Design culture for Sustainable urban artificial intelligence: Bruno Latour and the search for a different AI urbanism

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability by drawing upon some key concepts of Bruno Latour’s philosophy. The idea of a sustainable AI urbanism - often understood as the juxtaposition of smart and eco urbanism - is here critiqued through a reconstruction of the conceptual sources of these two urban paradigms. Some key ideas of smart and eco urbanism are indicated as incompatible and therefore the fusion of these two paradigms is assessed as an unstable basis for shaping sustainable AI urbanism. The concepts in question - modernity, science and nature – are subsequently redefined following Latour’s philosophical perspective, in an attempt to define a different theoretical basis for a sustainable AI urbanism in the Anthropocene. Finally, the principles of a design philosophy shaped by Latour are used to change the design culture that informs AI urbanism towards a more sustainable practice. This paper constructs and promotes a dialogue between the disciplines of philosophy and urban theory with urban design in the conviction that the principles produced by the former and the practices carried out by the latter must start a biunivocal relationship. The paper reveals that in order to change design culture in the field of AI urbanism, it is necessary to rethink some of the key ideas that inform the Western and modern worldview through novel philosophical reflections.

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“…This raises the question of whether these models can be said to possess a form of agency, even if it is not equivalent to human agency. Latour's actor-network theory [25] provides a useful perspective on this issue, suggesting that agency is not a property inherent to humans alone, but rather emerges from the complex interactions and associations between human and nonhuman actors within a network. From this view, ChatGPT and other AI systems can be understood as nonhuman actors that exercise a form of agency through their ability to shape human knowledge, communication, and decision-making processes.…”