the end of the day, you want to do what you
believe, what you perceive asbeing the best do you guys, do
you guys ever remember the firstessay you had to write as a kid
?
Sam Brown (28:43):
yeah, well, I don't remember the exact one, but I
remember writing essays.
Gerard Dombroski (28:46):
I distinctly remember like, um, there's like
this book.
We had to like, uh, do a bookreview or whatever on this book
and as soon as you like, youread the quote or something and
then you're trying to place itin, like you'd get so influenced
by, or you'd find an examplethat talked about something in
(29:07):
an essay kind of way.
I found it super hard to thenpull back and not be influenced
by the other words that I say,so you kind of end up writing
this weird dislodge betweensomebody else's idea.
Ben Sutherland (29:23):
So you mean you put the quote in and then you
rewrite the paragraph based onthat quote.
Gerard Dombroski (29:27):
Well it's probably better when you fast
forward to university orsomething and you Google or
you're looking through otherbooks about other books.
So somebody else is writingabout somebody else's work, oh
here, such and such, and I wouldfind it real hard to pull my
(29:48):
mind back away from how somebodyelse had written something to
then write something myself.
But I'm saying that I've neverbeen a very confident writer, so
I don't exactly have the skillsto.
Ben Sutherland (30:01):
What's the difference between that and
let's say you and I arecollaborating on these projects.
Sam Brown (30:07):
Are you saying that?
Ben Sutherland (30:08):
we're collaborating on these projects,
right?
So you've come up with thisdesign.
I'm like, yeah, that's actuallya great design.
I think that you know that'sbetter than what I've got.
Let's go with that.
All of a sudden am I a baddesigner because I think that
your design is better than mineno, no, I'm, I'm saying it's.
Gerard Dombroski (30:28):
It's hard not to be influenced by, by
something and between us twopeople.
I'm all for influence, but Ipersonally, it's impossible not
to.
Sam Brown (30:40):
gerard doesn't want to be influenced by the machine,
yeah.
Ben Sutherland (30:43):
He already is, except in this case.
The machines are just otherawesome architects.
Sam Brown (30:49):
I mean that's an interesting thing because a lot
of this comes back.
I mean, we're talking about itfrom a concept point of view.
A lot of this comes back toeven just precedent.
Right, we're all designers,architects We've've been through
university.
Even in our professional world,we rely heavily on precedent
and looking at what other peoplehave done before and using that
(31:11):
to help inform solutions andthings like that.
Ultimately, we're coming upwith our own design.
But I kind of get where you'recoming from, ben, and that you
sort of be using ai to createprecedent for you.
Is that what you're saying?
Ben Sutherland (31:26):
yeah, I'm not.
The reality of it is.
I'm not going to be like thisis the final form.
That's not going to happen.
It's like you always have toevolve it, like it doesn't have
all the information.
It's never going to have allthe information because there's
such a huge human element toarchitecture that I mean like
(31:47):
maybe it'll get there.
I mean it probably will getthere.
Sorry, I'm going back on thatcomment, but it's nowhere near
there yet.
Sam Brown (31:55):
It's interesting because we're looking at it from
this design point of view and Ithink you're right that it will
never be able to design as wellas we can.
But I don't know, can it?
Can it, will it be able todetail and draw and like,
project, manage and do all ofthe like menial tasks that make
(32:19):
up, you know, 80, if not more,of our job?
Ben Sutherland (32:25):
is.
Sam Brown (32:25):
That is that the realm is that the realm where ai
is probably more going to fitinto the into architecture, and
the fact that you're you know,after, after multiple projects,
you're able to build a bigenough like like large language
model that you can designsomething yourself you, and then
you feed that design into youknow, into the large language
(32:46):
model and say, produce a likedetailed drawing package, and it
just does it do you think?
Ben Sutherland (32:52):
I think, yeah, I think.
You hit the nail on the headyeah I think like a way more
realistic or like better use,better application, for it is
the likes of the council orwhatever the building code
actually being like, I don'tknow having some sort of ai or
3604, for example.
How awesome would it be if youcould just, you know, have your
(33:15):
building designed and thenoutput the detailed design and
documentation pretty muchautomatically based on your own
design.
I think that that is is, yeah,a better use of of ai, and I
also think in the constructionrealm is going to see a lot of
benefits, because it's like it'sjust got so much areas, so many
(33:36):
areas where you can add value.
That is just like low-hangingfruit, like scheduling, you know
, like scheduling is perfect forit and humans just cannot
manage a construction project tosave themselves, no matter how
good you are.
There's just so many areas thatyou can optimise on in the
future.
Gerard Dombroski (33:57):
Do you know around humans?
Humans have been finding waysto get out of grunt work for
millennia.
Sam Brown (34:02):
It is, it's that grunt work for for millennia.
It is, I think, grunt, I thinkit's grunt work.
Gerard Dombroski (34:05):
It's a lot more palatable to um, give away
sort of those areas.
I just want to jump back toprecedent real quick before we
get too far away.
Yeah, because I I have more, uh, extreme thoughts here.
Because I'm an extreme person,don't judge me too harshly
that's why you're an architectyeah.
so over the years, people aregoing to find out that I'm
pretty opinionated.
(34:25):
I think designing via precedentis Good up to a point, but I
think university pushes it waytoo hard and I see people using
it way too hard.
I think architects like AnneHoltrop, who actively tries to
trick himself into ideas fromother realms.
(34:49):
So he does like ink, splashesand squiggles and we'll dissect
that and turn it into a building.
So I see precedent being usedway too much where people just
make another version of somebodyelse's building, like this
world of mini Zomthors.
But AI is generally designingvia precedent, as you're saying.
(35:14):
So it's a match together of allthe images it's seen and it's
only creating interpretation ofother things that it's already
seen.
So I think for me, the moreinteresting architecture that I
particularly want to see isnewer things, things that you
haven't seen before and that'snever going to come out of AI
unless it's been fed that which,if it doesn't exist, it can't
(35:37):
be fed.
Ben Sutherland (35:40):
I agree.
Can I butt in there?
Have you finished?
Gerard Dombroski (35:43):
Send it, mate.
Get in there.
Okay, keep the game of pingpong going.
Sam Brown (35:48):
This might be, our most heated episode yet.
I agree, but I also disagree.
Ben Sutherland (35:54):
I think what you're talking about is a small,
small small percentage ofarchitecture.
There's no way that any kind ofthis densification, any of
these developments, anythinglike that.
It's just not enough.
It's just unfeasible to createsomething new every single time.
(36:17):
So there's got to be like anelement of I can do better but
I'm not like going to recreate,redesign the wheel, like you
know what I'm saying Likethere's got to be an element of
let's just make themsignificantly better than what's
out there now, not let's createsomething new altogether.
Gerard Dombroski (36:37):
I think that comes down to each architect
individual and why you're whatyou're doing in each particular
job and, as we talked about inthe design episode, we kind of
have lines of inquiry and design.
(36:57):
I guess, yeah, what eachproject you're working on and
why you found that projectinteresting to work on, and for
me, coming up with something newis always going to be like a
strong priority in terms of thatline of inquiry, gerard, is
(37:19):
there?
Sam Brown (37:19):
is there capacity at all for a line of ai inquiry
though?
Ben Sutherland (37:23):
exactly if anyone's going to design a
challenge you.
You're new and unique.
Sam Brown (37:27):
Surely it's ai right like why not use that as your,
as your your directive and likemaybe you?
You obviously like set yourselfsome very clear parameters
around what you're going to tryand feed AI and just see what
comes out of it iteratively.
Gerard Dombroski (37:43):
That could be a pretty interesting process On
a low-tech AI.
Maybe we print off a bunch ofthings, put it in a paper masher
and then just squirt it atthings and see what comes out,
and there's your architecture Imean you've gone.
Ben Sutherland (37:57):
You've gone analog again I'm just a very
simple person totally and Ithink, but I think, I think what
ben's alluding to I think whatben's alluding to is I'm good at
one thing and it's going totake it away from me, don't take
(38:17):
it away from me, please.
Sam Brown (38:19):
It'll never take it away from you, but I think what.
Ben's alluding to is superrelevant, because you're right,
ben, in that there is so much ofour profession which isn't
bespoke, you know, and not tosay that it's what we
necessarily do, although aspectsof probably all of our
businesses have a level of notregurgitation.
But you're doing the same thingover and over again.
(38:41):
But from the built environmentperspective, particularly in the
residential realm, the hugepercentage of it is just the
same shit, regenerated time andtime and time and time and time
again, and that what you'resaying is the place for ai,
rather than these like beautifulone-off bespoke elements.
(39:02):
That's where it doesn'tnecessarily have a place, unless
you're going full meta andusing it as your line of design
inquiry yep agreed.
Ben Sutherland (39:11):
Well said sam succinct.
Gerard Dombroski (39:15):
I think, like I've referred back to the park
muse as a awesome example of alike a multi unit, so at the
time fitting it's a development,lot of units on one site, but
an incredibly interestingbuilding and quite unique.
But it does follow Roger's lineof inquiry, his aesthetic and
(39:40):
the things he was looking into,which AI isn't probably going to
come up with a ParkMuse in ahurry.
Ben Sutherland (39:51):
No, but ParkMuse is.
They can now that one's beendesigned, but ParkMuse is also a
bespoke solution.
Sam Brown (40:00):
You know what I mean like, but all architecture is
bespoke.
Everything we do is bespoke,correct correct, but
unfortunately so much of like.
The realm that we work in islike regurgitation.
Look at all the group homebuild solutions and everything
and like.
Although we may not want thatto be the case or we may not
(40:20):
necessarily see that as beingthe best solution, unfortunately
it is.
