As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to transform how we investigate and innovate, designers are faced with the proverbial Faustian pact: how to leverage the powerful access to information-rich environments while managing the seemingly infinite nested black boxes that tend to exclude human scrutiny or even critical participation in the generative phases. Nowhere is this phenomenon more poignant and potentially troubling than at the frontier of bio- and microbiological engineering, where AI platforms are already attempting to “program” cells as “living factories” to produce materials for medicine, food, and the built environment more quickly and cheaply than conventional extractive material practices (A-Life, Google X Moonshot). On the one hand, the bioinformatic revolution has staggering potential to support human and planetary health, yet on the other hand, now that the “Biodiversity Hypothesis” is no longer hypothetical, as we are increasingly aware of the corelationships between human health and immunity with elements as obscure as the presence of rare flowering plants (Hanski et al. 1998, 2004, 2006, 2011, 2017), one the most important questions regarding the increasingly massive computational models is who and what is being left out of them inadvertently? Now that we are about to enter an era where we can conceive, coordinate, and understand (increasingly in real time) the implications of built environments across scales, from microbially active surfaces to neighborhoods and regional infrastructures, what are the salient methods of building trust and participation in the culture of design practice and participation?s.
