Terremoto article transcript

In the March issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, the article “The Co-Design Catalyst” discusses how AI text-to-image tools can be used to enrich community dialogue and support collaborative design visualization. The article emphasizes the benefits of artificial intelligence tools and gives recommendations for prompts that will result in the most accurate, context-aware, and humanlike renderings.

Noticeably and woefully missing in this essay are the terrifying environmental, social, and spiritual negative externalities and the ethical compromises that come with engaging with generative AI. Increasing demand and investments in artificial intelligence have led to a boom in data center construction and, consequently, stress the electrical grid and local water resources. Land use priorities also come into question, as many data centers are built on former farmland near metropolitan areas, replacing opportunities for local agriculture and polluting local skies and waterways.

In addition to draining natural resources, Al models are built on exploiting the workers that train these algorithms. While some praise the efficiency of creating imagery from Al image generators, underpaid workers, usually in the Global South, endure low wages, little access to social safety nets, and intense surveillance and performance monitoring while completing repetitive and dehumanizing work for the sake of building software that is billed as "artificial." All "artificial" intelligence is built on exploiting distinctly human laborers, whose labor is swept under the rug under the guide of efficiency.

As designers, it's crucial to interrogate the trade-offs that come with using AI tools. Generative Al models routinely source imagery from artists and designers without permission, stealing and regurgitating ideas to the detriment of our collective culture and creativity. In praising the speed of generative Al, we endorse reducing the level of skill required to professionally design by routinizing and simplifying it. As designers and artists in other creative fields lose their jobs to AI, we must stand in solidarity and endorse value in craft, art, and the human hand in design.

Our team at Terremptp recently made the collective decision to intentionally not engage with Al tools for the above reasons. It is the goal of our office to build landscapes and gardens that cultivate and support life, and thus engaging with a technology that is essentially life killing seems like a clear and simple decision to us. We emphatically encourage our fellow landscape designers and clients to choose the same. Zing!

David Godshall, Asla, and Theresa Rathslang