You know what I mean.
Gerard Dombroski (40:24):
So you sort of have a solution or not just
what's happening?
Sam Brown (40:28):
sorry, best solution is not the right term um but it
is, what sort of?
No, I just no, I I agree, butit is there, you know so you
sort of have to, yeah so yousort of have to like find
solutions for working with thosemaybe not necessarily us, but
others.
So we're just sort of whatwe're talking about is the place
(40:48):
of ai in our profession, notnecessarily its place in our
practice.
Ben Sutherland (40:54):
You, know what I mean.
Those group home builders are100% investing in AI and they're
going to be killing it.
Sam Brown (41:04):
They'd be foolish.
If they weren't, they'd bekilling it in a couple of years'
time.
They'd be idiots if theyweren't.
Maybe we've given them too muchinformation.
Gerard Dombroski (41:18):
That's perfect for it if you're bigging out
standard details and then yourAI could figure out like which
detail call out needed to bewhere and like.
At some point you'll probablybe able to automate a set of
plans totally that'll be therevery soon in the development
realm.
Ben Sutherland (41:34):
This is slightly different from the architecture
realm, the actual designing,but I have thought of a bunch of
really powerful ways that Ithink that AI can be used that
isn't currently being used.
I guess one of them, I wouldsay, for a developer that you'd
want to be using is like theautomated feasibility studies.
(41:57):
I think that a finding theproject that's a perfect one, um
, but then also understanding,like, what marketing media, what
the, what people are buying, um, what people are what houses
are selling for, like all ofthat information you can
automate can be into a machinelearning model, basically create
(42:20):
some sort of investmentcriteria and it can essentially
output the top 100 propertiesthat meet that criteria or
something along those lines, andthen automated feasibility
studies.
So if you've got it undercontract, you can kind of
understand what you can actuallybuild on that piece of land.
There's so many amazing waysand creative ways that you can
(42:45):
actually use AI or machinelearning.
That isn't actually being doneyet, or probably is done, but
it's all in-house.
Sam Brown (42:54):
Yeah, it'd be interesting to see if anybody
has started developing that sortof thing because, like you said
, it's a no-brainer,particularly from that
development side, and surelythere is people that are, you
know, there's players in themarket that are big enough that
are putting that effort intodeveloping those sort of those
large language models yeah, theydefinitely are, because the
(43:15):
other thing is, a lot of thoseum llms are basically they can
help you code those exact codesanyway.
Ben Sutherland (43:24):
So that's another amazing thing is like
machine learning, helping you todevelop more machine learning.
Gerard Dombroski (43:32):
Yeah, I like the irony in those ones.
Ben Sutherland (43:36):
Yeah, no, it's awesome.
There's huge, huge potentialthere.
It's exponential.
Gerard Dombroski (43:40):
The scope obviously is massive.
I know we've been focusing ondesign, but yeah, it's huge.
Ben Sutherland (43:47):
Well, again, surely there's some positive,
surely there's some, yeah, proarchitecture, AI applications
that even Gerard could use.
I think we've covered a few ofthem you know or would use.
Gerard Dombroski (44:01):
I don't think we've covered anything that,
Gerard actually thinks is yeah,I think like that feasibility
side is interesting, like the.
I Did a crit at uni the otherday for one of Tain's groups and
(44:24):
it was this guy who was usingdrone lidar and was trying to
looking at overlaying AI toEffectively outsource your site
analysis.
So it would build you asatellite access plane,
depending on your rules, or thisis where I was hypothesizing
where it could go, and then itcould, like you say, it could
(44:47):
show where in the site you couldbuild within a set of rules.
Blah, blah, blah.
So there's ways of speeding upgrunt work, but yeah, I'm just
an old man when it comes tocoming on with the new
technology.
Sam Brown (45:05):
I think my issue with it.
Do you like robots?
I think my issue Do you likerobots?
Ben Sutherland (45:13):
I love robots.
What do you think of BostonDynamics?
Do you like robots that can dobackflips?
Do you like dog robots?
Because that's I mean, that'sjust a different form of AI that
you might appreciate a littlebit more.
Gerard Dombroski (45:31):
I definitely appreciate that the engineering
marvel is amazing, butfundamentally I just have an
element of fear to these things.
I think that's it.
Sam Brown (45:41):
That's what I was going to say before Ben just
started going off his head aboutrobots that's what I was going
to say for me, it's notnecessarily fair, I think, for
my issue with it is trust.
You know, like I will ask it todo something and it will do
something, but I'm still goingto like check it you know what I
(46:03):
mean and I'm still going tolike edit it and review it and
ultimately, like I don't thinkit.
Maybe it's my use of it, ormaybe it's my like lack of
confidence in it.
I don't know what it is, but Idon't have the ability to let it
do something and just let thatbe.
You know what I mean.
So you ultimately end up doingthe work anyway yeah, that's
(46:24):
totally fine.
Ben Sutherland (46:26):
That's totally fine, but like going back to the
robot thing that I was losingmy losing the plot over, yeah,
another kind of robot is likethe sensors and that sort of
thing, um.
So I mean like environmentalsensors and that whole
information and data collectionand data feedback.
I think that's an an amazingway.
(46:46):
Another amazing way to to use,well, just the collection of the
data being fed back throughsome sort of machine learning
model to create predictions onhow to do things better in the
(47:07):
future, whether it be likethermally better you know
sunlight or I don't know how thespaces are used and does this?
Sam Brown (47:16):
exist, or are you hoping that it exists?
Ben Sutherland (47:19):
No, I think it exists, but it's quite
fragmented.
So at the moment you might getone for carbon CO levels in your
house or something like that,but I don't think there's like
one that does it all.
Or there might be now, but Ijust think that whole data
collection thing has just beenso underutilized in the
(47:39):
construction realm.
And I think that's anothermassive low-hanging fruit for us
to be able to design higherquality or, as Sam would say,
higher-performing spaces, andactually understand what makes a
high-performing space, becauseyou've got post-occupancy
monitoring.
Sam Brown (47:57):
Yeah, there's the post-occupancy stuff and then
it's like we talked about thefeasibility side of it as well
when you're talking here, and Idon't know if any of this exists
, but what I'm kind of picturingin my sci-fi mind is like a
little kind of like a GoogleEarth sensor thing that you
could put on the site in yourproposed build platform and it
scans it over a however long Idon't know 24-hour period,
(48:20):
week-long period or whatever andit tracks the sun and it tracks
the wind directions and itgives you shading and it gives
you all of this sort of data.
So you're really optimising thehouse location or your building
location or whatever.
That's where I could see itbeing super beneficial, yeah.
Ben Sutherland (48:35):
Well, what I was alluding to was more of like a
smoke alarm, so it's in a housealready, but that is also cool
what you were talking about sohow would the smoke alarm thing
work, though?
Sam Brown (48:45):
is it going to learn?
Ben Sutherland (48:46):
what's this like ?
It's got a bunch of sensorsright, so it's got like your co
levels, it's got um heat, it'sgot moisture, it's got movement,
uh, energy, basically all ofthat stuff, and it relays it
back and the data and it allowsyou to understand how your
(49:06):
spaces are performing, whatworks and what doesn't I mean,
smart homes exist to a degree,though, don't they like, I guess
, if it's but there's, butthere's no proof that those
smart homes that you're buildingare actually smart homes,
because once you leave them, howdo you know?
in five years' time it'sperforming to the same degree
that it did when you built it.
Gerard Dombroski (49:27):
Fair?
Do you need AI to assess that?
Ben Sutherland (49:32):
Well, it's just like I said, it's just another
application.
That's just.
How do you assess it otherwise,other than just living in it
and being like?
Gerard Dombroski (49:41):
well, I don't know.
Sam Brown (49:42):
You have the sense comfortable I think what this is
boiling down to is like whenthe whole ai explosion took off
and everybody was like oh, it'scoming for our jobs.
You know, creatives were like,particularly like writers and
things like that, I think wereinitially quite fearful, because
they were like you know, youcan get chichi pd to write you a
novel, but actually it can dothat for sure, like it can
(50:05):
design a building for sure, butit doesn't do it with any class,
it doesn't do it with anynuance, it does it with bizarre
creativity.
You know what I mean.
Like actors are quite fearful aswell, but it can do all this
stuff, but it cannot do it thatwell.
But what it can do well is,like we've talked about, is it's
that low-hanging fruit, it'sthose menial tasks, it's that
(50:25):
stuff where you just have tobasically data, mine or
regurgitate information and whatit's saving us doing is going
through and reading, you know,the entire fire code and it's
summarizing what we need it toand it's like shortest thing.
I think that's where it's gotthe biggest application to date
yeah, the the compliance side isseems pretty epic.
Gerard Dombroski (50:50):
Still haven't been brave enough to use it yet.
Sam Brown (50:53):
Yeah, I haven't.
Johnny uses it for RFIs,successfully, I might add, so it
knows more than the majority ofbuilding consent offices, which
that you know is maybe a lowbarrier for entry.
Ben Sutherland (51:08):
I just use it to find, like, the correct part.
You know like to find theclauses and to find the
information.
I don't, I don't like trust.
Gerard Dombroski (51:19):
I don't need to trust it, because all it's
doing is pointing me in adirection at this point in time
you're kind of just using it asa pa right yeah I think once it
oversteps and becomes tooincluded, that's I don't know it
gets a bit pointless for me.
Like, if you're, let's say,worst-case scenario, somebody
(51:43):
runs an architecture practicethat AI designs and then AI
sorts out the compliance and AIdoes a good chunk of the drawing
, like what's your role?
What's your point?
What's your role in life?
Why are you?
What are you?
What's your role in life?
