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In 2022, over 700 top academics and researchers behind the leading artificial intelligence companies were asked in a survey about future A.I. risk. Half of those surveyed stated that there was a 10 percent or greater chance of human extinction (or similarly permanent and severe disempowerment) from future A.I. systems. Technology companies building today’s large language models are caught in a race to put all of humanity on that plane.
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Kabakoo Academies, the reference training platform for African youth, is launching the “Building tomorrow in the Sahel” program, an interdisciplinary training course aimed at architects and other building trades such as masonry, plumbing, carpentry and painting.
Read more🔵 FS 🟡 Sci-fi
Science fiction writers have anticipated a variety of modern inventions, from cars to organ transplants. In particular, some decades-old works of dystopian fiction don’t read like fiction anymore. At times, writers were even able to influence the course of history.
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The technology and policies are falling into place. But we’ll need a revolution in U.S. home retrofit business models and financing to scale up enough to meet the climate challenge.
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A joint Anglo-Italian architectural project has produced a 'floating city' concept - a collective of orb-like houses that would supposedly house up to 50,000 people in the event global warming leads to mass flooding. The concept was hatched by an international team of architects and designers led by Italian firm Luca Curci Architects and UK-based Tim Fu Design, who came together to design a eco-friendly village that adapts to future climate demands.
Read more🔵 FS: Future Studies 🔘 Arch: Architecture
I thought about ChatGBT’s use in writing about architecture. Would it encourage more trite, languid, anodyne articles about design published online and in print? I’ll let you decide. Here’s an edited transcript of my 15-minute interview with the bot.
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Despite some initial skepticism, more surveys are showing that consumers are eager to participate in the metaverse, and they’re looking for ways to engage with their favorite brands in virtual environments.
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Global issues such as the housing crisis and climate change are galvanising ambitions for a new generation of high-tech cities. The Line, a 500-metre-tall skyscraper that will house nine million people in northwestern Saudi Arabia, as shown in this video, is the most recent example but not the only one. BIG, Foster + Partners and OMA are among multiple architecture studios helping to masterplan futuristic urban centres, which often claim to be designed with a focus on sustainability.
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While Gray had taken some consulting gigs over the years, he’d never received an offer like this one. The first shock was the money: significantly more than he’d earned from all but one of his books. The second was the task: researching the aesthetics of seminal works of science fiction such as Blade Runner. The biggest surprise, however, was the ultimate client: Mohammed bin Salman, the 36-year-old crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
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This conversation on Second-order design fiction is part of an ongoing collective research project by Fry and Perera on Technology, Cosmotechnics, Design and Resistance. In their conversation Fry and Perera explore the concept of second-order design fiction (SoDF) as an emergent means of addressing how design is understood and practiced in the context of the contemporary ecological crisis. They propose how SoDF can be considered a potential alternative to the ‘crisis of representation’ that contributes significantly to the complications related to finding ways out of unsustainable practices.
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