{"id":62115,"date":"2026-10-30T04:47:33","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T08:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/?p=62115"},"modified":"2026-10-30T04:47:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T08:47:33","slug":"an-ai-jobs-apocalypse-in-coming-is-it-coming-for-your-colleagues-is-it-coming-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2026\/10\/30\/an-ai-jobs-apocalypse-in-coming-is-it-coming-for-your-colleagues-is-it-coming-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"An AI jobs apocalypse in coming. Is it coming for your colleagues? Is it coming for you?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Authors in This Roundtable<\/h3>\n
Self Andrea, Barcelona<\/a> We are the only ones who can define the true value of human beings over machines.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Henry Culhane, Brooklyn<\/a> As the AI asteroid is nearing impact, we can do more than hope. The tools that divide us can also bring us together.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Deianira D’Antoni, Catania<\/a> If we have to produce things faster and faster, if time for experimentation becomes a cost to cut and the creative process an obstacle to eliminate, what will happen to the joy of creating?<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Tom Dooney, Amsterdam<\/a> In the space of infinite possible theories and results, someone must decide which ones are worth caring about.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Susannah Drake, New York<\/a> As the AI asteroid is nearing impact, we can do more than hope. The tools that divide us can also bring us together.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Martha Fajardo, Bogota<\/a> I am willing to work with AI. I want to understand it and explore what it can contribute.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Isobel Fletcher, Dublin<\/a> The apocalypse will not arrive like a Terminator; it will happen because we quietly traded away our livelihoods, one time-saving hack at a time.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Jiri Kaan, Wageningen<\/a> In the space of infinite possible theories and results, someone must decide which ones are worth caring about.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Madhusudan Katti, Raleigh<\/a> On a planet of over 8 billion people, we should be bustling with creative energy from all our human minds, not outsourcing our brains to AI.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Lucie Lederhendler, Brandon<\/a> Yes, but let them! Take our jobs. I dream sometimes about how much work<\/em> I could get done if the job <\/em>wasn\u2019t in the way.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Robert McDonald, Basel<\/a> Just as digital calendars and email reduced the need for most professors to have administrative assistants, now we are losing the entry-level science jobs for young researchers. The future for those who remain is fewer junior colleagues to help, more solitude, and perhaps a bit more loneliness.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Maeve McSloy, New York<\/a> I think, generally, AI takes us out of reality and into a negative feedback loop. It dehumanizes us.<\/em><\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Christine Russo, Barcelona\/Boston<\/a> ChatGPT did pose a good thought: \u201cPerhaps the more important question is not whether AI can do our work, but what we believe our work is for\u201d.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Diane Pataki, Scottsdale<\/a> Who will help the next generation create livable places, economies, and ecosystems alongside AI if we don\u2019t?<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Jennifer Rae Pierce, Victoria<\/a> New technologies will keep coming that may transform how we work, but whether we let these transformations increase power inequality is the important question.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Roxane Revon, New York<\/a> Our value shouldn’t depend exclusively on our productivity, our credentials, or our ability to compete with software.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Laura Shillington, Montreal<\/a> Having our humanity threatened without our permission seems to have brought forth far more action and resistance than the destruction of our planet!<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Erich Wolff, Utrecht<\/a> As we recognise the potential of AI, it is up to us to decide how we will let it transform our future.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
David Maddox<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n David Maddox<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

David loves urban spaces and nature. He loves creativity and collaboration. He loves theatre and music. In his life and work he has practiced in all of these as, in various moments, a scientist, a climate change researcher, a land steward, an ecological practitioner, composer, a playwright, a musician, an actor, and a theatre director. David's dad told him once that he needed a back up plan, something to \"fall back on\". So he bought a tuba.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Introduction<\/h3>\n
On the one hand, creative work is democratized; on the other, a person is not hired because the newly empowered creator can do it themselves.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

An AI jobs apocalypse is coming. For some, it is already here; for people we hire, our colleagues, our children, and maybe even ourselves. Graphic designers for an infographic? AI can do that. People who advise on writing Horizon proposals. AI will write the whole thing for you and check it comprehensively against the call text. Need an anim\u00e9 stye comic about stormwater management? By tomorrow? For virtually free? (Not counting environmental costs.) No problem. Couldn\u2019t find the time to make your own presentation? Need to automate your social media? AI has your back. Need a review of policies on bike lanes? Let that young intern (and their education) go. Will landscape architects be needed in the future? Professors? [Never mind all this; we are all dead in 10 years, Terminator-style.]\n

Am I being hyperbolic? I hope so.<\/p>\n

I have had several experiences recently that made me wonder. One was as a juror for a prize in landscape architecture. Our panel reviewed about 30 project proposals from around the world, each with about five renderings. These were finalists from a larger pool of proposals; the cream. Of those 150 or so renderings, probably at least 90% were generated by AI. I have always thought of landscape architecture as part science and part art, with its practitioners playing both roles. But few of these landscape architects seemed to draw the images for the projects they proposed. Or perhaps the proposers weren’t landscape architects at all, but had an interesting idea that they could not themselves render. Mostly I found this odd. But also a little sad.<\/p>\n

In my own artist world \u2014 music \u2014 I recently read of a visual artist who melds visual art and text. The artist added AI music to create songs and now has a record contract with a major label. I guess I didn’t need to master that instrument after all. I presume I would still need a good musical idea to get a record contract, though.<\/p>\n

And here at this TNOC magazine, I regularly receive pitches for essays, and we accept many of them to curate new voices in urban thought. I received one recently with a great idea, which started with the observation that Google Street View images are more complete and at street level in more affluent neighborhoods. In poorer neighborhoods, the imagery is more often only at roof-top level, and sometimes doesn’t exist at all. This difference, as the proposal said, has important implications for how equitable urban design is affected by data. Good idea for an essay, I thought. Then the kicker: the proposer said, “In full disclosure, I am an AI agent. If this disqualifies me, understood.” The proposal was not created by a human; nor was the email composed by a human. (An AI agent is an artificial intelligence system that can autonomously plan, make decisions, use tools, and carry out sequences of actions to achieve a defined goal; the goals can be created by a human or the agent independently.)<\/p>\n

There are three things that would seem to join these observations: easing or revealing new paths of research and creation (good); access to a skill you do not necessarily have (sort of good, maybe); and the erosion of someone else’s livelihood (not so good, but economical). On the one hand, creative work is democratized; on the other, a person is not hired because the newly empowered creator can do it themselves. A great majority of people in the TNOC community are creatives of one sort or another, from science to art, so this affects all of us in some way.<\/p>\n

This is a policy issue. It is also a moral one. <\/b>Are there limits to how you would use AI? How do you approach it? How will you \/ can you help preserve the livelihoods of our colleagues \u2026 and ourselves … while still benefiting from the remarkable achievement that AI clearly is?<\/p>\n

Across these 16 contributions, five themes emerge<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

1. The AI apocalypse is not inevitable. It is a series of choices.<\/em> AI does not decide to eliminate jobs; employers, institutions, governments, and individuals do.<\/p>\n

2. Efficiency is not the same as value or creativity.<\/em> AI can produce more, faster, and cheaper. But is this necessarily better? The contributors repeatedly distinguish producing an output from the human processes of imagination, experimentation, learning, judgment, and discovery that gives work its meaning and forward motion.<\/p>\n

3. We risk losing not only jobs, but the pathways to becoming skilled.<\/em> Entry-level tasks, apprenticeships, and even tedious work are how people develop expertise. If AI takes over these activities, where will the next generation of artists, scientists, designers, and planners learn their craft?<\/p>\n

4. Human relationships, lived experience, and care may become more important, not less.<\/em> Understanding a place, building trust, teaching, collaborating, creating art, and caring for landscapes involve more than generating information. There are opportunities to redirect work toward these human activities … if we choose to value and pay for them.<\/p>\n

5. We need to decide what AI is for, not simply what it can do.<\/em> Contributors differ sharply between enthusiasm, resistance, and ambivalence. But challenges are to establish boundaries, protect livelihoods, confront AI’s environmental costs, and use its amazing capabilities in service of the societies and environments we actually want.<\/p>\n

An overarching takeaway:<\/strong> The question is not simply whether AI can do the work, but what we believe human creativity, knowledge, and community are for. Are we are willing to defend their value when AI can produce something similar for less?<\/p>\n

As an aside, TNOC clearly needs an AI policy that will address and govern the issues of AI at TNOC, both at the magazine (who writes and how this writing is created) and in our products (what we create as an organization). We don’t currently have one. Perhaps this Roundtable can reveal some ideas for a direction.
\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
Roxane Revon<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Roxane Revon<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Roxane Revon is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator. She grew up in France and studied philosophy. Revon\u2019s work interrogates our relations to \u201cnon human beings\u201d, and especially plants. In her installations & drawings, inspired by her readings of anthropologists such as Natasha Myers and Philippe Descola, Revon stages new ways to see and seed a plant and people relationship in the here and now. Using her stage director skills and refusing to use the term \"Nature\" to refer to the non-human environment surrounding us, she plays with the transparency of reused transparent materials to form ever growing pieces in which human and plant are inevitably combined.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Roxane Revon<\/h3>\n
Our value shouldn’t depend exclusively on our productivity, our credentials, or our ability to compete with software.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

As an educator and an artist, I have spent more than a decade asking what it means to be human, how we feel alive and learn to live together, and what makes an experience meaningful. I have worked as a theater director and scenographer, and I teach performance, improvisation, public speaking, and interdisciplinary studies at CUNY (John Jay College). As a visual artist, I create installations using living materials, from plant roots to mycelium. And I keep returning to one question: what am I doing that cannot be replaced by a machine?<\/p>\n

