Caught in a time warp.

Yet, a day after Burger’s presentation, Robert L. Easter, FAIA, takes the AIA stage to receive the Whitney M. Young Jr. award for bringing diversity into the architectural space. In his acceptance speech, he acknowledges that 60 years ago, Black architects made up three percent of the industry, noting that number is still the same today.

So, for Burger, two things are true: AI is a product of an internalized technical bias, but its insights are also diagnostical of the architecture industry.

“It took me 24 tries until I had a single woman show up in the image,” he says about prompting AI to populate images of five architects in front of a modern building, pointing out that the program is also inaccurate, often populating four or six people and only sometimes showing five architects.

“Only in two instances was there any apparent person of color,” observes Burger.

The key takeaway.

The key takeaway is that architecture is not an intrinsically progressive field, given an overwhelming amount of gender, race, and diversity-related disparities, so debating that AI can currently replace human architects distracts from the effort needed to create a more equitable future.

However, though AI is not the absolute answer, it can act as a new member of the team, helping create solution spaces for design.

But, as you would with any team member, Burger considers it imperative to appraise the scope and limitations of its background, experiences, and strong and weak points to infuse its thinking into the design process.

He warns that architects must practice careful language use when leveraging technology and actively advocate for removing problematic stereotypes from these systems.

“Just like with any human, there is a level of bias, so you listen and take it with a grain of salt,” Burger asserts.

Likewise, he argues that human-centric architecture offers awareness of physical reactions to space, can stimulate informed choices based on dynamic socialization, and leaves room for architects to focus on empathetic architecture, informed by analysis, aided by tech, but very human.

For him, the next step is to continue carefully studying the role of language and technology and challenging its contribution to harmful practices in architecture. He is developing an informative framework and guidance material for how Woods Bagot can ethically leverage AI in design.

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Denise Garcia
Content and Communications Leader (North America)