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Natural or artificial? The dialectic between the two concepts – which is probably one of the most fundamental in human history – unfolded in two directions. Through science and art, human beings aspired to imitate and surpass nature all around them. Then they turned in on themselves in an endeavor to improve the human condition and even exceed it. So it is that our bodies are surrounded by artifacts and even filled with them (we are cyborgs twice over), and our intelligence – a faculty that once upon a time indisputably separated us from other creatures in the world – tends to be mimicked, and perhaps even eclipsed, by that which, to greater anomie and also our greater revulsion, is commonly called by its initials: AI, for Artificial Intelligence.

What the thinking machine has the potential to give of itself still remains to be seen, but the changes that it will definitely bring are sure to affect art and architecture immensely, as we already predicted in Arquitectura Viva 247. With its infinite capacity to store and combine, will Artificial Intelligence become a kind of omnimode memory box? Will it fit into the design process as easily as other technologies have? Or will it, as intelligence, claim credit as ‘author,’ as a docile and efficient author destined to make architects of real flesh and blood an anachronism?