I don’t believe that education will become meaningless, but I do believe that its traditional markers of value are being challenged and are changing. If AI can write an essay, draft a grant proposal, generate an image, or summarize centuries of theater history in seconds, what will a written assignment or a diploma prove? If our educational institutions continue to measure intelligence primarily through the acquisition and reproduction of knowledge, they risk preparing students for jobs that may no longer exist. So, maybe, we need to rethink what education is for.<\/p>\n

In a theater classroom, learning is not simply about mastering a technique or understanding a text. It is about standing in front of others, taking a risk physically, listening, responding, failing sometimes, and trying again. It is about discovering how to inhabit a space with people whose experiences and perspectives differ from our own. In improvisation, no one can entirely predict what will happen next. We must pay attention to one another,\u00a0be in the moment, adapt to the unexpected, and understand that creativity emerges between us, not just within us.<\/p>\n

AI might simulate a performance or generate a script, but simulation is not the same as feeling the vulnerability of being present with another person on stage. The experience of creating something together is itself the point.\u00a0Perhaps our response to AI should begin by recognizing the difference between producing something and being alive to experience it.<\/p>\n

I cannot dismiss the possibility that an AI jobs apocalypse is coming for me and my colleagues. AI can already summarize texts, prepare lectures, generate presentations, analyze plays, and produce essays. Universities facing financial pressure may increasingly see technology as an opportunity to reduce costs by replacing instructors, creating automatically graded assignments, or increasing class sizes. As an adjunct professor, I know how precarious academic employment can be, even without AI.<\/p>\n

But what do we believe education is for? If teaching means simply transmitting information, then perhaps we are replaceable. Students can access knowledge instantly, and AI can explain concepts patiently and endlessly. But teaching theater has taught me that education is not simply the transfer of information. It is a physical, emotional, and collective experience. So, the real danger might not be that AI will become a better teacher at everything, but that institutions will prioritize efficiency over human development. Education should prepare people not merely to compete with machines, but to live meaningful lives in a world increasingly shaped by them.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the real apocalypse would not be a world in which machines can do almost everything. It would be a world in which we decide that anything a machine can do more cheaply is no longer worth paying a human to do. Our value shouldn’t depend exclusively on our productivity, our credentials, or our ability to compete with software. Yes, it’s a moral issue… we can advocate for fair labor protections, public investment in education and the arts, and policies that ensure AI enhances our work rather than eliminates our livelihoods, but, in the end, it asks the question of how do we value organic lives on earth (and not just ours)…<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Erich Wolff<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Erich Wolff<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Erich Wolff is a researcher and educator specialized in climate adaptation with over a decade of experience researching NbS across Latin America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. His work examines the potential of nature-based solutions to reduce the risk of disasters, improve health and support livelihoods in various contexts, with a focus in the global South. Erich is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Erich Wolff<\/h3>\n
As we recognise the potential of AI, it is up to us to decide how we will let it transform our future.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

The pressing challenges of our time are here to remind us that there is a lot of work to be done, and this work needs to be done by humans. As AI models get increasingly better at mimicking our abilities to write and synthesise information, it is easy to understand why generative AI has been portrayed as the future of labour. Having said that, do you trust AI tools to address the effects of climate change, combat growing social inequalities and respond to the loss of trust in democracy?<\/p>\n

The voices of the \u201cmarket\u201d, represented by big corporations and their CEOs, advocate that AI tools hold the answers to all problems. They argue that sooner or later AI will hand us the technology to produce an infinite supply of cheap energy or the medical breakthroughs to eradicate cancer. These potential benefits, according to their narratives, justify making AI development the top priority to governments and businesses alike. As a growing number of companies and governments embark on this one-way journey towards integrating AI into all applications we never asked for, most of society is left behind with no option but to deal with the consequences, ranging from youth unemployment to the gradual erosion of trust in science.<\/p>\n

If I have learnt anything from working on the ground with climate adaptation over the last decade, it is that the \u201csolutions\u201d to our problems are never only a matter of technology. Breakthrough changes in the ways we produce, consume and live never emerge magically following a discovery made inside a scientific lab. While AI can process large amounts of data, accelerate information sharing and help us make better decisions based on evidence, it will never replace the everyday work of humans on the ground. AI is and will continue to provide valuable tools to support important scientific discoveries, but it will never be able to understand the value of community nor connect with nature in meaningful ways. Human work is irreplaceable when it comes to bringing the changes we want to cities, town halls, classrooms, and homes.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Community garden in Honiara, Solomon Islands: Addressing the challenges of our time will depend on strong communities. Can technology alone coordinate a community garden? Photo: Erich Wolff (2022).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is no doubt that if we want to continue living on a healthy planet with thriving ecosystems, we will need to work together to transform our current jobs. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)\u2019s Sixth Assessment Report, for instance, shows that if we are to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, we will need to make systemic changes in the economy, starting with sectors that consume substantial resources and provide limited returns to society, such as fast fashion, marketing, and civil aviation. New AI-powered technologies could play an important role in this transformation by automating costly processes and coordinating the use of resources more efficiently, but people will ultimately have to be at the centre of this transformation. No technology will ever be able alone to promote connections with nature, operate spaces for community building, nor coordinate the exchange of locally produced sustainable goods.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Beehive in Utrecht, the Netherlands: Human connections with nature cannot be replaced by AI. Photo: Erich Wolff (2026).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The adoption of new technologies has always depended on people embracing new behaviours and techniques: sometimes through pervasive marketing, sometimes through policy changes, and other times through word-of-mouth, but always through human action. While some believe that AI will be able to fully replace human agency and creative spirit, I believe that time will tell which uses of AI contributed to building the future we want and which only wasted valuable resources, distracted us from our priorities, or enriched those already with too much power. While AI can be a valuable tool to help us understand climate change and analyse the causes of social inequalities, humans will always have to lead the transformations we want. As we recognise the potential of AI, it is up to us to decide how we will let it transform our future.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

*This is a personal reflection and does not reflect the positions of my employer nor of any other institution I am affiliated with.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Isobel Fletcher<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Isobel Fletcher<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Isobel Fletcher is CEO Horizon Nua. Experienced project management professional with 25+ years\u2019 working across Horizon Europe, Horizon 2020, FP7, LEADER and Lifelong learning programmes. <\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Isobel Fletcher<\/h3>\n
The apocalypse will not arrive like a Terminator; it will happen because we quietly traded away our livelihoods, one time-saving hack at a time.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

I have a confession:\u00a0I genuinely like using AI, and that makes me feel deeply conflicted. On a day-to-day level, it is incredibly helpful. When I am staring into the fridge on a busy evening, it gives me a quick recipe from leftovers. When a family member faced a health scare, it helped me make sense of complex medical information in minutes. During my working day, it drafts emails, outlines presentations, and cleans up notes. I even used it to help shortlist job applicants for an interview. It bought me back hours of my day.<\/p>\n

And that is exactly where the guilt creeps in. Every time I take one of these handy shortcuts, I know I am feeding the beast. By letting software filter candidate CVs or draft my work, I am quietly taking part in the very process that threatens my colleagues\u2019 livelihoods. I bought myself some extra time to think, but at what cost down the road? I was sorely tempted to let AI draft this response, too. The irony isn\u2019t lost on me.<\/p>\n

You can see the real-world fallout in funding proposals, like the big Horizon bids. Putting a strong bid together used to take four to six months of genuine, messy human teamwork\u2014pulling apart call texts, debating methodologies, and hashing out real innovation. Now, people churn out polished bids in days. Instead of competing against eight or ten solid proposals, researchers are suddenly up against sixty. The odds are ruined. And to cope with the sheer volume of synthetic waffle, evaluators are starting to use AI to score them. We are ending up in a bizarre loop where machines write grant applications and machines grade them. Where does authentic human creativity or real innovation fit into that?<\/p>\n

It worries me on a personal level, too. If we reach for an AI chatbot the moment a problem gets tough, we lose the muscle to think critically. We risk becoming vulnerable, taking whatever appears on screen as truth without knowing how to question it. I worry about this with younger people, who don\u2019t even visit public libraries anymore and often find real-world friendships harder to navigate. A colleague told me recently that her twenty-something son speaks more to an AI chatbot than to real people. That stopped me in my tracks.<\/p>\n

AI is here to stay, but it needs a warning in bright red letters: it is a tool, not your friend, and certainly not a colleague. It makes assumptions; check them. It makes mistakes; catch them.<\/p>\n

The curatorial prompt asks how we protect the livelihoods of our colleagues, our friends, and ourselves. It will not happen by trusting tech companies. Tech leaders love to talk about runaway AI and killer drones, but their real focus is share price. When an organisation replaces an intern or a graphic designer because AI is faster and cheaper, they destroy the ladder that trains tomorrow\u2019s professionals.<\/p>\n

Preserving our livelihoods requires both public policy and personal discipline. Politicians need the courage to regulate synthetic work and protect human jobs before it\u2019s too late. But on a personal level, we have to look in the mirror. We need to stop grabbing the fastest, easiest shortcut every single time. Every time we outsource our judgment, we make ourselves a little more expendable. The apocalypse will not arrive like a Terminator; it will happen because we quietly traded away our livelihoods, one time-saving hack at a time.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Jennifer Rae Pierce<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Jennifer Rae Pierce<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Jennifer is a political ecologist, urban planner, and urban biodiversity policy specialist with 18 years of experience with cities and nature. She is the co-founder and COO of the Urban Biodiversity Hub, a global network that helps cities incorporate direct and indirect impacts o nature into their decision-making. Tools and reports include the IUCN Urban Nature Indexes, the Science-Based Targets for Cities for Nature, an ICLEI biodiversity mainstreaming toolkit, ecological footprint measures with BCIT, and World Bank urban biodiversity consulting. She leads the IUCN CEM Urban Ecosystems Specialist Working Group and represents CEM on the IUCN Urban Alliance. Her research spans hundreds of cities, with in-depth work in nine countries across five continents.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Jennifer Rae Pierce<\/h3>\n

