ON AI PERSONALITY

Fall 2022

Uic Soa Studio 465

Instructor: Sean Lally

Collaborator: Alex Mai

This studio looks into new modes of representing architecture and how we can use software foreign to architecture to predict and simulate future conditions. This project uses Unreal Engine 5 to render an immersive environment in real time which one can walk through and experience interactive elements of the design.

We predict that in the future artificial intelligence will develop to the point of being able to understand and feel emotion. From this point AI will begin to develop personality as something that goes hand in hand with emotional capability.

By giving an AI a body in the form of a building it can now express its personality in the physical dimension and learn from the behavior of its inhabitants. This AI, given the tools to develop and communicate personality and emotion becomes a reaction to the sum of its inhabitants and builds personal relationships with members of its community.

The building’s exterior is a monolithic cube form made of dark concrete and sits on a mound of earth. This gives the building character and presence, understanding character as an aspect of personality.

The AI communicates with inhabitants through a mural which updates as the conversation develops. The images are personal but contribute to the larger narrative of the community.

AI Takes personality information from user interaction

AI combines personality information with present information and mixes with information from other inhabitants

A color gradient is overlayed on the mural which acts as a filter that indicates the AI’s feelings about its interactions with the community.

Terrace lights are personal to each conversation, they indicate the AI’s feelings about specific conversations and are unaffected by adjacent conversations.

In each of the building’s three levels the terraces become larger and less separated to allow for varying levels of privacy in conversations.

The top level is the least private, so the information given to the AI becomes impersonal and the mural turns into an ambiance that is nonspecific to an individual