AI-to-Microbe Architecture: Simulation, Intelligence, Consciousness

Abstract

This paper probes questions of how big machines—buildings—can function as hybrid metabolic/AI organisms. Focusing on AI, artificial life (ALife), and microbial intelligence I look through the lens of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Alan Turing’s algorithmic plant simulations to source modernist theory for biointelligent architectures. I’m using scant records and testimony interpreted through each thinker’s writings, architecture, and/or simulations. This text is then a device for considering ways-of-being within, and ways-of-thinking about, theory/practice for the fusion of biological-to-biosynthetic intelligences (microbes, plants, animals, AI, machines.) Resulting theory thereafter supports the development of bioremedial environmental cleanup addressing climate change. My proposition then deploys biomimetic and laboratory data to nurture metabolically driven intelligences partnered with AI in the production of architectures. That ontological pathway stems from machine learning, bio-surveillance, and digital simulation at object, agent, and urban scales. Accomplishments in neural net AI and synthetic biology stirred me to question earlier breakthroughs in relation to current experimental practices. Subsequently, I link and hybridize emergent design proposition to AI, ALife, and biological intelligences as unities for environmentally performative, intelligent buildings.