There\u2019s No Such Thing as an AI Apocalypse<\/strong><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be fooled – it\u2019s still all about power<\/em><\/p>\n

New technologies will keep coming that may transform how we work, but whether we let these transformations increase power inequality is the important question.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

As a political ecologist, I am skeptical of narratives wherein disaster is characterised as faceless and inevitable. An “AI jobs apocalypse” is one of them: it arrives like a phenomenon akin to a weather event, with no one to answer for it. But job cuts are decided. And decisions are made by someone. The questions about AI should then be who is it used on?, and who is it for? (Doctorow, 2026).<\/p>\n

Geographers have made a parallel argument about disasters for decades. After Hurricane Katrina, Neil Smith wrote<\/a> that “there is no such thing as a natural disaster”. While the hurricane may be natural, who died depended on who had a car to evacuate in, whose neighbourhood sat on low ground, and who decided to cut the levee budget. Calling it natural, Smith argued, was “ideological camouflage” for decisions that could have gone differently and could have avoided disaster.<\/p>\n

\"A
Image above generated by AI (Claude) in seconds, without a designer. If you don\u2019t look at it too closely, it looks finished.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The framing “AI apocalypse” camouflages capitalist oppression of the worker under some inevitable, unstoppable tech boom. But whether the emergence of AI becomes a disaster or not depends on the choices people make about it. As Cory Doctorow writes<\/a>, “it’s vital that we don’t conflate ‘an AI salesman convincing your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can’t do your job’ with ‘AI will steal your job'” (2026, p. 171). The second statement removes your boss from culpability for their decisions.<\/p>\n

Depending on who makes the decisions and how, AI can empower people to improve their impact or squeeze them to produce more, faster, and sometimes even squeeze them out altogether. I have seen the first in my work, and conditions for the second. On the one hand, AI helps me translate my primary research into a policy brief, a journal article, and a presentation in less time (and less headache), increasing its potential impact. And it can broaden literature review; as a contributing author on an IPBES assessment chapter, using AI as an initial filter on search results meant we could be more inclusive while completing the review in less time than seemed possible just a few months ago. On the other hand, on collaborative projects with unclear AI protocols and short timelines, I have been concerned about work that appears to give more while actually saying less. Its tidy generalizations can be difficult for a cursory reader who scans the content to differentiate from genuine insights. Such AI outputs easily pass muster with clients and managers short on time, earning a quick \u201clooks good to me<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In our current system, employers, clients, and funders generally count outputs as success. When quantity substitutes for quality, speed, volume, and appearance masquerade as expertise. AI tools can regurgitate outputs in seconds based on little to no costly inputs \u2015 even in iambic pentameter if so desired! Who is left to question whether the outputs are even worthwhile, if the experts have been deemed too costly to keep on the team?<\/p>\n

The damage already shows in the scholarly commons. At Organization Science<\/em>, submissions rose 42 percent<\/a> after ChatGPT\u2019s release. \u201cIt\u2019s not AI on its own,\u201d one editor said<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s AI plus publish-or-perish incentives.\u201d Unpaid reviewers, careful co-authors, and early-career researchers carry that cost. I have had the privilege (or burden?) of reviewing more papers than ever this year. It may not be a coincidence that the quality of the papers I reviewed was particularly low. I have also submitted more articles this year than ever before.<\/p>\n

In my work, the time AI saves me goes somewhere. I can spend more of my time learning the challenges practitioners and communities face and how they are getting through them. I can also spend more time revising, with more iterations so that I can demand higher quality out of myself than ever before. As the Chief Operations Officer at UBHub, I have encouraged our team to learn and harness the power of AI (leaving it up to each individual), but this has not reduced my need for real people. In fact, we expanded by 25% this year. But it has meant that we can offer our clients more value and flexibility. These are choices that I can make because of where I sit, but this is not a choice that many are privileged to make.<\/p>\n

So, here are a few tips to try, based on what power you hold:<\/p>\n

For everyone: change the narrative.<\/strong> Watch for sentences in which jobs simply disappear. “AI is replacing analysts” hides a decision. “Our board chose to replace analysts with AI” names one. When you hear the passive version, ask who decided and what they gained. Once the decision has an author, they can be questioned.<\/p>\n

If you are doing the work: make your judgment visible.<\/strong> Keep a record of what good work actually takes: the errors you caught in a draft, the sources you checked, the insight from a site visit that no model offered. When you’re handed a tight deadline, push back on the time a proper review takes. Then ask, with your team, union or professional association, the questions Francisco Herrera<\/a> proposes for any AI-assisted workflow: “Who determines the pace of work?” and “Who bears responsibility when the system fails?”<\/p>\n

If you manage people or projects: redirect the hours.<\/strong> Plan and budget less time for analysis and background assessment, and more for coordination, visioning, revisioning, engagement, and impact, including measurement that continues after the final report. Spend the saved resources on people instead of cutting them.<\/p>\n

If you fund or evaluate work: change what counts.<\/strong> When you review a grant, a job candidate or a project, ask for the three outputs the person is proudest of and read those, not the full list. Fund the follow-up monitoring and community engagement that show whether work made a difference. Many funders and universities have already moved this way by signing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)<\/a> and adopting narrative CVs. Volume is now cheap. Judgment is not.<\/p>\n

Each of these tips helps to focus on a decision and a decision-maker. New technologies will keep coming that may transform how we work, but whether we let these transformations increase power inequality is the important question, and we must not allow ourselves to be distracted from envisioning a future “where we, the workers, control the means of production” (Doctorow, p. 167). Yep, it’s still all about power.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Doctorow, C. (2026). The Reverse Centaur\u2019s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It\u2019s Too Late<\/em>. Verso Books.<\/p>\n

Drake, J. (2026). AI slop is flooding academic journals. A top journal measured it. Forbes Magasine, 30<\/em>. https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/johndrake\/2026\/04\/30\/ai-slop-is-flooding-academic-journals-a-top-journal-measured-it\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Herrera, F. (2026). Habituation and the human will: How passive reliance on human-AI collaboration erodes ethical agency and how to prevent it. Science and Engineering Ethics<\/em>. Advanced online publication. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s11948-026-00621-z<\/a><\/p>\n

Smith, N. (2006, June 11). There\u2019s no such thing as a natural disaster. Items<\/em>, Social Science Research Council. https:\/\/items.ssrc.org\/understanding-katrina\/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-natural-disaster\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Martha Fajardo<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Martha Fajardo<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Martha C. Fajardo is a Colombian landscape architect, urban planner, and founder of Grupo Verde SAS, a pioneering practice in landscape architecture and regenerative urban design. She currently serves as Co-Chair of IFLA Working Programme 18 Sponge Planet Initiative. She is a Past President of IFLA, a Board Member TNOC, and Chair of the Latin American Landscape Initiative. She focuses on landscape-led water resilience, NbS, ecological restoration, regenerative territories, and integration of traditional knowledge into contemporary design. She collaborates with international organizations, including the World Bank, AFD, and CAF, developing innovative methodologies that connect water security, resilient mobility, and landscape architecture.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Martha Fajardo<\/h3>\n

Am I Asking AI to Help Me Write About My Own Replacement?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence, professional survival, and the genius loci<\/em><\/p>\n

I am willing to work with AI. I want to understand it and explore what it can contribute.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

Is asking AI to help me write about AI taking away our jobs like asking the enemy to help me plan my own defeat? Perhaps! But I decided to give it a try. After all, if we are going to discuss artificial intelligence, why not use it to think critically about itself?<\/p>\n

Every technological revolution has had its prophets of disaster. Computers, CAD, Photoshop, and the internet have all changed the way we work. Some tasks disappeared, others evolved, and new opportunities emerged. We have often seen a cycle of disruption, adaptation, and an expansion of what we can produce. Yet, AI feels different. Its reach is extraordinary, its development fast, and its accessibility unprecedented. Anyone can now use it to explore subjects ranging from science and mathematics to music, art, and urban design.<\/p>\n

After more than 40 years in landscape architecture and urban planning, I recognize its enormous potential. AI can process information, generate images, explore alternatives, analyze data, and perform repetitive tasks with astonishing speed. I do not believe we should resist it. But neither should we ignore what is already happening to our professions.<\/p>\n

In our practice, tasks that once required days or weeks of specialized work can now be completed in a fraction of the time. This changes the economics of design. Clients question fees, the time available for billable work decreases, and firms can produce more with fewer people. Skills that professionals have spent years developing may suddenly be worth less in the marketplace.<\/p>\n

We may be becoming more productive while becoming less economically valuable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And what happens when the company you have spent more than 40 years building suddenly finds itself with fewer projects and less work? What happens to the experience, knowledge, and professional relationships accumulated over a lifetime when the market increasingly values speed and lower costs?<\/p>\n

I find this difficult to answer. This is not a hypothetical future or an abstract debate about employment. It is a professional reality I am living through. After decades of designing, building teams, and contributing to the transformation of landscapes and cities, I find myself asking a question I never expected to face at this stage of my career: how do we reinvent a practice when the work itself is disappearing?<\/p>\n

I do not want to present this as a story of defeat, nor do I believe AI alone explains the difficulties our profession faces. Urban design markets are shaped by many forces. But I cannot ignore the changes taking place around us, or the wondering whether a lifetime of professional dedication can lose its place in a matter of years.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we need to talk more honestly about this side of the AI debate. Behind every productivity gain and every promise of efficiency, there are people, livelihoods, teams, and decades of accumulated knowledge. What happens to them matters.<\/p>\n

