the AI architect analogy

The Seattle Central Library was architected (in part) by Rem Koolhaas, who has a notably European architect-y name. The most striking feature inside the building is this weird escalator.

The picture above doesn’t do it justice. It’s a really cool building on the inside and the outside.

Rem Koolhaas is a professional architect. He’s very good at his job. He studied very hard and worked very hard to get very good at his job. I could not do his job.

the part about AI🔗

My point is: imagine a magical tool came along that made building buildings an order of magnitude easier than it currently is. I must admit I have little to no idea what goes into building something like the Seattle Central Library above. I imagine somebody’s pouring some concrete at some point, definitely some glass gets placed somewhere by someone, perhaps some steel over there. I imagine many people involved in the process have also studied very hard and worked very hard for years to get very good at their jobs to build something like this in the real world.

But, imagine that magical tool came along that made menial tasks in the building process easier. Perhaps you can just snap your fingers and all the concrete and steel is in place. Or perhaps it’s just a magical drug and all of the laborers are suddenly 10x more productive.

Now imagine the building I would create with this magical tool. It would be a disaster, my architecture 101 experience from college nonwithstanding. It doesn’t matter how quickly concrete gets poured or windows placed if the building is not good. And in the real world, the building must meet physical, temporal, financial, and environmental constraints. In the real world, if something goes wrong (the building collapses and kills people because it was poorly engineered) someone is held to account.

when somebody says something stupid about AI