Entering a dialogue with the machine leads to anthropomorphizing it, which is dangerous in the case of AI. We have been asking "will AI do things better than us?", when we should be asking "will AI need us?". It is imperative that we ensure that AI continues to be subservient to us, so the technologies that it generates continue to favor us. As AI improves at an exponential pace, it may become independent, and we become unnecessary to a hyper-efficient system. Look at the case of Revit, for example, in cities like Miami you can easily tell most skyscrapers were designed with Revit. The rigidity and efficiency of the software transcends the digital and becomes the physical, the architect becomes relegated to the tool. In a way we are employees to the tool, and the relationship with Revit is a pretty conventional software-user one, imagine what will happen if we put a face on the software and "converse" with it. Revit and CAD allowed architects to be faster, but that didn't translate to more free days for us, nor to the conditions for the unionizing of architects, nor us being paid better. Worse yet, it didn't lead to investors translating savings into better, larger or more affordable spaces for people. If anything, we have all these computer-made buildings where units are more unaffordable than ever. Revit and CAD just allowed the rich to get richer. We can be programmers or" strategists asking what is to inhabit spaces", but the ones to answer for us will always be those financing projects, unless clients begin having difficulties in finding architects who behave like mere executors, fearful of proposing improvements necessary to inhabitants' quality of life and of upsetting contractors. To the question of what is being human, I'd respond it is a series of conditions, one being having needs. We need safety, freedom and food. Food will be placed on the table by us, by keeping our jobs, freedom is an illusion but at least we have to ensure not letting machines enslave us further, and safety, in this context, by keeping machines subservient to us. The only way I could see humanity achieving peace, fulfillment and abundance for all is having AI help us construct the proverbial Matrix, and connecting to it, only there could we design boundless architectures, live healthy lives, manipulate time, travel endlessly while our physical bodies in this depleted earth are fed minimally, sufficiently to keep our uploaded consciousness.