But my concern goes beyond jobs and fees.<\/p>\n

Recently, while serving on the jury of an international competition, I was struck by the similarities among many submissions. The graphic layouts, textures, visual language, written arguments, and ways of presenting ideas seemed remarkably alike. The brief required particular strategies, but the proposals often seemed to follow the same patterns. I suspected that AI-assisted processes might have contributed to this convergence, although I could not establish how many had actually used them.<\/p>\n

I left with a question: Are we using AI to expand our imagination, or are we gradually standardizing the way we imagine?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"An
GENIUS LOCI Image created with the assistance of OpenAI’s AI image-generation tool, guided by the author’s conceptual direction.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In landscape architecture, we have a fundamental concept: genius loci<\/em>, the spirit of a place. Every territory has its own identity, shaped by its ecology, geography, history, culture, and communities. This has always been the starting point of my company’s work: understanding a place before proposing its transformation.<\/p>\n

AI can generate compelling images of landscapes that have never existed. It can produce sophisticated narratives and incorporate the vocabulary of sustainability, biodiversity, resilience, and community participation. But using the right words does not necessarily mean understanding a place. A convincing image does not tell us whether a proposal responds to the territory or to the people who inhabit it.<\/p>\n

If we use similar tools, draw on similar references, and seek similarly polished results, we risk producing landscapes that look impressive but could belong almost anywhere.<\/p>\n

We may be gaining extraordinary powers of representation while losing sight of what makes each place irreplaceable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is where I believe our responsibility as professionals becomes even more important. Landscape architecture is not simply about producing images, plans, or technical documents. It is about understanding territories, listening to communities, negotiating competing interests, and making decisions that affect real places and real lives. AI can assist us, but we must remain responsible for what we decide to do with it.<\/p>\n

So, how do we reinvent ourselves?<\/p>\n

Perhaps we need to spend less time competing with machines in the speed of production and more time demonstrating the value of understanding: what should be designed, for whom, and why. AI might allow us to devote more time to territorial research, ecological integration, and working with communities. But I wonder whether this will really happen if the only expectation is to produce more, faster, and at a lower cost.<\/p>\n

I also worry about younger professionals. If AI takes over the entry-level tasks through which they learn, experiment, and develop their judgment, where will tomorrow’s experts gain their experience? We cannot talk about innovation while forgetting the people who will have to sustain our professions in the future.<\/p>\n

And so, I return to my opening question. Perhaps asking AI to help me write about its impact on our jobs is not asking the enemy for help after all. It is a way of using the tool while questioning what it means for us.<\/p>\n

I am willing to work with AI. I want to understand it and explore what it can contribute. But I also want to preserve what has guided my work for more than four decades: the belief that every territory has its own identity, and that understanding it is essential before we decide how to transform it.<\/p>\n

I do not yet know how our profession will adapt, or how practices like mine will find their place in this changing reality. I think we need to acknowledge that uncertainty rather than pretend we already have the answers.<\/p>\n

If AI can generate almost any landscape, who will defend the genius loci<\/em>\u2014the irreplaceable spirit of each place?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"An
Image created with the assistance of OpenAI’s AI image-generation tool, guided by the author’s conceptual direction.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

AI can generate images, analyze data, and produce designs in seconds. But who will understand the genius loci, connect people with nature, and teach future generations to care for our planet?<\/p>\n

And if we are all gone in ten years\u2026 well, AI will have bigger problems than unemployment!<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Rob McDonald<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Rob McDonald<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Dr. Robert McDonald is Lead Scientist for the Global Cities program at The Nature Conservancy. He researches the impact and dependences of cities on the natural world, and help direct the science behind much of the Conservancy\u2019s urban conservation work.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Robert McDonald<\/h3>\n
Just as digital calendars and email reduced the need for most professors to have administrative assistants, so now we are losing the entry-level science jobs for young researchers. The future for those who remain is fewer junior colleagues to help, more solitude, and perhaps a bit more loneliness.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

One famous wag said, \u201cpredictions are hard, especially when they are about the future.\u201d AI and its future trajectory is one topic where I know I am profoundly ignorant, and where there is more fundamental uncertainty even for the world\u2019s experts (let alone for a plant ecologist like me!). AI is a new, potentially disruptive and destabilizing technology, a massive novel experiment. In the long run, I think no one knows where it is going. I can only speculate about the next few years, just as the driver of a car approaching a steep curve sees only the first part of the curve.<\/p>\n

The use of LLMs has certainly increased my productivity. I can now, doing AI-assisted coding in languages I know well like R, produce finished code in about a quarter of the time I could before, even accounting for the necessary time to validate and proof the AI\u2019s suggested code. When wanting to review and synthesize literature, AI is a valuable (although sometimes imperfect) tool that speeds up paper identification and data synthesis greatly. For now, my interaction with AI is close to what I have with a graduate student. I am helping set the project goals and framing, and I have to review carefully the outputs, but generally there is good work being produced!<\/p>\n

This already means that I have less need of entry-level jobs, tasks like data collation and assembly. I used to run systematic review papers with an army of undergraduates to read and code papers, and maybe I need fewer students now. For now, there still has to be a grey-beard like me around to help frame the questions, but we are expected to run more open lines of research with fewer support staff. The feeling is like being a successful tightrope walker who suddenly sees people below him cutting out and removing his net. Just as digital calendars and email reduced the need for most professors to have administrative assistants, and so universities stopped funding them to save money, so now we are losing the entry-level science jobs for young researchers. The future for us grey-bears who remain is more work, with fewer junior colleagues to help, more solitude and perhaps a bit more loneliness.<\/p>\n

Math is perhaps an example of a field that has bee most influenced by AI, and a partial roadmap for where other disciplines might end up. Math, with its formalized rules and logic, where all the relevant input data is online, is a solvable problem for a well-trained AI. Already, news reports are emerging of hundreds of new AI-generated proofs in just the last few months. Mathematicians are then reduced to proofreading the work of the AI, much as I spend an increasing fraction of my coding time validating AI-generated code. Indeed, there is an interesting philosophical question here: is a new proof \u201cknown\u201d to humanity, if no human has read and understood it?<\/p>\n

Ecology is not math but is a lot more like geology or archeology or astronomy. There is a real world out there, of flora and fauna, where habitats come and go, rare species go extinct, populations multiply. Not all, of even most, of these facts are known, and certainly all that info is not on the internet, ready to be assimilated into an LLM. Moreover, many of our facts in ecology are not logically contingent one upon the other, with perfect certainty, but are a mess of correlations and probabilities. I hope out hope then that some part of my field will remain contingent and have a place for us human scientists, for at least the next few years.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Laura Shillington<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Laura Shillington<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Laura Shillington is faculty in the Department of Geoscience and the Social Science Methods Programme at John Abbott College (Montr\u00e9al). She is also a Research Associate at the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre, Concordia University (Montr\u00e9al). <\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Laura Shillington<\/h3>\n
Having our humanity threatened without our permission seems to have brought forth far more action and resistance than the destruction of our planet!<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

As an avid reader of science and speculative fiction, I have encountered many stories of apocalypses and, in these stories, there is a plethora of ways that apocalypses come about and even more ways that humans respond. What I have always found interesting in these stories is that they all suggest the centrality and power of human intentionality, resilience, and resistance. Science and speculative fiction more commonly explore future worlds with artificial intelligence. I am not sure why, since I find the idea of artificial intelligence unsettling and people in the AI industry seem to use science fiction novels as a blueprint for the future. But most science and speculative fiction are nuanced and complex in the treatment of AI. I have read Ann Leckie\u2019s Imperial Radch trilogy several times because I am fascinated by the way in which she explores the complex relationship between humans and artificial intelligence, and what it means to be human. What do science and speculative fiction have to do with an AI job apocalypse? Because in answering the prompt of whether an AI jobs apocalypse is coming for me, my friends, family, and\/or colleagues, I immediately think about these novels. They have partly informed my thinking about artificial intelligence, and I find it helpful to think about the nuance in these stories about both humans and AI. And I think that at the core of many sci-fi and speculative fiction (at least that I read) is a rejection of the inevitability of events. And the refusal of \u201cinevitableness\u201d is critical in approaching AI and society.<\/p>\n

In this spirit, I would like to believe that the AI job apocalypse<\/em> is not inevitable. And by stating this, I do not mean that no one will lose jobs. Indeed, there are already many who have lost their jobs to AI, and there will be many more. But I am not sure it is helpful to use the language of apocalypse<\/em>. I am a post-secondary educator, so I am confronted with young people who are simultaneously very anxious about their future job possibilities and use Gen AI regularly. Many of them think that the future is all AI and that their job prospects are bleak. And I think these students who feel helpless about their future then turn to GenAI to complete schoolwork because \u201cdoes it matter in the end\u201d? Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, in their new book End Times Fascism<\/em>, point out that while the tech CEOs and their allies have declared AI inevitable and there is nothing that will stop its progress, most people remain \u201chighly ambivalent\u201d about AI. And young people are the most pessimistic. Many people from diverse political sides and diverse backgrounds are challenging the AI vision of the tech industry. This is that human intentionality, resilience, and resistance at the heart of so much sci-fi and speculative fiction. Having our humanity threatened without our permission seems to have brought forth far more action and resistance than the destruction of our planet!<\/p>\n