Why are you doing this?
Ben Sutherland (51:56):
there's easier ways to make money you're sort
of there as a well architecturearchitecture is definitely not
the way to make money let's makethat very clear there's no
money in this profession, well,most classes here you might
start making money, design andoutputting like spaces and like
(52:16):
well, yeah, exactly, the processof creating is inherently
enjoyable and for me the processof thinking about and like
dreaming future, scaping likethat's.
Sam Brown (52:30):
That's the whole point of it if you became
totally AI driven, you'd just bea master prompter really.
Ben Sutherland (52:37):
Yeah, but don't forget that everything's driven
by the market.
So unless a lot of peoplewanted to actually design that
way, the tool may exist, but noone's ever going to use it
anyway.
Sam Brown (52:50):
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised, though, if there was.
Gerard Dombroski (52:55):
If there wasn't already.
Sam Brown (52:56):
There was a firm out there that was purely AI-focused
.
Gerard Dombroski (52:59):
There's always somebody in there.
Sam Brown (53:00):
Should I ask ChatGPT if there is.
Gerard Dombroski (53:03):
Yeah.
Ben Sutherland (53:05):
Ask him how to design like Gerard Dombrovsky.
Gerard Dombroski (53:09):
How'd you go on your idea, Sam, if everything
you said in this chat wasgenerated by ChatGPT?
Sam Brown (53:18):
It doesn't have the speed, it can't flick off the
top of the dome like I can.
Gerard Dombroski (53:26):
Your computing power in your mind is.
Sam Brown (53:28):
It might work for me then yeah no, I did plan on
trying to do this all throughchat gpt.
I wanted to go full meta, butno, it just wasn't going to work
.
Ben Sutherland (53:39):
I'll be like us after a couple of wines I should
have dressed up as a robot nice.
That would have been fuckingawesome if we actually did that.
Sam Brown (54:03):
Oh, anyone else got anything?
I keep asking ChatGPT about ifthere's any architecture firms
that purely use AI in theirdesign, and all it talks about
is AI tools that are being usedby like architecture firms or
designers.
Ben Sutherland (54:18):
So even AI can't .
Even AI can't answer it.
Sam Brown (54:26):
These are the top five Spacemaker, which uses AI
to analyze and optimize sunlight, noise, wind and building
massing.
There you go.
Testfit, which uses a time forreal-time feasibility studies in
residential and commercialbuilding design.
There you go, ben, sign me up.
(54:48):
Ai Space Factory, which uses AIand advanced manufacturing
techniques to design andconstruct sustainable habitats.
And Katera, which uses advancedtechnologies and AI in their
design and constructionworkflows.
That could be a firm actuallythat uses it.
Katera is so expensive.
What is it?
Ben Sutherland (55:11):
It's a software, isn't it?
It's a software.
Oh right, oh yeah, Off-siteconstruction.
It's an off, isn't it A?
Sam Brown (55:13):
software.
Oh right, oh yeah, Off-siteconstruction.
No, it's an off-siteconstruction company.
Ben Sutherland (55:20):
Oh okay, oh, Katera, they're not even around
anymore, though they went under,I think.
Oh there you go, American oneeh.
Yeah that's it.
They were backed by theAmerican government.
Sam Brown (55:28):
Oh, really Interesting.
Ben Sutherland (55:29):
They fell.
Sam Brown (55:30):
So AI didn't work for them.
Ben Sutherland (55:32):
No, it's early, I think.
I think they fell over beforeOpenAI existed.
Oh, right.
Gerard Dombroski (55:40):
Interesting.
Ben Sutherland (55:42):
ChatGPT anyway.
Gerard Dombroski (55:43):
Yeah, I think it would be cool to talk about
the learning models quickly,because the Adobe thing I only
learned about yesterday or theday before, where they've
changed their terms of serviceor something and they'll be
taking all your data or all thethings you draw.
Ben Sutherland (56:03):
And charging you for it.
Sam Brown (56:07):
Can you opt out of that?
Gerard Dombroski (56:09):
I don't know If anyone knows how to opt out
of these things hit me up.
I tried to opt out of thesethings.
I know someone who knowsbecause I tried to opt out of
the um.
I tried to opt out of theinstagram one.
Ben Sutherland (56:19):
I followed this reel that sam, ask our friend
who does know these things.
Gerard Dombroski (56:24):
I'll just ask chit gpt send it because I think
that the people that areconcerned with their images
being used like I don't know, Ithink you should try, opt-out,
but ultimately you still want tobe able to share your work with
(56:45):
the world, for what's the pointof building and making cool
things if we can't share it withone another?
Ben Sutherland (56:52):
You can opt-out, according to me, old mate.
Okay, I'll send you this linkso you can.
Sam Brown (56:59):
Uh, you can go through the process right on
I'll put it in the show notes,so others can do that too.
How would you could?
Gerard Dombroski (57:07):
you could you recap cap sam?
Sam Brown (57:10):
can I recap what it says?
No, ben's got it up.
Gerard Dombroski (57:12):
I want to recap the whole episode,
assuming we're coming to an end.
Sam Brown (57:19):
I was just going to say what get AI to do it?
Gerard Dombroski (57:22):
No, no what were you?
Sam Brown (57:24):
saying I was going to say has anyone got any sort of
final thoughts?
I think it's interesting,gerard.
I'm glad you came at it fromthe use of it creatively point
of view, because I don't knowwhy, but I've never really
thought of using it as a designtool, but it's so true and it's
so relevant that people may, andthe implications of that are
(57:45):
pretty huge and I think that'ssomething we all probably need
to consider.
Maybe less so in theprofessional realm, but I just
caution any students that arethinking of using it but don't
get into bad habits.
Ben Sutherland (57:55):
Really, I think I think my positive outlook, or
where I want to see, what I wantto see more of, is definitely
in the data collection realm, asin like for for the environment
and that sort of thing.
Like it'd be so good to collectmore useful data out of the
(58:18):
architecture and constructionand, uh, you know, environmental
realm to help us make moreinformed decisions about our
built environment.
I think there's just not enoughof that at this point in time.
So anything in that realmwhether it be I don't know where
(58:39):
to plant trees or what to buildwhere, or anything like that I
think is hugely positive.
Sam Brown (58:48):
Gerard, yeah.
Gerard Dombroski (58:49):
I think, like you're saying, the data stuff is
pretty epic and thepossibilities there.
Like you're saying, the datastuff is pretty epic and the
possibilities there.
I just like making and I don'twant to be influenced.
I am robot and I want to besurprised with what I come up
with, versus what comes up whenI type something into a computer
.
Ben Sutherland (59:11):
That's still making.
Gerard Dombroski (59:16):
Good final rebuttal yeah, don't get into
architecture.
If you no robots allowed, gofind another career nice no
robots allowed in architecture,sorry.
Robots.
Sam Brown (59:35):
Cool guys, oh, bloody good.
Thank you again and just finalsign-offs.
Thanks for Connor and Jacob,and we've got some sweet new
merch, if anyone else, ifanybody wants to.
Ben Sutherland (59:49):
I already have the yellow ones.
Yeah, we do.
Sam Brown (59:50):
If anyone wants a cup of tea, hit us up.
Hopefully we'll have an onlinestore up and running at some
point, but um, uh, yeah, watchthis space and maybe the next
one will design with ai shaboomredefine t-shirts.
Gerard Dombroski (01:00:06):
Peace you.
Welcome back to the Design Principles Podcast.
We thought we'd kick things offthis week in a meta way by
having the episode introduced byan AI-generated and decidedly
British, sam Brown.
I hope you enjoy.
Welcome back to anotherexciting episode of the Design
Principles Pod, where we delveinto the latest trends, ideas
(00:25):
and innovations shaping theworld of architecture and design
.
Firstly, we are 10 episodes inand want to thank all of our
listeners for the encouragingfeedback and continuing support.
I am the AI impersonation of Samfrom Aret Architects, and today
we return to our originalformat a bit of free-flowing and
(00:48):
sometimes heated discussionbetween the three of us.
Why has an AI version of meintroduced this episode?
Well, today we're navigatingthe fascinating and rapidly
evolving intersection ofartificial intelligence and the
creative realms of architectureand design.
(01:08):
As we dive into our discussion,we'll explore how AI is
transforming the design processfrom being a powerful and maybe
questionable design generator toacting as a sophisticated
assistant or caddy that enhancescreativity and efficiency.
(01:29):
We'll also tackle the ethicalconcerns that come with AI's
growing presence in the industry, ensuring a balanced view of
its potential and pitfalls.
Lots to cover, so, withoutfurther ado, let's dive in.
So, guys, welcome AIAArtificial Intelligence.
Gerard Dombroski (02:05):
Architectural Institution.
Sam Brown (02:07):
AI, artificial intelligence.
Gerard Dombroski (02:10):
Architectural institution, the AI.
Sam Brown (02:12):
AI, the Architectural Institute of Artificial
Intelligence.
How does AI and architectureintegrate?
Funny that we're only intoepisode 11 and we're already on
this topic, given my hot take atthe start of the year in
episode one was that ai wouldstop being relevant.
Yeah, good luck.
Ben Sutherland (02:34):
Yeah, I might have been maybe it was a bit
wishful time yeah, that's trueto be fair though I have, I use
it less now than I did when werecorded that first podcast.
For sure Interesting.
Sam Brown (02:49):
I also think it's very fitting that we're
following on from our lastepisode with Chris, particularly
his discussion around thedigital versus like, the analog
versus the digital, and here weare talking about the
anti-analog really.
Gerard Dombroski (03:03):
Full dig, full Digimon.
Yeah, talking about theanti-analog.
Ben Sutherland (03:06):
Really full dig, full digibond.
