How AI is allowing us to create a new civilisation.
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly changing our lives as seen in previous articles but with its growth, we start to wonder what the limits might be and which aspects will simply remain as science fiction? We are working at improving our world with AI but with rapidly rising ocean levels, global warming becoming a more pressing issue by the day and a population that is projected to be in excess of 10billion individuals by 2050, is it time for us to look at alternative places to live?
Space travel has almost become synonymous with science fiction now. And as space travel increases, Mars has become the next frontier for us. Space travel, as of now, is not a very luxurious task. The famous Apollo 11 actually had a very cramped cabin space, approximately a length of 7 meters by a diameter of 4 meters, (which is one giraffe in a Volkswagen Beetle – just to paint a picture) but when you take into account that the minimum time that astronauts will have to spend on the red plant is a year and a half these conditions do not seem very humane. So how do we tackle this problem? Well the answer is hinted within the title; we aim to use AI to make the homes on the planet before the astronauts arrive.
This is easier said than done. That is why earlier this year NASA announced their 3D printing challenge for aspiring minds of all backgrounds with a $500,00 cash reward and the chance to help build a new home on Mars.
Source: AI SpaceFactory
‘AI Space Factory’, an award-winning architecture firm headed by David Mallot, a renowned skyscraper designer, ended up getting the gig for this program. An example of how AI can be utilised is by using AI to design the building plans through modeling, which actually revealed in Mallot’s competition-winning entry case, a vertical dome would be more effective than a traditional horizontal domed design. Then an AI 3D printer managed to create a third of their 2-story home competition entry model in under 30hours. AI is also being used to trial and model different architectural designs under various environmental conditions as t would be infeasible to test the houses on Mars. The AI is mainly being used to predict how structures will perform and function in the harsh environment of Mars. These functions range from structural strength to the science needed for optimal thermal insulation. The accuracy of these tests are essential for the safety of the astronauts as air is currently toxic for humans due to the high composition of carbon dioxide and temperatures can range from -50degrees to -200degrees Fahrenheit.
‘AI Space Factory’ is also aiming to make its mission renewable and fully biodegradable and therefore have made the home out of materials that will be found on Mars. To achieve this they have made the house from a mixture of basalt which is readily available in large quantities on the plant and a plastic polymer made from corn. This means that for their mission to be a real success they are going to place robots on the red plant to grow this and create their raw material in harsh conditions. They envision that there will be a mars agricultural society in the future using automation. Therefore, to colonise the planet, we need to make the land usable. I assume that one such way that this can be achieved is through the use of vertical farming and the use of smart greenhouses that use AI and computer vision to monitor the climate of plants. Such technology is actually currently being used in the Netherlands, and this process has been so successful that it has made the town known as the “silicon valley of agriculture”
The use of AI is rapidly speeding up the growth of the 4th wave of technological revolution and teams such as the ‘AI Space Factory’ utilising automated processes to revolutionise industries such as Space travel. I believe that this technology also shows a lot of potential for the future of agriculture and architecture and I am very excited to see whether or not we will be able to have a civilization on Mars or another plant in this generation or whether this will simply remain science fiction.