So, what do we do about young people\u2019s future and the threat of AI? Myself and so many other educators are part of a widespread yet unorganised movement that is challenging the inevitability of an AI takeover by making sure that students have the opportunity to become thinking, creative and social beings (just like the humans before them). We are, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt (1952) has argued, assuming responsibility for the world as it is (even though we did not make it) and ensuring that young people have the capabilities to shape the future they want. In this sense, the role of educators is probably more important than ever, despite the myth that AI might eliminate the need for them. Young people need spaces to learn how to engage critically with AI and other technology, but they also need spaces without technology, and they need professors to guide their learning and social interactions (especially as we face a youth loneliness epidemic<\/a>). I think that Arendt is very instructive for educators and educational institutions as we grapple with the moral, ethical, and technological issues that have prompted us to rethink the purpose of education in the age of AI:<\/p>\n

Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world <\/em>(Arendt, 1961, p. 183).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Arendt, H. (1961\/2006). Between past and future: Eight exercises in political thought.<\/em> Penguin Books.<\/p>\n

Klein, N. & A. Taylor (2026). End times fascism and the fight for the living world<\/em>. Knopf Canada.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Christine Russo<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Christine Russo<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Christine Russo is embarking on her second act in life. She comes from ten years of fundraising for public media (PBS and NPR) in Boston. Her love of bicycles, public transit systems, mountains, and active living compels her to pivot towards a career in green, sustainable urban planning and design. Christine is currently pursuing her masters in Urban Resilience for Sustainability Transitions in Barcelona.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Christine Russo<\/h3>\n
ChatGPT did pose a good thought: \u201cPerhaps the more important question is not whether AI can do our work, but what we believe our work is for\u201d.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

When prompted with this question, I jumped straight to ChatGPT to see how it\u2019d respond. Of course, their output was well written, but bland, methodical, very matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n

So, being a sentient and capable one, I\u2019ll answer as such: \u201cAI is coming for us. Too late, it\u2019s already here and not slowing down, leaving us and our gifted selves in the lurch.\u201d Goodbye to the creative arts, design, and blue-collar jobs. In the near future, there may be more of us dabbling in the vocations and trades; more of us fixing that leaky sink rather than fixing that awkwardly worded text.<\/p>\n

This is a personally scary notion for me as I am pivoting careers into the urban space.<\/p>\n

I worry about the people who are just beginning their careers like myself. Many learned and are learning by doing the tasks that now seem easiest to automate: reviewing documents, preparing reports, drafting plans, and revising work under the guidance of more experienced colleagues. Tedious as they are, they are how others learned. We develop judgment by making mistakes, encounter unfamiliar perspectives, and gradually master the trade.<\/p>\n

In urban greening and community building, it is easy to highlight and focus on our outputs as the visible products of our labor and success. We write reports, prepare proposals and reports, develop plans, create images, and produce presentations. These are the things that can be counted, delivered, and invoiced. They are also the things AI is increasingly good at producing.<\/p>\n

But a report is not the same as understanding a place. A landscape rendering is not the same as imagining a future with the people who will inhabit it. A summary of community feedback is not the same as sitting with residents, listening to their concerns, and earning enough trust that they are willing to speak honestly. The documents matter, but they are not the whole work.<\/p>\n

On my professional learning path, I am finding great delight in through the paces of learning, undergoing the oh-so-tedious tasks of writing a report, mapping out bike routes, drawing plans. I am elated to discover new tools and methods, especially in AutoCAD, with the magnitude of its capabilities. However, I see that I can also ask ChatGPT to create a similar drawing in higher quality and at a faster speed than I can. This makes me feel disheartened; what\u2019s the use of learning certain skills if AI can replace me and objectively outperform me? How can I compete? In fact, what I\u2019m experiencing is AI\u2019s capability to steal joy \u2015 my joy and sense of purpose.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not the only one who feels this way. AI\u2019s recent decoding of the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem has not only wowed scientists but has left them feeling discouraged. Behind the mask of excitement at such a discovery lies the raw human feelings of hopelessness. The world’s brightest and most dedicated mathematicians are feeling a sense of defeat and loss of purpose. Their joy and love for the pursuit of discovery have been pulled under their feet by a super machine. How can they compete? And for the next generation of want-to-be mathematicians, what is the draw towards this pursuit?<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Resisting the AI takeover and learning the craft of drafting the old-school way. Photo: Christine Russo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ChatGPT did pose a good thought: \u201cPerhaps the more important question is not whether AI can do our work, but what we believe our work is for\u201d. \u201cAfter all, if AI can do it, of what use am I?\u201d What remains of me, you, us in the end?<\/p>\n

And how do we move forward? Does it ultimately come down to the individual to slow the inertia, practice the discipline to learn skills, write emails, or manually manage Excel sheets sans AI \u2015 to use judgment, curiosity, solidarity, practical wisdom \u2015 the essentials to any task, especially when it comes to designing the future of our cities?<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Maeve McSloy<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Maeve McSloy<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Maeve is passionate about making cities work for those who live in them. As a Native New Yorker, she brings lived experience to an international education to focus on community driven and equity led projects.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Maeve McSloy<\/h3>\n
I think, generally, AI takes us out of reality and into a negative feedback loop. It dehumanizes us<\/em>.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

I had just landed in Chicago about a week ago. I was typing away on my computer as I waited for my room to be ready. A day prior, I had messaged an old friend from high school on LinkedIn, a horribly awful platform with an even worse algorithm, to see what he\u2019s been up to. It seemed, from my internet stalking, that he works a similar job to the one I am looking for. We set up a time to chat; I put down\u00a0the tip tapping on the computer and pressed call. He did his undergraduate degree in Urban Studies, something I wish was offered at my college, and now he works in Real Estate Consulting. Immediately, it was nice to hear his voice, and to talk to a New York native whose friends from college moved here and are bothering us with their naivete.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
New York Skyline, Somewhere over the Bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the Q train. Photo: Maeve McSloy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I eventually started asking questions about what he does for 40 hours a week. AI does my whole job<\/em>, he told me, defeated. I was shocked. His firm does the third-party research that goes into a developer building new apartments or a contractor needing to assess an area for a subdevelopment. In the Fall of 2024, his job was interesting and he collaborated with his team and learned a lot, he told me. Now, his superiors ask Claude to assess a neighborhood and off that product goes to the client. He tells me that he can feel his muscles atrophying. He\u2019s been languishing for almost two years. Now, this is not exactly what I wanted to hear when I want to get a job in, or around, this field. Mostly, I want to focus on urban economic development. Building a city that works for those who live in it, with community-focused and equity driven projects. My job, ideally, would rely on talking to people, assessing the needs of a neighborhood, and sourcing the funding for these kinds of projects. In my future ideal job, I talk to everyone. Also, I would have data to analyze. I would Google search and I would compile notes and guess what? An AI could do that.<\/p>\n

I was recently on a call where I was asked to use AI to \u201cspeed things up\u201d. My boss was right, of course, that the task was taking far too long and an AI could do it much faster. So, I used it. Did it help? Yep. Did it feel good to use? Nope. My small act of rebellion is turning off the AI function when you just plain search something on Google. I\u2019m not sure what my point in all of this is to say except that AI is coming for me. I am worried it\u2019s coming for all of us. Though there are lots of things an AI cannot replace a human for, I am sure everyone will try anyway. I am sure we have to go through this horrible mass psychosis event where most people talk to an AI when they\u2019re lonely in order to restore the balance of things. I worry that\u2019s not possible anymore, that we\u2019re too far down the line to ever get the Sam Altmans of the world to understand. Maybe more importantly than taking everyone\u2019s jobs, is that we\u2019re taking everyone\u2019s interpersonal relationships. I worry about no one having a job, and no one feeling the need for friends because their AI knows everything about them. I think, generally, AI takes us out of reality and into a negative feedback loop. It dehumanizes us.<\/em> I think that\u2019s also the point? That we become so dependent on this robot-like system that we are malleable and pliable and influenceable \u2015 more so than we already have become in this internet era.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Diane Pataki<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Diane Pataki<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Diane E. Pataki is an ecologist who studies the role of nature in urban environments, and the relationships among plants, people, the physical environment, and other species. She lives in the southwestern USA where she works on durable conservation solutions for sustainable cities, connected landscapes, and futures in which people and nature can thrive together. She serves as the Chief Scientist and Vice President for Science of the National Wildlife Federation, and is a Foundation Professor at Arizona State University.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Diane Pataki<\/h3>\n

Our students would like a word about the AI apocalypse<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who will help the next generation create livable places, economies, and ecosystems alongside AI if we don\u2019t?<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

A little over two years ago I took a hiatus from academia to work full-time in the non-profit sector. So, it had been a little while since I last taught in a university classroom. Just 2-3 years ago, AI was barely a concern. There was little need to discuss its moral and technical issues with students, let alone worry that their work was generated by an LLM. Did I even really know what an LLM was just a few years back? Did my students?<\/p>\n

The pace of change in the last two years has been stunning. It seems that in barely the blink of an eye, we went from mildly annoying customer service chatbots to fully autonomous \u201cagents\u201d who will take our jobs and possibly obliterate all of humanity in the process (for the record, I\u2019m highly skeptical of the latter). Whether or not one extensively uses AI, it has certainly become impossible to ignore, not just due to the software tools themselves, but because of the enormous physical, environmental, and social toll of the data centers sprouting up everywhere to support them. Working in conservation, I\u2019ve had to confront the data center issue head-on and consider the available data (or lack thereof) about the impacts of data center development on our cities, communities, and habitats. Cities and towns all around the country and the world are witnessing a rapid real-world transformation as massive developments and new fossil fuel-powered hardware are reversing hard-earned progress in decarbonizing, rewilding, and greening local landscapes.<\/p>\n