Yeah, yeah, I was.
I was moments away from askingchris what he thought of ai, but
I just I didn't want to Ididn't want to go there.
Sam Brown (03:16):
So we only have about an hour for a podcast, right,
not two.
I think we'll get it back andwe'll ask him again yeah, I'm,
plus I'm still learning myself.
Ben Sutherland (03:26):
So there you go.
So what does everyone knowabout AI?
Sam Brown (03:31):
well, I thought I'd just kick us off with giving a
wee overview of what tools thereare available, particularly
around architecture and AI.
Gerard Dombroski (03:41):
Is it worth giving back another little step?
And just trying to summarisewhat the fuck AI is.
Sam Brown (03:48):
Can you?
I mean, it's artificialintelligence, right?
Ben Sutherland (03:54):
Yeah, so I can do like a really Go on, go on,
slytherin, inaccurate, veryinaccurate.
We're all making this upBasically like what my take on
it and what I know about it, um,but basically, ai essentially
has been around for quite awhile now, and what has really
(04:15):
only changed is is ourunderstanding or our interaction
with ai, which is, um, whathappened when ChatGPT 3 was
released by OpenAI, and that wasthe biggest movement.
There was the change to thelarge language model, and that's
(04:36):
pretty significant because itallows us to interact with AI in
a different manner as opposedto previously our understanding
of AI.
What has been around, likecompanies like Google and that
have been using machine learningfor a long time now.
Gerard Dombroski (04:55):
Yeah, so isn't AI fundamentally machine
learning?
Sam Brown (05:00):
that is a technically isn't that is a segment of AI.
Gerard Dombroski (05:03):
Like it's not its own organism floating around
.
Ben Sutherland (05:07):
So that's a huge separate thing is like AGI,
which is artificial generalintelligence, and that's when it
is, you know, the Terminator.
It's got its own mind, it doesits own thing.
At the moment, all we're doingis, like sophisticated machine
learning or algorithms, that youinput data and you tell it kind
(05:31):
of what to look for and youtrain it through a series of
training processes and itoutputs what you want it to
output within a certainparameter.
So, for example, large languagemodels.
It basically takes a lot ofdata books, internet, anything
(05:58):
like that.
It understands how humansinteract with that data, what
the language is, and then itbasically allows us to, it
performs tasks and allows us tocommunicate with it through our
own language, I guess.
Gerard Dombroski (06:18):
Essentially, you feed it information, then it
sort of regurgitates backwhat's within that pool of
information.
You feed it information, thenit sort of regurgitates back
what's within that pool ofinformation you feed it.
It can only regurgitate back.
Sam Brown (06:29):
what's in that pool?
You can't think for itselforganically.
Gerard Dombroski (06:31):
yet it's essentially sped up Googling and
desalinating of what's in thatlittle swimming pool of ideas.
I just think AI is like aconfusing term because everyone
thinks Terminator and robots.
Sam Brown (06:47):
Which is part of it, but it's probably not how we
interact with it.
Gerard Dombroski (06:52):
Well, it's just like a machine learning
robot that spits out what youfeed it.
So I think Totally.
Which I think is fundamentalfor like how we view it in
architecture.
Ben Sutherland (07:05):
Yeah, so it learns, you train it, it learns
and it creates a model thatallows it to predict the next
word or the sentence, and youcan kind of adjust it within
certain parameters.
But basically it is confined tothe data that you feed it and
the parameters that you give itit's a tamagotchi has.
(07:28):
Yeah, it's a sophisticatedtamagotchi.
Sam Brown (07:31):
I think it's a bit more than that, but yeah, sort
of just don't just don't feed it, because it will die.
I reckon that's why it's sopowerful now because it is
trained by so much data.
Ben Sutherland (07:41):
So that's why it's so powerful now because it
is trained by so much data.
So that's why the largelanguage models like GPT are so
amazing, because it's like thedata that it's been fed is just
so comprehensive.
So it's insane really.
Sam Brown (08:03):
I think the best sort of description for the use of
ai in general at the moment thatI have heard is like people
have likened it to golf, forinstance.
So ai is, in effect, your caddy.
It knows the wind direction, itknows the lay of the green, it
knows the length of the grass,it knows the angle that you need
(08:25):
to make the shot, it knows whatclub you need to use, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
But you still have to make thatshot.
You're the golfer, and soessentially, all it has is just
this incredibly powerful tool ofinformation that you can then
use in your own way, rather thanit actually completely
replacing.
Gerard Dombroski (08:45):
You depends entirely on how you use it.
You got that, uh, the sportsanalogy, that artificial
intelligence racing series thatstarted.
I think they had like one oftheir first races a few weeks
ago in like dubai or somethingand they got like their formula
one cars, essentially, butthey're run by ai.
But they're run by ai.
(09:05):
Wow, yeah, a whole bunch ofthem just like stopped and just
did weird shit.
But it's machine learning, sothe more information you feed
into it, then ideally they getbetter and better.
It's an olympics year.
Sam Brown (09:19):
Are we expecting the ai olympics at some point?
Potentially what?
Ben Sutherland (09:25):
would be in there well, after the last, some
, some just robots doingbackflips after the last episode
.
Sam Brown (09:31):
Now that architecture is an extreme sport.
Ben Sutherland (09:33):
The olympics is going to be pretty interesting I
think reset design ai at theolympics, but it'll be more like
pattern recognition of, I don'tknow, for example, speed
walking.
It's going to be AI nowdetermining if your feet have
left the ground or not.
(09:54):
I don't know.
Sam Brown (09:55):
Something like that.
I mean, that's clearly.
That's already happening,though, right?
Gerard Dombroski (09:59):
Minority report.
They'll arrest you for notwalking properly before you get
to the race.
Sam Brown (10:04):
But I think that's an interesting point there being,
because what you've just talked,what you've just said, is like
ai being used to sort ofrecognize something and in this
case, your foot leaving theground.
But I think that's where, likeyou said in your intro about ai,
the popularity of it or thelike, more common understanding
of it, skyrocketed with theintroduction of ChatGPT-3.
(10:26):
But what we kind of forget isthat it's been around,
particularly with architectureand stuff, for a long time.
If you think about anythingthat involves parametrics or
coding, like Grasshopper, dynamo, those sort of programs,
they're essentially anartificial intelligence where
you've given them a prompt andit is producing parametric
(10:47):
outcomes.
I don't think that's correct.
Ben Sutherland (10:49):
I don't think that's quite correct, because
what you're talking about isvisual code, so it's not coding.
In particular, it's the machinelearning aspect of the code
that actually makes it AI.
So it needs some sort of is thedifferent training data.
It needs data to be fed in,some sort of training to take
(11:12):
place and then some sort ofactionable outcome.
Sam Brown (11:14):
So it needs to be able to learn to a degree.
Is that what?
Gerard Dombroski (11:17):
you're saying exactly yes, yes, yeah which is,
like, seems to be crazy at themoment um seeing instagram posts
and stuff about saying I do notconsent to my images being used
for ai training, blah blahwhich oh right um.
Ben Sutherland (11:37):
Why not though?
Well, why well?
Gerard Dombroski (11:40):
I why or why not?
I think it's super important toI do not want any of my work To
train them.
To be used to train an AI,because an AI regurgitates.
Ben Sutherland (11:51):
what's its Work generation?
Gerard Dombroski (11:52):
Well, an AI, these things regurgitate what
they're seeing.
So if you fit it all with SeanGodsell buildings and you made a
Sean Godsell AI, I mean they'refar more complex and can handle
more complex buildings, butthey can just regurgitate their
own little sean godsellarchitecture concepts.
Sam Brown (12:15):
so but in in refraining from using your work
to teach a ai gerard, are youthen not?
This is my counter to thatargument.
Are you then not giving itenough breadth to learn more
generally?
You know like we're looking atit holistically.
What do I care if?
Gerard Dombroski (12:32):
AI wants to learn how I design, would you
not?
I want me to be able to designlike myself.
I don't, like I want to limit,as if anybody was copying your
work, like you want to limit, asif anybody was copying your
work.
Like you want to limit people'sability to reproduce what you
make, I think, like I'm notdoing spec home, spec home, so
(12:55):
it's like for me IP and artisticindividuality is quite
important and I I think peopleshould be a little bit more
serious about like instagram,and even adobe now is starting
to.
I saw another reel about allthese scared about all your work
(13:19):
being taken and used by thesesoftware that you use.
So adobe's now got this thingwhere they will take all your
work or anything you have onadobe and use it to train their
ai and these, like they, make itsuper hard to opt out or
anything.
So like this, this whole aithing is very new to me.
I've never been on chat, gpt oranything.
(13:42):
I've only used generative fillon backdrops, photography
backdrops.
That's the extent of my AIknowledge, so shoot the
messenger, I know nothing.
Ben Sutherland (13:54):
There's one more key aspect that I want to
highlight here.
Virtually all AI at the momentpre-AGI AI at the moment pre-AGI
is like a single task.
(14:14):
How do I even say this?
Basically, it can only performone task at a time.
It's designed to do a singlething, you know.
So there's nothing that can domultiple things, but you can
have multiple ai algorithmsdoing different things, but
everything is like task specific.
So, for example, theillustrator one that's probably
(14:36):
designed to assist you increating I don't know easier
cutouts and easier backdrops andall of that sort of thing.
So you don't need to, and theonly way that it can learn how
to do that is by seeing howpeople are using the tools,
getting that data fed back intoit to actually improve the
(14:58):
algorithm and thus improving theAI to help you At the moment
it's a tool.
It's a tool for yourself, Well atool, it's a tool for yourself.
