The Learning Machine and the Spaceship in the Garden. AI and the design of planetary 'nature'

Abstract

Planetary-scale artificial intelligence systems are increasingly being promoted by technology companies in the forms of projects such as Microsoft’s “AI for Earth” and Google’s “Earth Engine”. This article interrogates some of the conceptual dimensions and history of the “dashboard” approach to the management of “spaceship earth” within art, architecture and landscape architecture, and considers the implications of the increasingly entangled “design” work that brings together nature as data, machine learning, robotics and autonomous technologies.