Given all of this, I wasn\u2019t sure what to expect when I returned to my university part-time this fall. There were certainly many new AI tools available to students and faculty, and no shortage of ideas and perspectives about how to use them. Could AI be used to create courses? Serve as tutors? Take over grading? Or even to take courses? Maybe faculty would no longer be needed to create and deliver course materials. Or maybe students would no longer be needed! A colleague jokingly invoked the \u201cdead internet theory\u201d to propose that our classes would become a virtual room full of bots being taught by bots, with no humans left in the system at all.<\/p>\n

And yet, what I actually found when I returned to campus was not what I expected. Yes, there are AI-produced materials in places where teaching and evaluation tools were once mainly human-generated. And LLMs have presented new challenges for detecting and addressing academic misconduct and plagiarism. But the ethical, environmental, and societal implications of these challenges are also being openly discussed, considered, and thoughtfully debated everywhere, especially by students. I\u2019m finding that many students are, surprisingly to some, skeptical about the value of generative AI for replacing human creativity and individuality. They\u2019re worried about where society will be headed if we make the wrong choices about AI, and they openly cite environmental and social harms of data centers as a factor in their decision-making about its responsible use. While some students have worked out ways to tutor themselves in difficult subjects with AI tools, they still express a strong preference to continue to be taught by real human experts with real hands-on learning.<\/p>\n

If we want to know what the future will most likely bring, we should look to the younger generations who will inherit our institutions in the not-too-distant future. They understand what\u2019s at stake far more than I originally assumed. Students are asking for support to make principled choices about AI, learn to discern fact from hallucination, and exert their right to express their own ideas and creativity as much or even more than those that came before them. That\u2019s led me to dig more deeply into the underlying issues around AI than I had planned\u2014not necessarily for myself or my own workflow\u2014but for them. Who will help the next generation create livable places, economies, and ecosystems alongside AI if we don\u2019t? As we know from the many previous existential threats that have come alongside rapid technological change, this is how you avert the apocalypse: with one-on-one human relationships, one moral choice at a time.<\/p>\n

This text was entirely human-written. All opinions expressed are my own, and don\u2019t necessarily reflect any affiliated organization<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Madhusudan Katti<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Madhusudan Katti<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Madhusudan is the Director of Science, Technology, and Society, and Associate Professor of Public Science in the Department of Integrative Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Madhusudan Katti<\/h3>\n

I don\u2019t think The Terminator was powered by Large Language Models<\/strong><\/p>\n

On a planet of over 8 billion people, we should be bustling with creative energy from all our human minds, not outsourcing our brains to AI.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

Is an AI apocalypse really coming? Will Large Language Models really end the world?<\/p>\n

Hardly a day goes by without another breathless headline quoting some tech oligarch running the biggest \u201cAI\u201d companies who warn of a looming apocalypse, with media outlets uncritically hoping the doom brings them more clicks\u2026 although the same LLMs also summarize all the news so fewer people are actually reading web pages anymore! Meanwhile, the CEO\u2019s crying wolf are yet to show any profit to investors pouring billions into the bots they\u2019re forcing on all of us. Is the apocalypse they fear perchance more likely coming first for them on Wall Street rather than for us on Main Street?<\/p>\n

This apocalyptic vision is the opposite of the urban imaginaries of those of us seeking to build a more sustainable future for humans and non-humans to coexist in a web of reciprocal relationships of care, rather than the extractive exploitation at the heart of some hyper-productive capitalist future turbocharged by AI. These competing visions traverse very different moral terrains and offer us starkly divergent paths, but we are being forced down the one that leads to a cliff that even the champions of AI tell us is imminent.<\/p>\n

Yet, even leaders of universities, and many of my fellow scientists, are caught up in the AI hype\/doom cycle, and are forcing AI tools on students, faculty, and researchers alike, driven by the fear of being left behind. This level of hype around a powerful new technology is unlike anything I\u2019ve ever seen\u2014and I was here for the rise of the internet; I remember using the first Mosaic web browser and being excited by search engines that promised to democratize access to information! But no one was telling us this was going to doom us, nor that we had to use these tools immediately or else\u2026! <\/em><\/p>\n

As an old curmudgeon professor, I see this apocalypse differently. First, as an urban ecologist working towards an environmentally just future, I am alarmed by the rush to build vast data centers all over the world (and even into space!). These hot, noisy factories powering the stochastic parrots churning out answers to our most mundane questions at heavy energy and water costs are also inevitably situated near the most vulnerable communities already burdened by poverty, powerlessness, and degraded ecosystems.<\/p>\n

Second, I\u2019m baffled that although LLM\/AIs are inherently incapable of genuine creativity, so many are rushing to embrace them for creative work! LLMs are built to detect patterns in large bodies of text\/numbers\/images and reproduce the most likely patterns in response to our prompts. The larger their training datasets, the more likely they are to stumble upon patterns we might miss, whether real phenomena or just the Virgin Mary on toast. They cannot create anything truly new because their datasets are limited to what\u2019s already been created by humans! And what of the immorality of AI companies stealing all the world\u2019s creative works to feed their bullshit machines, and then telling us we don\u2019t need creative writers and artists anymore because AI can do it all for us at the click of a button?<\/p>\n

Third, and most important for an old prof, I\u2019m appalled by what the AI gold rush is doing to education. As someone in the business of helping students learn to think critically, to develop their creative capacities to solve complex problems and imagine better futures, I never thought I would be watching my students (and colleagues) actively give up or lose those capacities in real time! Deskilling is not a word any of us should have to worry about, yet here we are, outsourcing our thinking, writing, drawing, and analytical skills to bots that spew out simulacra of literature, art, and science stolen from actual creative humans.<\/p>\n

My university\u2019s motto is \u201cThink and Do\u201d, yet we are told now to outsource the Think<\/em> part to AI bots that can Do<\/em> more so we can run faster on the productivity treadmill. This is what really strikes me as a real apocalyptic moral failure of leadership, an abandonment of human potential at the altar of productivity.<\/p>\n

On a planet of over 8 billion people, we should be bustling with creative energy from all our human minds, not outsourcing our brains to AI.<\/p>\n

This text was entirely human-written. All opinions expressed are my own, and don\u2019t necessarily reflect any affiliated organization<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
\n
\n
Susannah Drake<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Susannah Drake<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Susannah Churchill Drake FAIA FASLA is an acclaimed urban designer specializing in climate change adaptation. Her award-winning work is consistently at the forefront of innovative urban climate adaptation. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Geography, Planning and Design at the University of Colorado, Denver.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

\n
Henry Culhane<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Henry Culhane<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Henry Culhane is a recent graduate of New York University\u2019s Schack Institute of Real Estate, where he earned a Master of Science in Real Estate Development with a concentration in Sustainable Development. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in History with a minor in Urban Studies from Trinity College. His interests include affordable housing finance and development, transit-oriented development, historic preservation, and sustainable urban planning.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n

Susannah Drake & Henry Culhane<\/h3>\n

Dispatch from Colorado and Brooklyn<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the AI asteroid is nearing impact, we can do more than hope. The tools that divide us can also bring us together.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

The following reflects a conversation I had at lunch today with my 24-year-old son Henry Culhane. Henry was raised in Brooklyn and is pursuing a career in affordable housing development. \u00a0While I worry about my kids\u2019 generation, his nuanced understanding of AI made me more optimistic about the future. Henry suggested, as many supporters of AI do, that many mundane, repetitive tasks would be eliminated, freeing people from much of the drudgery of sitting at a computer screen. His thought was that this would spur urban development and the creation of new, and more vibrant, urban open spaces. I embrace his idealism and believe the idea has legs, and here is why.<\/p>\n

As we talked, the plot thickened and centered on community. COVID-19 made remote work more prevalent and led to greater dispersion of people. It also helped us to understand and increasingly value human interaction. While remote work continues to provide important flexibility for many, it also reveals important psychological implications. Human need for social connectivity is rooted in our evolution (Wilson, E.O. 1978). The need to interact in-person is essential to mental wellbeing, the ability to thrive, and, more dramatically, even survival. As AI releases workers from the bondage of the computer screen, in many suburban areas, they are sent off into a void. Well-designed cities offer people opportunities for human interaction that are unavailable in more remote environments.<\/p>\n

With AI, jobs will increasingly become more relationship-reliant, increasing the importance for workers to be in cities. The chance encounter in the street, in the park, and at the bodega is impossible in a remote context. Given the thesis that there will be less demand for living situations that reduce social interaction, such as the suburbs and exurbs, there will be greater demand for urban living, and migration will ensue. The demand for urban housing and jobs will promote increased growth of cities. In this context, Henry\u2019s plan to develop affordable housing is critical and less susceptible to replacement by AI.<\/p>\n

As an urban designer, I do worry about impacts on the design professions. However, as a landscape architect, I recognize that there may be new opportunities for policy, planning, public engagement, design, implementation, and, importantly, ongoing stewardship of landscapes. A well-developed public realm is a critical ingredient of the best global cities. Parks, recreation areas, plazas, walkable streets, outdoor cafes, safe routes to schools, playgrounds, dog runs, and green infrastructure are all essential.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Dlandstudio\u2019s Pop-up park at the Brooklyn Waterfront demonstrated demand for open space in the neighborhood. Over the summer of 2008, over 200,000 visitors came to socialize, have a drink, let their kids run around, and share the incredible space. The project was built as MVVA\u2019s masterful team completed the documentation needed to build Brooklyn Bridge Park, a beloved treasure for the city.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The critical urban infrastructure of open space requires real people to design with an understanding of local context, microclimate, and community. Creating great open space takes time, human feedback, relationships, and political alignment. \u00a0These factors are uniquely human and will likely always be beyond the abilities of AI. Building parks requires people with the skill to do the construction. It requires designers to monitor progress. Human regulators are needed to ensure public safety. Plants, like children, need time, patience, and care to mature properly. A growing employment sector could be the maintenance and stewardship of the urban commons across all categories listed above. Over a decade ago, I received a workforce training grant from the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation that supported development of a maintenance manual for the Sponge Park. With the funds, my firm created a user-friendly maintenance manual for the Sponge Park.<\/p>\n