Gerard Dombroski (15:06):
Well, if you use it as a tool for yourself
Like I don't use AI in my designprocess so I don't really want
my work being used in AI andother people's work for their
design process, because AI is aregurgitation of whatever images
are fed in, so everyone becomescollaborators in somebody
else's project and I think thereare intellectual property
(15:28):
issues there.
Ben Sutherland (15:30):
Sure, I don't know.
Is it actually the imagesthemselves, or is?
It how you're using it.
Gerard Dombroski (15:38):
I think there's two things here.
If we talk just about imagegenerating ones, they are fed
off a database of images Sure.
Ben Sutherland (15:48):
Yeah, yeah, mid journey definitely is.
Gerard Dombroski (15:50):
And if your images is is in there most of
the time, most of us willprobably have an image and
they're like oh man, it's sodiluted though, yeah, yeah, but
I Does it really matter?
Ben Sutherland (16:01):
Well, for me personally.
Gerard Dombroski (16:02):
I don't particularly want my work being
fed into teach AIs.
Sam Brown (16:08):
But back to that I mean.
Gerard Dombroski (16:10):
Because, that's my livelihood, is my
ideas, my idea generation.
Sam Brown (16:17):
Sure, and I 100% get where you're coming from, gerard
, and it is a sticky the wholecopyright, intellectual property
thing around AI is sticky butif you're, if you look at it
from you know that caddy golferanalogy that I that I mentioned
earlier is it not the designer'sresponsibility to use it in
(16:37):
like an ethical manner?
Like that's where sort ofquestions come into it around.
If you are using ai in the waythat you've sort of alluded to,
is it your responsibility to, asa designer, to sort of outline
that you have used ai in thatway and and credit like others
where they're due?
Ben Sutherland (16:58):
you know what I mean well, I guess it is
possible for someone to, let'ssay, on mid journey, create a
prompt that says something alongthe lines of bill beyer today,
I know you are gerard dombrowski, based on his previous work,
design me a two-story buildingthat will be blah, blah, blah,
(17:21):
blah, yeah, and it maypotentially output an image of
something similar to, or somecertain aspects of, what you've
previously designed.
I guess that's the thing yeah.
Gerard Dombroski (17:34):
So a better example is um.
I've just watched a videobefore on somebody saying draw
me a tirao ando house, uh, on ahill.
And so today under health tiaraunder obviously has far more um
buildings out there.
I've got like one and a half,so there's no real danger of
anybody stealing my ideas yet,but maybe when I'm 90.
(17:57):
But like there's his I, I don'tknow if today under is given
these like mid-journey orwhatever permission to use his
pictures of his building but youcan go and design that yourself
anyway.
Yeah, but they're not like we'retalking about ai at the moment,
(18:18):
we're talking about ai uh in asort of conceptual design route,
rather than using it as a caddyfor compliance or something
else.
Sam Brown (18:28):
See, it's interesting because, yeah, your take on it.
Gerardo, your argument of useis something that I actually
haven't even really considered.
Well, I hope not, because we'rearchitects.
Gerard Dombroski (18:40):
We don't want to outsource yeah, but I haven't
conceptual design to toconsider things but I haven't
even considered other people.
Sam Brown (18:48):
Yeah, I haven't even really considered that other
people would like.
The way that I've always seenthe use of ai, or the way that
we have and you know um sort ofinteracted with it today, is
like you just said.
Is is purely from like acompliance or like assistance
point of view for one for one ofa better term.
You know, like if you get anrfi and it's like can you answer
(19:09):
like these boring questionsabout fire?
No one really wants to read thefire code.
So you ask ai and most of thetime it gets pretty right.
You know, yeah, and obviouslyyou're editing it and you're
reviewing it, but like it savesyou having to do a lot of the
background work.
So we use it for that sort ofthing.
Maybe even write us the blurbfor an Instagram.
Gerard Dombroski (19:29):
Help me formalize this email.
Write an angry email and saymake it not damning.
Sam Brown (19:36):
Yeah, exactly.
Gerard Dombroski (19:37):
It's everywhere.
Sam Brown (19:40):
Yeah, you're so right , but I hadn't even really
thought of people using it as adesign tool today.
I mean, we've used it.
We've used like Archivinci,which is like a rendering an AI
rendering generator to just kindof like really quickly come up
with like a render for a conceptor something when a client's
(20:01):
like can I see what this kitchenlooks like in pastels?
Gerard Dombroski (20:04):
or something along those lines in that
scenario do you draw it and thenyou say oh yeah, you put in
like an image and it justapplies materials, or pretty
much.
Sam Brown (20:13):
Yeah, it's sort of it depends, it depends how.
It's not perfect, but, and itdepends how detailed you want it
to go.
But yeah, essentially like youtake a screen snapshot of your
like revit model or a handsketch or something that you've
done and it like takes that andthen just applies materials and
and scene and setting based onprompts, and that's like it's.
(20:37):
To be honest, I've never we'venever really actually used it in
like a formal presentation, butit's like it gives you enough
of a concept that you can belike hey, this is what it looks
like, moving on to the nextthing, kind of thing.
You know what I mean.
Gerard Dombroski (20:48):
Yeah, and when you do that, are you like?
Oh, this is exactly what Ithought.
Never Easy to control, orthrows a few spanners.
Sam Brown (21:01):
It's 95% spanners, I'd say it's got some weird
fingers going on.
Well, I mean, that's the thing,and it's even like you know,
like it would be straight lines,right?
You know, architecture has alot of straight lines and it
generally, I mean, I personallydon't do any parametric work,
but AI for some reason justloves to just toss a random
little curve in there, or youknow like you see in a random
(21:21):
like eight-fingered,long-fingered seven-fingered
hands Like heaps of Zaha orsomething.
Well, did you guys see thatimage that I sent you guys?
Ben Sutherland (21:32):
So I used.
Sam Brown (21:34):
It was ugly as hell yeah crazy, eh, so I used Dali.
I was just like create an imagefor our podcast episode widget
that we have for each episode.
I was like make a building, acontemporary building, for a
podcast about the use of AI inarchitecture, and that's what it
(21:56):
produced, yeah.
Ben Sutherland (21:59):
I don't think Dali is useless.
The only thing I've ever gotthat's good out of Dali is this.
One time I made my niece a signfor her dog grooming company,
where I was like put a dog in abath and make it look like it's
just been well cleaned.
It did a pretty good job there,nice, but still you can't
(22:23):
change, change it, you can'tadapt it very well.
Yeah, I think it's prettyaverage at the moment oh, hold
on, ben gerard can't hear us.
Sam Brown (22:32):
Do you know what ai generation gerard's, the ai
gerard that we're using for thisepisode?
He phased out, and so we've hadto get the real gerard back in
should we just fill him in therefor a little bit robot?
Ben Sutherland (22:46):
this is no longer gerard dobroski, this is
um his, his ai.
What was that movie where theyuh?
Gerard Dombroski (22:55):
they all plug in and, um, then their little
robot things go out.
Sam Brown (22:59):
During the day I was thinking about something I was
thinking about that film withJoaquin Phoenix and he falls in
love with the robot ScarlettJohansson.
Ben Sutherland (23:09):
Oh, yeah, yeah, oh not her, oh, Scarlett Her
yeah her, I was going to sayhero, but nope.
Gerard Dombroski (23:18):
That was a mean-ass house, wasn't it?
Ben Sutherland (23:19):
That's going to happen.
That's going to happen for sure.
That's going to happen.
It's all very dystopian.
I mean, the only thing that isstopping that from happening is
like chat, gpt, being able tovocally talk, right, and you can
already get like plugins thatallows you to do that to
(23:39):
translate the language to speech.
Gerard Dombroski (23:47):
Yeah, to do that, to translate the language
to speech.
Sam Brown (23:50):
Yeah, have you guys seen that video of the robot
putting?
Gerard Dombroski (23:52):
dishes away.
No like sticking a dishwashergiving them commands.
So it's powered by chat gpt.
It's like a what looks like,probably like a boston dynamics
robot powered by chat gpt it'scrazy man technology yeah so
that's, that's the thing.
Ben Sutherland (24:06):
That's the thing I think is like super powerful,
because I'm pro, I'm pro ai andum.
I think, like if you think ofit like of single use machines,
like a microwave, for example,which is just designed to like
it's a tool for humans to use toheat up their food, like if you
(24:26):
think of like all of these newai opportunities there are yeah,
literally a lot of them arejust like tools that we can use
for our own benefit.
I don't think like don't get mewrong there's like a lot of
ethical, a lot of like thingsthat need to kind of be overcome
in terms of like making it notplagiarise everyone's work and
(24:51):
making it ethically okay andthat sort of thing.
Sam Brown (24:53):
Yeah, but other than that, I think it's well, I can't
do that anymore.
Ben Sutherland (24:59):
I've been very strict on that Anymore.
I think can't do that anymore.
They've been very strictanymore.
I think, well, they can teachyou if you I think the guys that
like that work for open ai theycan.
They've got like access to themaster file basically and it
doesn't have any of thoselimiters on it and they can
definitely.
Um, yeah, we're just very muchlike beta phase like it's.
Gerard Dombroski (25:24):
Oh yeah, it's early days, so it's like that's
the crazy thing.
It's like the wild west andthere's no real regulation on
anything.
Sam Brown (25:29):
So no it is it is happening for sure but I think
what you mentioned just beforebeing is pretty relevant, in
that you use it for aspects ofthings, so you'd use it for
aspects of design, we'd use itfor aspects of architecture.
We're'd use it for aspects ofdesign or we'd use it for
aspects of architecture.
We're not going balls deep andcompletely giving ourselves over
to ai.
