Intelligence
2018-presentRelated publications:
Cantrell, Bradley, Zihao Zhang, and Xun Liu. 2021. “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Landscape Architecture.” In The Routledge Companion to Artificial Intelligence in Architecture, 232–47. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367824259-15.
Zhang, Zihao. 2020. “Cybernetic Environment: A Historical Reflection on System, Design, and Machine Intelligence.” JoDLA Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture 5–2020: 8. https://doi.org/doi:10.14627/537690004.
Zhang, Zihao, and Ben Bowes. 2019. “The Future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in Landscape Design: A Case Study in Coastal Virginia, USA.” Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture 4–2019: 2–9. https://doi.org/doi:10.14627/537663001.
Cantrell, Bradley, and Zihao Zhang. 2018. “A Third Intelligence.” Landscape Architecture Frontiers 6 (2): 42–51. https://doi.org/10.15302/J-LAF-20180205.
Cantrell, Bradley, and Zihao Zhang. 2018. “Choreographing Intelligent Agents.” In 107th ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, Black Box. https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.107.1.
Zhang, Zihao, and Shurui Zhang. 2020. “The Cybernetic Environment as a New Frontier.” Lunch Journal 14: 149.
This ongoing philosophical project concerning intelligence investigates the concept's development and present-day socio-cultural and environmental ramifications in parallel with the advancement of intelligent machines since the mid-20th century.
With the ascendance of machine learning and artificial neural networks, Allen Turing's 1950 question—"Can machines think?"—becomes obsolete today. AI systems are replacing humans in many decision-making processes, including environmental management. Machines become important actors in the co-production of the shared environment.
Since the late 1990s, posthumanism has made its way into 21st-century intellectual life, providing new frameworks to challenge human exceptionalism that underpins many contemporary issues, from systemic racism to climate change. Ideas such as assemblage thinking, actor-network theory (ANT), new materialism, and object-oriented ontology (OOO) transform how agency and intelligence—the individualistic anthropocentric concepts—may be conceptualized in favor of a non-human-centric mode of thinking.
With this posthumanist cognition, the question is not about whether machines can think -- like humans. The question is how we may recognize other forms of intelligence other than humans, which, in itself, is already embedded in an assemblage of more-than-human parts. Is there a different way to conceptualize intelligence outside the human-nonhuman spectrum? What is the role of intelligent machines other than optimization and automation?
With the ascendance of machine learning and artificial neural networks, Allen Turing's 1950 question—"Can machines think?"—becomes obsolete today. AI systems are replacing humans in many decision-making processes, including environmental management. Machines become important actors in the co-production of the shared environment.
Since the late 1990s, posthumanism has made its way into 21st-century intellectual life, providing new frameworks to challenge human exceptionalism that underpins many contemporary issues, from systemic racism to climate change. Ideas such as assemblage thinking, actor-network theory (ANT), new materialism, and object-oriented ontology (OOO) transform how agency and intelligence—the individualistic anthropocentric concepts—may be conceptualized in favor of a non-human-centric mode of thinking.
With this posthumanist cognition, the question is not about whether machines can think -- like humans. The question is how we may recognize other forms of intelligence other than humans, which, in itself, is already embedded in an assemblage of more-than-human parts. Is there a different way to conceptualize intelligence outside the human-nonhuman spectrum? What is the role of intelligent machines other than optimization and automation?