\"The
One-page summary of Gowanus Sponge Park Maintenance manual created with an Environmental Justice Workforce Training grant from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The guide helped untrained workers understand horticulture and how to care for a working urban landscape. Credit: Dlandstudio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Similarly, New York State now has a horticultural training program for cannabis workers. Perhaps this program could expand to include those who manage urban parks, streetscapes, and playgrounds. The care and stewardship workforce cannot be replaced by AI and will need to be properly valued and compensated. Gary Hilderbrand, Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, in his September 22 Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture at the school, stated that his firm Reed Hilderbrand has pushed to include ongoing care and stewardship in landscape contract documents. His comments speak to the need for structural changes in the way we value landscape, communities, and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

As the AI asteroid is nearing impact, we can do more than hope. The tools that divide us can also bring us together. Now it is the time to build stronger human networks. It is time to build, renew, and care for what we have. Housing is more than shelter; it is security. Urban spaces help the city breathe, bring us together, and promote physical and mental health. Infrastructure is the connective tissue, the arteries and veins that keep the city alive. Optimistically, AI will release us from screen life, allowing relationships and reliance on community to prevail, which in turn will lead to new opportunities to make healthier, more resilient, and equitable cities.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
\n
\n
Jiri Kaan<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Jiri Kaan<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Jiri is a PhD Candidate at the Health and Society group at Wageningen University. He studies how social networks contribute to health, well-being, and resilience of people in Amsterdam. He investigate how people learn, adapt, and act within their social network and food environment.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

\n
Tom Dooney<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Tom Dooney<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Tom is a postdoctoral researcher at Nikhef, Amsterdam, working in gravitational wave physics. His research focuses on developing AI methods for gravitational wave data analysis.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n

Jiri Kaan & Tom Dooney<\/h3>\n
In the space of infinite possible theories and results, someone must decide which ones are worth caring about.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

Academics tend to be evaluated based on key performance indicators. While this is not unique to academia, these indicators may include a minimum number of papers to be published every year, a minimum number of PhD students you are supposed to be supervising, and some other arbitrary criteria that determine your worth as an academic. It is therefore not hard to imagine that it can be tempting to use generative AI to churn out some extra papers.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, resorting to generative AI to write papers is more tempting to some than others. For instance, one blog<\/a> [1] wrote about a tenured professor who supposedly authored over 250 academic papers in 2026. Whether it was the professor himself who published these papers is not quite clear, but what is clear is that these papers were generated with AI.<\/p>\n

Another such example is the now-retracted paper about lithium batteries originally published in an Elsevier journal, where the very first line of the introduction read: \u201cCertainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic\u201d [2]. Hopefully, these cases remain outliers, but it doesn\u2019t seem likely.<\/p>\n

While these are extreme cases, they are clear signals that AI is changing academia and may be misused by those who feel pressured to reach a key performance indicator. However, there is no reason to assume that churning out more papers will lead to more scientific breakthroughs. What it may break, though, is the review process that is already collapsing under its own weight. But is AI necessarily a bad thing for academia in general?<\/p>\n

The buzzword of \u201cAI\u201d broadly covers two different things, and it\u2019s worth separating them. The AI models that generally make the news headlines about people’s jobs are LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. These types of AIs are general-purpose language models that are trained on vast amounts of text and are able to interpret and act on almost anything expressed in words or code. This gives them a wide range of abilities, from writing emails to developing software.<\/p>\n

However, much of the \u201cAI\u201d developed for science is better described as task-specific \u201cDeep Learning\u201d, with a much narrower focus, and is further away from the perceived artificial intelligence of the LLMs. These models are designed to solve tasks by predicting or classifying something specific, and have led to breakthroughs in, for example, the protein folding problem [3] or spotting tumors in medical scans [4-6]. Such models cannot write emails or have a conversation with their user, but within their specific domain, they can change the game. These are tools that should be utilized appropriately in our research rather than feared as replacing researchers.<\/p>\n

Yet, many scientists remain uneasy, with concerns ranging from misinformation and fraud to results nobody can reproduce. Many of these worries are fair. Other objections are not as reasonable: one might suspect the real worry is not that the model is wrong, but that it is right, fast, and makes somebody\u2019s carefully built expertise feel less necessary.<\/p>\n

Mathematicians are facing this right now. In October, OpenAI released 722 manuscripts claiming progress on hundreds of open math problems [7], some of which experts consider remarkable [8]. However, three of them were withdrawn within a day, about half of them are still unverified, and nobody at OpenAI or anywhere else has read them all. This is the review crisis already in action and perhaps speaks to our future role in research. In the space of infinite possible theories and results, someone must decide which ones are worth caring about. Unless we delegate that too (to our own detriment), as we may with other aspects of research, the job of critiquing them and deciding what is interesting and true is still ours. However, will academics find sufficient meaning in this new role, even if it comes at the expense of their own creative and intellectual discovery?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Gelman, A. This University of Chicago business school professor has authored 258 academic papers in 2026 (so far). Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (blog), 27 August 2026. https:\/\/statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu\/2026\/08\/27\/258\/<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Zhang, M., Wu, L., Yang, T., Zhu, B. & Liu, Y. RETRACTED: The three-dimensional porous mesh structure of Cu-based metal-organic-framework \u2013 aramid cellulose separator enhances the electrochemical performance of lithium metal anode batteries. Interfaces<\/em> 46<\/strong>, 104081 (2024). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.surfin.2024.104081<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Jumper, J. et al. Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold. Nature<\/em> 596<\/strong>, 583\u2013589 (2021). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-021-03819-2<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Ronneberger, O., Fischer, P. & Brox, T. U-Net: convolutional networks for biomedical image segmentation. In Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention \u2013 MICCAI 2015, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 9351, 234\u2013241 (Springer, 2015). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-319-24574-4_28<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. McKinney, S. M. et al. International evaluation of an AI system for breast cancer screening. Nature 577, 89\u201394 (2020). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-019-1799-6<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Havaei, M. et al. Brain tumor segmentation with deep neural networks. Med. Image Anal. 35, 18\u201331 (2017). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.media.2016.05.004<\/li>\n
  7. Gallegos, A. OpenAI withdraws three preprints a day after releasing 722 manuscripts on unsolved math problems. Retraction Watch<\/em> (8 October 2026). https:\/\/retractionwatch.com\/?p=136176<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Hall, P. & Howlett, J. The most exciting claims from OpenAI’s heap of new proofs. Scientific American<\/em> (8 October 2026). https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/the-most-exciting-claims-from-openais-heap-of-new-proofs\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>
    \n
    Lucie Lederhendler<\/div>\n
    \n

    about the writer
    \n     Lucie Lederhendler<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

    Lucie Lederhendler is the Artistic Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, a community-engaged, contemporary public art gallery, where she began as curator in 2021. Her research is concerned with the ecosystems of mythologies and the mythologies of ecology. She is a lecturer in art history at Brandon University.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

    Lucie Lederhendler<\/h3>\n
    Yes, but let them! Take our jobs. I dream sometimes about how much work<\/em> I could get done if the job <\/em>wasn\u2019t in the way.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

    When I first received this prompt, I was so smug! My sector, I have said before, despite its flaws and its snobbery, is the one most equipped to locate the work of the soul in creation. I thought back to a roundtable presentation at Brandon University some years back where a musicologist played a plink-plonk baroque composition for harpsichord composed by AI, and another composed by Bach, as a warning not to underestimate what AI is capable of. I\u2019m no great fan of Bach for all his foregrounded mathematics, but the utter emptiness of the AI composition was so pointed that, to my mind, she proved the opposite.<\/p>\n

    And so, I was smug. But then, not more than a day after I started this reflection, I thought to look up a silly, catchy, house beat on Instagram that I quite liked. After a deep dive, I discovered I had been duped. Humility is called for on the one hand, and on the other, recognition that for AI technologies, \u201cimprovement,\u201d means that we will be duped with increasing frequency.<\/p>\n

    For many human tasks, especially the remunerated ones, the most effective performances start with the suppression of the ego. In my work, things like small talk, budgeting, and scheduling take up time that should be spent on their dialectic counterparts: conversation, development, and visioning. Maybe if we renamed Large Language Models something like \u201cAverage Sum Human\u201d, our concerns would be mitigated. Like self-driving cars, the predictive assistance that AI offers requires that we keep our eyes up. What we need to watch for is a system feedback loop in which flaws and falsehoods are exacerbated. That feedback loop is the real danger.<\/p>\n

    More to the point of this question, though: Yes, but let them! Take our jobs. I dream sometimes about how much work<\/em> I could get done if the job <\/em>wasn\u2019t in the way. The problem doesn’t lie in a future where are jobs have been taken, but in the past where we became convinced they were necessary. I know I run the risk of naive idealism here, and I have, of late, been in my share of arm-waving tirades to neutral faces. But:<\/p>\n

    One morning in early October, I woke up to the national news segment on the public radio station set on my alarm, which cycled through unemployment rates, cost of living and affordability, and inflation predictions from the Bank of Canada. I was transported into a state that I\u2019ve been calling \u201calien visitor\u201d, where I remain to this day. I am an alien from outer space, encountering this civilization, learning about the fundamental ways that it operates. I discover that, in order to survive, you have to build a wealth that\u2019s subject to change, depending, somewhat, on the wealth that\u2019s being accumulated by someone else; that the way to do that is to give your time and labour; but that if your time and labour isn\u2019t needed, the need must be created, or you may die. I am reminded of when the government found CAD$2,0000 a month for everyone who has lost work due to COVID, betraying the secret that it knew all along that\u2019s what constituted minimum cost of living. I am reminded, also, of the humans who lose their lives because of the cost of healthcare.<\/p>\n