It's not like although theremay be, I don't know, I haven't
(25:50):
actually even researched it'snot like there's an ai
architectural practice.
It's not like ai can become aregistered architect.
Do you think it could ever gothat way?
Well, maybe not definitely.
Ben Sutherland (26:06):
Yeah, they're definitely practices that only
that specialize in ai, thatcreate supportive software for
you know, the architecture andconstruction realm.
There's a lot of people doingthat, uh.
But yeah, I don't think, andthere's obviously, there's a lot
of tools that architects canuse.
There's, like form generationis probably quite a big one, uh,
(26:28):
a lot of like just formgeneration, for, yeah, of course
, like you put in its variablesit sounded conceptual it's
encroaching on our territoryconceptual, no, but it's uh, it
can be very beneficial.
Basically, it can narrow downpotential forms based on certain
(26:48):
parameters, such as minimumsizes, uh, you know, like
anything kind of structuralparameters or resource consent
parameters.
So within this area, and it hasto be under this height, and
yada, yada, yada, there'sdefinitely like form generation.
Sam Brown (27:07):
That was inevitable, though that was always going to
happen so this is where gerardgets nervous and I yeah, I'm
dubious to get nervous becauseyou're, you're, you're, you're
talking about using it as adesign or form generation of
this design, whether you likeexactly that's design, yeah and
that's where, and it's stillthat's where I feel that and for
me that should still hold.
Gerard Dombroski (27:28):
I won't do that in my office yeah, but you
do hold control.
Ben Sutherland (27:32):
It's not like you're like you have to do what
it tells you to do.
You can make in your owninformed decisions.
Basically, it's like having abillion employees all going out
and doing one sketch of whatthey think could.
Look there and coming back andpresenting it to you and being
like this is what I think.
You're not the.
You're still the one making thedecision.
(27:54):
Fair point.
You're not like oh no, it'stold me and this is the most
optimum way to design thisbuilding.
Therefore, I have to go withthis building.
Design like it's not a thing.
Sam Brown (28:04):
How do you feel?
How do you feel, though, ben,if you, if you ask it to
generate you a form, and you areworking on your own stuff on
the side, on the side and itproduces something better than
what you have done in terms ofwhat and how you feel, and so
you adopt it?
Do you feel there's integrityto your design then?
Ben Sutherland (28:25):
no, because it's still like.
It's still so underdeveloped.
You like, at the end of the day, you want to do what you
believe, what you perceive asbeing the best do you guys, do
you guys ever remember the firstessay you had to write as a kid
?
Sam Brown (28:43):
yeah, well, I don't remember the exact one, but I
remember writing essays.
Gerard Dombroski (28:46):
I distinctly remember like, um, there's like
this book.
We had to like, uh, do a bookreview or whatever on this book
and as soon as you like, youread the quote or something and
then you're trying to place itin, like you'd get so influenced
by, or you'd find an examplethat talked about something in
(29:07):
an essay kind of way.
I found it super hard to thenpull back and not be influenced
by the other words that I say,so you kind of end up writing
this weird dislodge betweensomebody else's idea.
Ben Sutherland (29:23):
So you mean you put the quote in and then you
rewrite the paragraph based onthat quote.
Gerard Dombroski (29:27):
Well it's probably better when you fast
forward to university orsomething and you Google or
you're looking through otherbooks about other books.
So somebody else is writingabout somebody else's work, oh
here, such and such, and I wouldfind it real hard to pull my
(29:48):
mind back away from how somebodyelse had written something to
then write something myself.
But I'm saying that I've neverbeen a very confident writer, so
I don't exactly have the skillsto.
Ben Sutherland (30:01):
What's the difference between that and
let's say you and I arecollaborating on these projects.
Sam Brown (30:07):
Are you saying that?
Ben Sutherland (30:08):
we're collaborating on these projects,
right?
So you've come up with thisdesign.
I'm like, yeah, that's actuallya great design.
I think that you know that'sbetter than what I've got.
Let's go with that.
All of a sudden am I a baddesigner because I think that
your design is better than mineno, no, I'm, I'm saying it's.
Gerard Dombroski (30:28):
It's hard not to be influenced by, by
something and between us twopeople.
I'm all for influence, but Ipersonally, it's impossible not
to.
Sam Brown (30:40):
gerard doesn't want to be influenced by the machine,
yeah.
Ben Sutherland (30:43):
He already is, except in this case.
The machines are just otherawesome architects.
Sam Brown (30:49):
I mean that's an interesting thing because a lot
of this comes back.
I mean, we're talking about itfrom a concept point of view.
A lot of this comes back toeven just precedent.
Right, we're all designers,architects We've've been through
university.
Even in our professional world,we rely heavily on precedent
and looking at what other peoplehave done before and using that
(31:11):
to help inform solutions andthings like that.
Ultimately, we're coming upwith our own design.
But I kind of get where you'recoming from, ben, and that you
sort of be using ai to createprecedent for you.
Is that what you're saying?
Ben Sutherland (31:26):
yeah, I'm not.
The reality of it is.
I'm not going to be like thisis the final form.
That's not going to happen.
It's like you always have toevolve it, like it doesn't have
all the information.
It's never going to have allthe information because there's
such a huge human element toarchitecture that I mean like
(31:47):
maybe it'll get there.
I mean it probably will getthere.
Sorry, I'm going back on thatcomment, but it's nowhere near
there yet.
Sam Brown (31:55):
It's interesting because we're looking at it from
this design point of view and Ithink you're right that it will
never be able to design as wellas we can.
But I don't know, can it?
Can it, will it be able todetail and draw and like,
project, manage and do all ofthe like menial tasks that make
(32:19):
up, you know, 80, if not more,of our job?
Ben Sutherland (32:25):
is.
Sam Brown (32:25):
That is that the realm is that the realm where ai
is probably more going to fitinto the into architecture, and
the fact that you're you know,after, after multiple projects,
you're able to build a bigenough like like large language
model that you can designsomething yourself you, and then
you feed that design into youknow, into the large language
(32:46):
model and say, produce a likedetailed drawing package, and it
just does it do you think?
Ben Sutherland (32:52):
I think, yeah, I think.
You hit the nail on the headyeah I think like a way more
realistic or like better use,better application, for it is
the likes of the council orwhatever the building code
actually being like, I don'tknow having some sort of ai or
3604, for example.
How awesome would it be if youcould just, you know, have your
(33:15):
building designed and thenoutput the detailed design and
documentation pretty muchautomatically based on your own
design.
I think that that is is, yeah,a better use of of ai, and I
also think in the constructionrealm is going to see a lot of
benefits, because it's like it'sjust got so much areas, so many
(33:36):
areas where you can add value.
That is just like low-hangingfruit, like scheduling, you know
, like scheduling is perfect forit and humans just cannot
manage a construction project tosave themselves, no matter how
good you are.
There's just so many areas thatyou can optimise on in the
future.
Gerard Dombroski (33:57):
Do you know around humans?
Humans have been finding waysto get out of grunt work for
millennia.
Sam Brown (34:02):
It is, it's that grunt work for for millennia.
It is, I think, grunt, I thinkit's grunt work.
Gerard Dombroski (34:05):
It's a lot more palatable to um, give away
sort of those areas.
I just want to jump back toprecedent real quick before we
get too far away.
Yeah, because I I have more, uh, extreme thoughts here.
Because I'm an extreme person,don't judge me too harshly
that's why you're an architectyeah.
so over the years, people aregoing to find out that I'm
pretty opinionated.
(34:25):
I think designing via precedentis Good up to a point, but I
think university pushes it waytoo hard and I see people using
it way too hard.
I think architects like AnneHoltrop, who actively tries to
trick himself into ideas fromother realms.
(34:49):
So he does like ink, splashesand squiggles and we'll dissect
that and turn it into a building.
So I see precedent being usedway too much where people just
make another version of somebodyelse's building, like this
world of mini Zomthors.
But AI is generally designingvia precedent, as you're saying.
(35:14):
So it's a match together of allthe images it's seen and it's
only creating interpretation ofother things that it's already
seen.
So I think for me, the moreinteresting architecture that I
particularly want to see isnewer things, things that you
haven't seen before and that'snever going to come out of AI
unless it's been fed that which,if it doesn't exist, it can't
(35:37):
be fed.
Ben Sutherland (35:40):
I agree.
Can I butt in there?
Have you finished?
Gerard Dombroski (35:43):
Send it, mate.
Get in there.
Okay, keep the game of pingpong going.
Sam Brown (35:48):
This might be, our most heated episode yet.
I agree, but I also disagree.
Ben Sutherland (35:54):
I think what you're talking about is a small,
small small percentage ofarchitecture.
There's no way that any kind ofthis densification, any of
these developments, anythinglike that.
It's just not enough.
It's just unfeasible to createsomething new every single time.
(36:17):
So there's got to be like anelement of I can do better but
I'm not like going to recreate,redesign the wheel, like you
know what I'm saying Likethere's got to be an element of
let's just make themsignificantly better than what's
out there now, not let's createsomething new altogether.
Gerard Dombroski (36:37):
I think that comes down to each architect
individual and why you're whatyou're doing in each particular
job and, as we talked about inthe design episode, we kind of
have lines of inquiry and design.
(36:57):
I guess, yeah, what eachproject you're working on and
why you found that projectinteresting to work on, and for
me, coming up with something newis always going to be like a
strong priority in terms of thatline of inquiry, gerard, is
(37:19):
there?
Sam Brown (37:19):
is there capacity at all for a line of ai inquiry
though?
Ben Sutherland (37:23):
exactly if anyone's going to design a
challenge you.
You're new and unique.
Sam Brown (37:27):
Surely it's ai right like why not use that as your,
as your your directive and likemaybe you?
