Problematizing AI Omnipresence in Landscape Architecture
It addresses the problem of AI hype for landscape architects, offering a critical framework, but is incremental as it builds on existing critiques without new empirical data.
This position paper tackles the uncritical adoption of AI in landscape architecture by proposing five archetypes for professionals to adopt when thinking about AI, and models their interactions using a causal loop diagram to argue for more nuanced approaches that could open new practice modes.
This position paper argues for, and offers, a critical lens through which to examine the current AI frenzy in the landscape architecture profession. In it, the authors propose five archetypes or mental modes that landscape architects might inhabit when thinking about AI. Rather than limiting judgments of AI use to a single axis of acceleration, these archetypes and corresponding narratives exist along a relational spectrum and are permeable, allowing LAs to take on and switch between them according to context. We model these relationships between the archetypes and their contributions to AI advancement using a causal loop diagram (CLD), and with those interactions argue that more nuanced ways of approaching AI might also open new modes of practice in the new digital economy.