Mario Carpo: The Imitation Machine

Abstract

Generative AI is currently one of the most polarizing and scrutinized technologies in modern history.  For very good reasons — well known to all.  Yet in the design professions we have been experimenting with generative AI for almost ten years, and by now we have some idea of what this new technology can do, of what it cannot do, and, likely, what it should not do.  Generative AI is a machine that makes new stuff out of old stuff.  Everything new that we get out of generative AI derives from something we have put into it.  Generative AI is a revolutionary imitation machine, where imitation does not mean copy, but assimilation and transformation.

By the way it works, generative AI reminds us that every new creation derives to some extent from precedent; it reminds us that imitation, style, and tradition are indispensable and inevitable components of every form of creativity.  But by the way it works, generative AI also reminds us that creative imitation can only take us so far; and that sometimes we want to do better than the models that inspire us.

This lecture is part of the Design Tech Public Lecture Series.

Biography

Mario Carpo

Mario Carpo, Guggenheim Fellow in 2022–23, is the Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural Theory and History at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL London. He was the Head of the Study Centre at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal from 2002 to 2006, Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History at the Yale School of Architecture from 2010 to 2014, Senior Scholar in Residence at the Getty Research Institute (2000–2001); Resident at the American Academy in Rome (2004), etc.

Mario Carpo’s research and publications focus on the history of early modern architecture and on the theory and criticism of contemporary design and technology. His award-winning Architecture in the Age of Printing (2001) has been translated into several languages.  His most recent books are The Alphabet and the Algorithm (2011); The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence (2017); and Beyond Digital. Design and Automation at the End of Modernity (2023), all published by the MIT Press.