Exploring the positive potential of AI part II: Shared languages, systems, spaces, and cities

Our Felix Kabo, research director, and Mike Tunkey, design principal, joined Eric to talk about the optimistic potential of AI moving forward and other key themes now that AI is officially “off and running” with its market size projected to reach $184 Billion by year’s end. 

Conversation summary 

During the second half of the conversation, the trio focused more on the functional requirements of empowering cross-disciplinary discovery in AI. They highlighted how creating a shared language, better physical spaces, and better systems can all make this possible. 

On creating shared language 

“This also reminds me of another piece that is important to this interdisciplinary work across AI, which is how do you learn to speak one another’s languages, right? I do not know how to communicate effectively about spatial things, and I am sure most community members do not either. 

But one of the things we encountered as we did more work between computer and social scientists is that our highly specialized languages are quite different. And we are talking about community engagement, well those stakeholders have their own specialized languages. 

And while it is efficient to use these specialized languages in our own worlds, they challenge conversations across these different sectors and communities. We need to build shared vocabulary, or we almost need a translator to be most effective.” (Eric Rice) 

“A lot of this conversation has sort of been about the social scientist and the computer scientist playing in the built, 3D world, but I think there’s another direction that is equally interesting to me – how can designer play in these social science worlds? 

When we talk about shared language, I see it as design thinking. It makes me think, well everyone at the USC center should take at least one design thinking course, because that is how we will discover and build the common foundational language we need. 

We already know that every discipline is going to engage with AI either formally or informally. And each discipline will enrich the larger conversation in some way, and so I listen to you talk Eric and I just think, designers should be part of your studies, that is how we close the gaps. (Mike Tunkey) 

I mean, it turns out every profession in the world uses the word "model," but we mean different things by it. What a social scientist, engineer, architect mean when they say "model," they are all different, but we often assume everybody knows what we mean.” (Eric Rice) 

On designing physical space to empower discovery 

“We really need more spaces where people can be pushed outside their comfort zones. You see this in every type of work where, it is easy to say in a safe space and talk to people who think like you...but discovery happens when we connect with people who are like, ‘what are you talking about?’ They help you by challenging your assumptions and seeing new perspectives. 

Even in our post-pandemic society, we need to find ways to allow for serendipitous encounters that do not require planning; creative collisions that can just happen. I do think we will find a way to marry AI with spatial intelligence and overcome the liability of distance, the liability of geography, so these creative collisions can happen in new ways. (Felix Kabo) 

On real-world applications for our cities

I look at cities, most cities were designed for certain groups of people, and it is debatable if they ever functioned for those they were intended to, but post-pandemic, there is an enormous amount of zombie urbanism. 
 
And, I think we can’t solve it with the same tools we’ve been using to create the problem. Like most people’s solutions is well, let’s make everybody go back to work, but I just don’t see that happening. So, I’m really excited about this interdisciplinary AI approach toward tackling some of these problems in zombie urbanism.” (Mike Tunkey) 

Zombie urbanism really overlaps with this idea of how you create resilient urban infrastructure and buildings. And I think we can lean into AI to solve it; to create more resilient infrastructure. Let us create smart infrastructure, let’s give it brains, and then we can refresh those brains every 5-10 years, that is a better approach to futureproofing. (Felix Kabo) 

More about the USC Center for AI in Society

The USC Center for AI in Society aims to develop, test, iterate and demonstrate how AI can be used to tackle society’s problems. The team is currently focused on work around homelessness, climate change, health, and equity.