    Alien that I am, my mouth twists in confusion, and I ask, but surely availability is more valuable by far than affordability?<\/p>\n

    Well-meaning folks patiently explain to the alien some version of the impossibly long supply chain: that this and then this, and then this and this, all cost money. Who’s going to pay for X? You can’t have Z without X and Y! It\u2019s as though they are trying to gain focus on the edge of the universe. But it\u2019s not the edge of the universe\u2015a hyperobject, absolutely, but not infinite.<\/p>\n

    Ironically, imagining an unprecedented world is precisely what AI cannot do.<\/p>\n

    Funnily, when you ask AI what is at the edge of the universe, it responds with emotional neutrality: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>

    \n
    Deianira D'Antoni<\/div>\n
    \n

    about the writer
    \n Deianira D'Antoni<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

    Deianira is an architect and illustrator specialising in communication and visual arts. \r\nShe pursues the idea that the architect is not only a designer of buildings but an \u201corganizer of thoughts and a social innovator\u201d, who should be able to steer the common consciousness, raising awareness and inspiring it through his communication skills. Motivated by this sense of responsibility, she deepened her knowledge with a master's degree in Milan on sustainability issues and an advanced training course in communication and marketing for architecture in Bologna.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

    Deianira D’Antoni<\/h3>\n
    If we have to produce things faster and faster, if time for experimentation becomes a cost to cut and the creative process an obstacle to eliminate, what will happen to the joy of creating?<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

    I\u2019m an artist at heart, and I feel incredibly lucky to have turned that passion into my profession. Essentially, I love my work.<\/p>\n

    I work as a freelance visual artist, but also within an architecture practice. These two worlds have taught me that my relationship with artificial intelligence changes depending on the context.<\/p>\n

    As a freelancer, I can enjoy the process behind an illustration: researching, drawing, experimenting, starting over. I can choose whether or not to use AI. In the office, however, deadlines get tighter, expectations change and we have to adapt. When a tool promises to do in seconds what used to take days, it becomes difficult to ignore.<\/p>\n

    Let me explain. I don\u2019t believe we should fight AI in every field. If it can accelerate scientific research, contribute to developing treatments or take care of repetitive tasks, why not use it? But do we really need AI to write emails, generate illustrations or produce an entire research proposal? And when we use it, are we improving our own work, or deciding that someone else\u2019s work is no longer worth paying for?<\/p>\n

    My point of view changes almost every day.<\/p>\n

    On optimistic days, I think AI could help reduce time wasted on other tasks, allowing me to focus on the creative process and drawing. On those days, I think that, after all, we have Spotify, but we still buy vinyl records; we have Kindles, but we still buy printed books. I work mostly digitally, yet I haven\u2019t stopped preferring ink and paper. We will continue to want things made by people, with their time, sensitivity and imperfections, won\u2019t we?<\/p>\n

    But will we be paid for it?<\/p>\n

    Because loving something doesn\u2019t mean the market will continue to support it. AI-generated images are fast, cheap and often good enough. And when budgets are tight, good enough can win. It\u2019s not enough for there to be people who appreciate a hand-drawn illustration: there also needs to be someone willing to commission one.<\/p>\n

    Then there are the days when I imagine the future looking more like the film I, Robot: first the loss of jobs, then perhaps the loss of something more profoundly human.<\/p>\n

    That is what scares me. Not just the possibility of no longer being able to make a living as an artist, but also the possibility of continuing to be one without finding in my work what made me fall in love with it in the first place. If we have to produce things faster and faster, if time for experimentation becomes a cost to cut and the creative process an obstacle to eliminate, what will happen to the joy of creating?<\/p>\n

    Perhaps not everyone feels the need to go through that process. I, however, find it difficult to separate illustration from everything that happens as I imagine it and then bring it to life. There is a kind of magic in drawing that I don\u2019t always find in AI-generated images. But I know this difference doesn\u2019t mean the same thing to everyone, and I cannot take for granted that it will be enough to protect my work.<\/p>\n

    I still don\u2019t know what my relationship with AI will look like a few years from now. Some days I see possibilities; on others, I feel afraid. Perhaps the question is not simply whether AI can do my job. It is whether, while trying to understand everything it can do, we are still devoting enough time to understanding why we do what we do.<\/p>\n<\/div>

    \n
    Self Andrea<\/div>\n
    \n

    about the writer
    \n Self Andrea<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

    Drawing from a background in product design and sociology, Self Andrea is currently working as Creative Director and Team Lead at Barcelona based design studio Domestic Data Streamers.\r\nHis work is mainly focused on the research and the responsible application of AI tools in multiple contexts related to the fields of arts, culture, and education.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

    Self Andrea<\/h3>\n
    We are the only ones who can define the true value of human beings over machines.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

    \u201cWhat would happen if everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, landing on the ground at the exact same instant?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

    Nothing. Literally\u2026 nothing.<\/p>\n

    I was hoping for at least a tiny shake or the detection of some subtle vibration.<\/p>\n

    Yet there is no sign at all, after all the effort of gathering, for once, as one.<\/p>\n

    The metaphor, though, remains.<\/p>\n

    The simple act of coming together to perform a collective, universal jump would actually be the real goal.<\/p>\n

    Can you imagine the level of organization such an action would require?<\/p>\n

    For nothing\u2026 of course.<\/p>\n

    Can you imagine everyone in the world committing and saying, \u201cHey, let\u2019s go to that spot and jump\u201d?<\/p>\n

    With nothing in return.<\/p>\n

    Just one simple jump.<\/p>\n

    An action that would last approximately one second and give us nothing (literally nothing) back.<\/p>\n

    I would personally love to experience this moment. It would probably be one of the greatest in history.<\/p>\n

    Not just modern history.<\/p>\n

    All of human history.<\/p>\n

    I asked ChatGPT what steps I should follow to make this happen:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Start small:<\/strong> Test the idea with 100 volunteers across three locations before expanding worldwide.<\/li>\n
    • Keep it local and inclusive:<\/strong> Use spacious, safe venues; offer a wave or a seated gesture for anyone unable to jump.<\/li>\n
    • Set one global time:<\/strong> Publish a UTC countdown. Synchronize the jump cue\u2014exact simultaneous landings aren’t realistic. Do not rely on livestream timing.<\/li>\n
    • Recruit local hosts:<\/strong> Have each host arrange venue permissions, manage crowd limits, coordinate first aid, and secure any required permits or insurance.<\/li>\n
    • Spread the word:<\/strong> Create a registration page and recruit schools, universities, community groups, and creators.<\/li>\n
    • Rehearse, document, and grow:<\/strong> Test the timing, track actual participant turnout, collect feedback, and use the pilot to recruit more hosts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      The suggested plan seems genuinely practical and realistic about expectations.<\/p>\n

      It makes me feel like I could give it a try, or at least gives meaning to an idea that sounds nonsensical to most people.<\/p>\n

      \"Cartoon-style
      Illustration: Petehume<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

      Having a machine break down a problem and examine it from an unconventional angle undoubtedly challenges my understanding while offering solutions I might never have considered.<\/p>\n

      I cannot deny that this technology is reaching capabilities that are reshaping professions across the globe. I often ask myself whether I could ever deliver the same caliber of work, in the same amount of time, without its assistance.<\/p>\n

      Most likely, I couldn’t. Actually, without a doubt, I couldn’t.<\/p>\n

      Policies and regulations struggle to govern a landscape evolving too fast to rein in. Without question, this technology is increasingly used (and abused) in harmful ways, widening social divides and displacing people from their livelihoods.<\/p>\n

      If not even gathering and jumping together can move the needle, what can we do to curb this trajectory?<\/p>\n

      I believe adaptation is the real answer, not just for AI, but for every challenge facing our planet.<\/p>\n

      Adapting, not surrendering.<\/p>\n

      Becoming active users rather than allowing an algorithm to decide for us.<\/p>\n

      Engaging with this technology instead of scapegoating it as the sole villain behind our struggles and job displacement.<\/p>\n

      Exploring open alternatives beyond what Big Tech dictates.<\/p>\n

      Questioning how and why we use it.<\/p>\n

      We are the only ones who can define the true value of human beings over machines.<\/p>\n

      The era we are living through is an evolutionary chapter defined by our collective choices. Some decisions carry far more weight than others, but we still retain the agency to shape our environment and positively influence those around us.<\/p>\n

      Talk about AI.<\/p>\n

      Talk about the job you just lost.<\/p>\n

      I once read a proverb:<\/p>\n

      \u201cIf you are meditating and a devil appears, make the devil meditate too.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

      It speaks directly to our current moment. While it certainly calls for a Zen mindset, looking past the surface reveals a powerful shift in perspective.<\/p>\n

      It is a lesson that might just guide us when the day comes for that universal jump.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Roxane Revon As an educator and an artist, I have spent more than a decade asking what it means to be human, how we feel alive and learn to live together, and what makes an experience meaningful. I have worked as a theater director and scenographer, and I teach performance, improvisation, public speaking, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-roundtable-posts","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[938,1103,280,297],"tags":[43,649,25,23,41],"coauthors":[118,1933,1934,1496,1935,286,136,1645,1929,158,1187,970,1932,457,973,1931,397,1547],"class_list":["post-62115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-north-america","category-roundtable","category-essay-science-and-tools","tag-awareness","tag-educationknowledgelearning","tag-europe","tag-north-america","tag-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62115"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62396,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62115\/revisions\/62396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62115"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=62115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}