You obviously like set yourselfsome very clear parameters
around what you're going to tryand feed AI and just see what
comes out of it iteratively.
Gerard Dombroski (37:43):
That could be a pretty interesting process On
a low-tech AI.
Maybe we print off a bunch ofthings, put it in a paper masher
and then just squirt it atthings and see what comes out,
and there's your architecture Imean you've gone.
Ben Sutherland (37:57):
You've gone analog again I'm just a very
simple person totally and Ithink, but I think, I think what
ben's alluding to I think whatben's alluding to is I'm good at
one thing and it's going totake it away from me, don't take
(38:17):
it away from me, please.
Sam Brown (38:19):
It'll never take it away from you, but I think what.
Ben's alluding to is superrelevant, because you're right,
ben, in that there is so much ofour profession which isn't
bespoke, you know, and not tosay that it's what we
necessarily do, although aspectsof probably all of our
businesses have a level of notregurgitation.
But you're doing the same thingover and over again.
(38:41):
But from the built environmentperspective, particularly in the
residential realm, the hugepercentage of it is just the
same shit, regenerated time andtime and time and time and time
again, and that what you'resaying is the place for ai,
rather than these like beautifulone-off bespoke elements.
(39:02):
That's where it doesn'tnecessarily have a place, unless
you're going full meta andusing it as your line of design
inquiry yep agreed.
Ben Sutherland (39:11):
Well said sam succinct.
Gerard Dombroski (39:15):
I think, like I've referred back to the park
muse as a awesome example of alike a multi unit, so at the
time fitting it's a development,lot of units on one site, but
an incredibly interestingbuilding and quite unique.
But it does follow Roger's lineof inquiry, his aesthetic and
(39:40):
the things he was looking into,which AI isn't probably going to
come up with a ParkMuse in ahurry.
Ben Sutherland (39:51):
No, but ParkMuse is.
They can now that one's beendesigned, but ParkMuse is also a
bespoke solution.
Sam Brown (40:00):
You know what I mean like, but all architecture is
bespoke.
Everything we do is bespoke,correct correct, but
unfortunately so much of like.
The realm that we work in islike regurgitation.
Look at all the group homebuild solutions and everything
and like.
Although we may not want thatto be the case or we may not
(40:20):
necessarily see that as beingthe best solution, unfortunately
it is.
You know what I mean.
Gerard Dombroski (40:24):
So you sort of have a solution or not just
what's happening?
Sam Brown (40:28):
sorry, best solution is not the right term um but it
is, what sort of?
No, I just no, I I agree, butit is there, you know so you
sort of have to, yeah so yousort of have to like find
solutions for working with thosemaybe not necessarily us, but
others.
So we're just sort of whatwe're talking about is the place
(40:48):
of ai in our profession, notnecessarily its place in our
practice.
Ben Sutherland (40:54):
You, know what I mean.
Those group home builders are100% investing in AI and they're
going to be killing it.
Sam Brown (41:04):
They'd be foolish.
If they weren't, they'd bekilling it in a couple of years'
time.
They'd be idiots if theyweren't.
Maybe we've given them too muchinformation.
Gerard Dombroski (41:18):
That's perfect for it if you're bigging out
standard details and then yourAI could figure out like which
detail call out needed to bewhere and like.
At some point you'll probablybe able to automate a set of
plans totally that'll be therevery soon in the development
realm.
Ben Sutherland (41:34):
This is slightly different from the architecture
realm, the actual designing,but I have thought of a bunch of
really powerful ways that Ithink that AI can be used that
isn't currently being used.
I guess one of them, I wouldsay, for a developer that you'd
want to be using is like theautomated feasibility studies.
(41:57):
I think that a finding theproject that's a perfect one, um
, but then also understanding,like, what marketing media, what
the, what people are buying, um, what people are what houses
are selling for, like all ofthat information you can
automate can be into a machinelearning model, basically create
(42:20):
some sort of investmentcriteria and it can essentially
output the top 100 propertiesthat meet that criteria or
something along those lines, andthen automated feasibility
studies.
So if you've got it undercontract, you can kind of
understand what you can actuallybuild on that piece of land.
There's so many amazing waysand creative ways that you can
(42:45):
actually use AI or machinelearning.
That isn't actually being doneyet, or probably is done, but
it's all in-house.
Sam Brown (42:54):
Yeah, it'd be interesting to see if anybody
has started developing that sortof thing because, like you said
, it's a no-brainer,particularly from that
development side, and surelythere is people that are, you
know, there's players in themarket that are big enough that
are putting that effort intodeveloping those sort of those
large language models yeah, theydefinitely are, because the
(43:15):
other thing is, a lot of thoseum llms are basically they can
help you code those exact codesanyway.
Ben Sutherland (43:24):
So that's another amazing thing is like
machine learning, helping you todevelop more machine learning.
Gerard Dombroski (43:32):
Yeah, I like the irony in those ones.
Ben Sutherland (43:36):
Yeah, no, it's awesome.
There's huge, huge potentialthere.
It's exponential.
Gerard Dombroski (43:40):
The scope obviously is massive.
I know we've been focusing ondesign, but yeah, it's huge.
Ben Sutherland (43:47):
Well, again, surely there's some positive,
surely there's some, yeah, proarchitecture, AI applications
that even Gerard could use.
I think we've covered a few ofthem you know or would use.
Gerard Dombroski (44:01):
I don't think we've covered anything that,
Gerard actually thinks is yeah,I think like that feasibility
side is interesting, like the.
I Did a crit at uni the otherday for one of Tain's groups and
(44:24):
it was this guy who was usingdrone lidar and was trying to
looking at overlaying AI toEffectively outsource your site
analysis.
So it would build you asatellite access plane,
depending on your rules, or thisis where I was hypothesizing
where it could go, and then itcould, like you say, it could
(44:47):
show where in the site you couldbuild within a set of rules.
Blah, blah, blah.
So there's ways of speeding upgrunt work, but yeah, I'm just
an old man when it comes tocoming on with the new
technology.
Sam Brown (45:05):
I think my issue with it.
Do you like robots?
I think my issue Do you likerobots?
Ben Sutherland (45:13):
I love robots.
What do you think of BostonDynamics?
Do you like robots that can dobackflips?
Do you like dog robots?
Because that's I mean, that'sjust a different form of AI that
you might appreciate a littlebit more.
Gerard Dombroski (45:31):
I definitely appreciate that the engineering
marvel is amazing, butfundamentally I just have an
element of fear to these things.
I think that's it.
Sam Brown (45:41):
That's what I was going to say before Ben just
started going off his head aboutrobots that's what I was going
to say for me, it's notnecessarily fair, I think, for
my issue with it is trust.
You know, like I will ask it todo something and it will do
something, but I'm still goingto like check it you know what I
(46:03):
mean and I'm still going tolike edit it and review it and
ultimately, like I don't thinkit.
Maybe it's my use of it, ormaybe it's my like lack of
confidence in it.
I don't know what it is, but Idon't have the ability to let it
do something and just let thatbe.
You know what I mean.
So you ultimately end up doingthe work anyway yeah, that's
(46:24):
totally fine.
Ben Sutherland (46:26):
That's totally fine, but like going back to the
robot thing that I was losingmy losing the plot over, yeah,
another kind of robot is likethe sensors and that sort of
thing, um.
So I mean like environmentalsensors and that whole
information and data collectionand data feedback.
I think that's an an amazingway.
(46:46):
Another amazing way to to use,well, just the collection of the
data being fed back throughsome sort of machine learning
model to create predictions onhow to do things better in the
(47:07):
future, whether it be likethermally better you know
sunlight or I don't know how thespaces are used and does this?
Sam Brown (47:16):
exist, or are you hoping that it exists?
Ben Sutherland (47:19):
No, I think it exists, but it's quite
fragmented.
So at the moment you might getone for carbon CO levels in your
house or something like that,but I don't think there's like
one that does it all.
Or there might be now, but Ijust think that whole data
collection thing has just beenso underutilized in the
(47:39):
construction realm.
And I think that's anothermassive low-hanging fruit for us
to be able to design higherquality or, as Sam would say,
higher-performing spaces, andactually understand what makes a
high-performing space, becauseyou've got post-occupancy
monitoring.
Sam Brown (47:57):
Yeah, there's the post-occupancy stuff and then
it's like we talked about thefeasibility side of it as well
when you're talking here, and Idon't know if any of this exists
, but what I'm kind of picturingin my sci-fi mind is like a
little kind of like a GoogleEarth sensor thing that you
could put on the site in yourproposed build platform and it
scans it over a however long Idon't know 24-hour period,
(48:20):
week-long period or whatever andit tracks the sun and it tracks
the wind directions and itgives you shading and it gives
you all of this sort of data.
So you're really optimising thehouse location or your building
location or whatever.
That's where I could see itbeing super beneficial, yeah.
Ben Sutherland (48:35):
Well, what I was alluding to was more of like a
smoke alarm, so it's in a housealready, but that is also cool
what you were talking about sohow would the smoke alarm thing
work, though?
Sam Brown (48:45):
is it going to learn?
Ben Sutherland (48:46):
what's this like ?
It's got a bunch of sensorsright, so it's got like your co
levels, it's got um heat, it'sgot moisture, it's got movement,
uh, energy, basically all ofthat stuff, and it relays it
back and the data and it allowsyou to understand how your
(49:06):
spaces are performing, whatworks and what doesn't I mean,
smart homes exist to a degree,though, don't they like, I guess
, if it's but there's, butthere's no proof that those
smart homes that you're buildingare actually smart homes,
because once you leave them, howdo you know?
in five years' time it'sperforming to the same degree
that it did when you built it.
