Artificial intelligence from the woods and the coast

For the past few weeks, artificial intelligence has found a new mission: to save our cities from concrete. Simply upload a photograph of a sun-drenched square and ask it to make it ‘more liveable’. Within seconds, the tarmac disappears, and trees, lawns, ponds and pergolas appear. Even the passers-by seem happier.

Resisting the temptation to quote Giovanni Semi these days is almost impossible. After all, it is he who reminds us that renderings do not merely depict buildings or squares: they portray a promise of happiness. They show not so much the city that is to come, as the one we would like to live in. Artificial intelligence did not invent this language. It has simply given everyone the opportunity to produce it.

Rather than the future, these images tell the story of the present. Even before finding a solution, a society produces the images through which it tries to imagine a way out. During lockdown, we imagined a world protected by plexiglass: panels in offices, restaurants and even unlikely transparent booths on beaches. Today, those images make us smile. Back then, they gave shape to our need for security.

It’s much the same with the climate crisis. Images come before the projects. The dried-up Tiber seen in Paolo Virzì’s "Siccità" gave shape to our fears. Artificial intelligence constructs the counterpoint to the same story: cities become forests, squares are filled with shade and water is everywhere. In Rome, on the other hand, all it takes is the felling of a row of trees to spark a row. This is a sign of a profound change: until a few years ago, the debate centred mainly on traffic and parking; today, it increasingly concerns the heat and the quality of public spaces. It would be easy to dismiss these images as naïve fantasies; if artificial intelligence continues to plant trees, it is because it has understood what we want to see. In this sense, it functions as a gigantic survey of our collective imagination.

Artificial intelligence does not design. It visualises today’s aspirations; however, designing means grappling with constraints, infrastructure, archaeology, safety and history: everything that a rendering can safely ignore. Piazza dei Cinquecento is one of Rome’s busiest squares and would certainly benefit from more trees; real trees, not technological ones. The original design did include them, but one of the main metro hubs runs beneath the square; quite simply, they could not be planted. The design has a more complex task than the images suggest: it must not merely represent a desire, but find a way to make it possible. Henry Ford is credited with a now-proverbial quote: if he had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have replied ‘faster carriages’. Artificial intelligence would have designed the perfect carriage. The project, however, begins when we imagine a new reality.