Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a fixture of the public imaginary for decades. From Rosey the Robot to cyborgs in Robocop, Hollywood has spent years rolling out versions of intelligent beings that do everything from clean our homes to threaten world domination. Yet despite years of wondering when AI would arrive, the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 took many by surprise. Intangible and omnipresent, the chatbot seemed to hurtle into our stratosphere from nowhere, with its endless potential prompting questions around whether its rise means our fall.

When it comes to the design world, we’re staring down the barrel of an AI that can instantly generate work that normally takes us weeks, months or even years to create. Its rapid mining of available data means the bot can perpetually upskill, drawing on infinite resources to create plans, designs, text, presentations and more.

So what does this mean for our industry? How do we learn to work with AI to optimise our work without sacrificing or downplaying the vital importance humanity and human-centric design plays in architecture, design and place-making?

Join us at the INDE.Summit, where a full day of virtual design discussions will kick off with a keynote address from Dr. Eduard Hovy from the University of Melbourne.

Working to the conference theme of “The Future is Here”, the keynote will address AI as a future that has arrived before many of us were ready for it, asking what it means and how it may change and improve architecture and design across the Indo Pacific region.

Importantly, this conversation will explore the nexus of AI and humanity, exploring the inherent deficits in computerised systems and the ongoing imperative for life, work and society to be grounded in emotions, conscience and soul. 

Dr. Hovy is an expert in the space of AI, bringing decades of expertise to a session that will draw transferable lessons from global responses to AI and apply them to our industry. He is currently Executive Director of Melbourne Connect and a Professor at both the University of Melbourne’s School of Computing and Information Systems and the Language Technologies Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA. He has spent time at the Department of Homeland Security’s Center of Excellence for Command, Control, and Interoperability Data Analytics, has completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) at Yale University in 1987, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the National Distance Education University (UNED) in Madrid in 2013 and the University of Antwerp in 2015.

Dr. Hovy’s experience has seen him track the rise of AI and explore the depths of its capacity. He is an international expert on the topic and provides advice to entire industries on their potential for interacting with and optimising current and future developments in the AI space. He is part of the future of AI and his address will chart a path for architecture and design as we look towards an increasingly computerised world.

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The INDE.Summit is a digital event to be held on Wednesday August 9, 2023. Registration is free and gives you access to a full day of panels and presentations. The Summit will be followed by the annual INDE.Awards Gala on Thursday August 10 which will be held in Sydney, Australia and broadcast live around the globe. Register for your free digital ticket now.