Gerard Dombroski (49:27):
Fair?
Do you need AI to assess that?
Ben Sutherland (49:32):
Well, it's just like I said, it's just another
application.
That's just.
How do you assess it otherwise,other than just living in it
and being like?
Gerard Dombroski (49:41):
well, I don't know.
Sam Brown (49:42):
You have the sense comfortable I think what this is
boiling down to is like whenthe whole ai explosion took off
and everybody was like oh, it'scoming for our jobs.
You know, creatives were like,particularly like writers and
things like that, I think wereinitially quite fearful, because
they were like you know, youcan get chichi pd to write you a
novel, but actually it can dothat for sure, like it can
(50:05):
design a building for sure, butit doesn't do it with any class,
it doesn't do it with anynuance, it does it with bizarre
creativity.
You know what I mean.
Like actors are quite fearful aswell, but it can do all this
stuff, but it cannot do it thatwell.
But what it can do well is,like we've talked about, is it's
that low-hanging fruit, it'sthose menial tasks, it's that
(50:25):
stuff where you just have tobasically data, mine or
regurgitate information and whatit's saving us doing is going
through and reading, you know,the entire fire code and it's
summarizing what we need it toand it's like shortest thing.
I think that's where it's gotthe biggest application to date
yeah, the the compliance side isseems pretty epic.
Gerard Dombroski (50:50):
Still haven't been brave enough to use it yet.
Sam Brown (50:53):
Yeah, I haven't.
Johnny uses it for RFIs,successfully, I might add, so it
knows more than the majority ofbuilding consent offices, which
that you know is maybe a lowbarrier for entry.
Ben Sutherland (51:08):
I just use it to find, like, the correct part.
You know like to find theclauses and to find the
information.
I don't, I don't like trust.
Gerard Dombroski (51:19):
I don't need to trust it, because all it's
doing is pointing me in adirection at this point in time
you're kind of just using it asa pa right yeah I think once it
oversteps and becomes tooincluded, that's I don't know it
gets a bit pointless for me.
Like, if you're, let's say,worst-case scenario, somebody
(51:43):
runs an architecture practicethat AI designs and then AI
sorts out the compliance and AIdoes a good chunk of the drawing
, like what's your role?
What's your point?
What's your role in life?
Why are you?
What are you?
What's your role in life?
Why are you doing this?
Ben Sutherland (51:56):
there's easier ways to make money you're sort
of there as a well architecturearchitecture is definitely not
the way to make money let's makethat very clear there's no
money in this profession, well,most classes here you might
start making money, design andoutputting like spaces and like
(52:16):
well, yeah, exactly, the processof creating is inherently
enjoyable and for me the processof thinking about and like
dreaming future, scaping likethat's.
Sam Brown (52:30):
That's the whole point of it if you became
totally AI driven, you'd just bea master prompter really.
Ben Sutherland (52:37):
Yeah, but don't forget that everything's driven
by the market.
So unless a lot of peoplewanted to actually design that
way, the tool may exist, but noone's ever going to use it
anyway.
Sam Brown (52:50):
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised, though, if there was.
Gerard Dombroski (52:55):
If there wasn't already.
Sam Brown (52:56):
There was a firm out there that was purely AI-focused
.
Gerard Dombroski (52:59):
There's always somebody in there.
Sam Brown (53:00):
Should I ask ChatGPT if there is.
Gerard Dombroski (53:03):
Yeah.
Ben Sutherland (53:05):
Ask him how to design like Gerard Dombrovsky.
Gerard Dombroski (53:09):
How'd you go on your idea, Sam, if everything
you said in this chat wasgenerated by ChatGPT?
Sam Brown (53:18):
It doesn't have the speed, it can't flick off the
top of the dome like I can.
Gerard Dombroski (53:26):
Your computing power in your mind is.
Sam Brown (53:28):
It might work for me then yeah no, I did plan on
trying to do this all throughchat gpt.
I wanted to go full meta, butno, it just wasn't going to work
.
Ben Sutherland (53:39):
I'll be like us after a couple of wines I should
have dressed up as a robot nice.
That would have been fuckingawesome if we actually did that.
Sam Brown (54:03):
Oh, anyone else got anything?
I keep asking ChatGPT about ifthere's any architecture firms
that purely use AI in theirdesign, and all it talks about
is AI tools that are being usedby like architecture firms or
designers.
Ben Sutherland (54:18):
So even AI can't .
Even AI can't answer it.
Sam Brown (54:26):
These are the top five Spacemaker, which uses AI
to analyze and optimize sunlight, noise, wind and building
massing.
There you go.
Testfit, which uses a time forreal-time feasibility studies in
residential and commercialbuilding design.
There you go, ben, sign me up.
(54:48):
Ai Space Factory, which uses AIand advanced manufacturing
techniques to design andconstruct sustainable habitats.
And Katera, which uses advancedtechnologies and AI in their
design and constructionworkflows.
That could be a firm actuallythat uses it.
Katera is so expensive.
What is it?
Ben Sutherland (55:11):
It's a software, isn't it?
It's a software.
Oh right, oh yeah, Off-siteconstruction.
It's an off, isn't it A?
Sam Brown (55:13):
software.
Oh right, oh yeah, Off-siteconstruction.
No, it's an off-siteconstruction company.
Ben Sutherland (55:20):
Oh okay, oh, Katera, they're not even around
anymore, though they went under,I think.
Oh there you go, American oneeh.
Yeah that's it.
They were backed by theAmerican government.
Sam Brown (55:28):
Oh, really Interesting.
Ben Sutherland (55:29):
They fell.
Sam Brown (55:30):
So AI didn't work for them.
Ben Sutherland (55:32):
No, it's early, I think.
I think they fell over beforeOpenAI existed.
Oh, right.
Gerard Dombroski (55:40):
Interesting.
Ben Sutherland (55:42):
ChatGPT anyway.
Gerard Dombroski (55:43):
Yeah, I think it would be cool to talk about
the learning models quickly,because the Adobe thing I only
learned about yesterday or theday before, where they've
changed their terms of serviceor something and they'll be
taking all your data or all thethings you draw.
Ben Sutherland (56:03):
And charging you for it.
Sam Brown (56:07):
Can you opt out of that?
Gerard Dombroski (56:09):
I don't know If anyone knows how to opt out
of these things hit me up.
I tried to opt out of thesethings.
I know someone who knowsbecause I tried to opt out of
the um.
I tried to opt out of theinstagram one.
Ben Sutherland (56:19):
I followed this reel that sam, ask our friend
who does know these things.
Gerard Dombroski (56:24):
I'll just ask chit gpt send it because I think
that the people that areconcerned with their images
being used like I don't know, Ithink you should try, opt-out,
but ultimately you still want tobe able to share your work with
(56:45):
the world, for what's the pointof building and making cool
things if we can't share it withone another?
Ben Sutherland (56:52):
You can opt-out, according to me, old mate.
Okay, I'll send you this linkso you can.
Sam Brown (56:59):
Uh, you can go through the process right on
I'll put it in the show notes,so others can do that too.
How would you could?
Gerard Dombroski (57:07):
you could you recap cap sam?
Sam Brown (57:10):
can I recap what it says?
No, ben's got it up.
Gerard Dombroski (57:12):
I want to recap the whole episode,
assuming we're coming to an end.
Sam Brown (57:19):
I was just going to say what get AI to do it?
Gerard Dombroski (57:22):
No, no what were you?
Sam Brown (57:24):
saying I was going to say has anyone got any sort of
final thoughts?
I think it's interesting,gerard.
I'm glad you came at it fromthe use of it creatively point
of view, because I don't knowwhy, but I've never really
thought of using it as a designtool, but it's so true and it's
so relevant that people may, andthe implications of that are
(57:45):
pretty huge and I think that'ssomething we all probably need
to consider.
Maybe less so in theprofessional realm, but I just
caution any students that arethinking of using it but don't
get into bad habits.
Ben Sutherland (57:55):
Really, I think I think my positive outlook, or
where I want to see, what I wantto see more of, is definitely
in the data collection realm, asin like for for the environment
and that sort of thing.
Like it'd be so good to collectmore useful data out of the
(58:18):
architecture and constructionand, uh, you know, environmental
realm to help us make moreinformed decisions about our
built environment.
I think there's just not enoughof that at this point in time.
So anything in that realmwhether it be I don't know where
(58:39):
to plant trees or what to buildwhere, or anything like that I
think is hugely positive.
Sam Brown (58:48):
Gerard, yeah.
Gerard Dombroski (58:49):
I think, like you're saying, the data stuff is
pretty epic and thepossibilities there.
Like you're saying, the datastuff is pretty epic and the
possibilities there.
I just like making and I don'twant to be influenced.
I am robot and I want to besurprised with what I come up
with, versus what comes up whenI type something into a computer
.
Ben Sutherland (59:11):
That's still making.
Gerard Dombroski (59:16):
Good final rebuttal yeah, don't get into
architecture.
If you no robots allowed, gofind another career nice no
robots allowed in architecture,sorry.
Robots.
Sam Brown (59:35):
Cool guys, oh, bloody good.
Thank you again and just finalsign-offs.
Thanks for Connor and Jacob,and we've got some sweet new
merch, if anyone else, ifanybody wants to.
Ben Sutherland (59:49):
I already have the yellow ones.
Yeah, we do.
Sam Brown (59:50):
If anyone wants a cup of tea, hit us up.
Hopefully we'll have an onlinestore up and running at some
point, but um, uh, yeah, watchthis space and maybe the next
one will design with ai shaboomredefine t-shirts.
Gerard Dombroski (01:00:06):
Peace you.
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