Northeastern University’s Center for Design (CfD) recently hosted an open conversation with Molly Wright Steenson, historian, designer, writer, and professor who works at the intersection of design, architecture, AI, and ethics. She is the author of Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape (MIT Press, Fall 2017), a history of AI’s impact on design and architecture. She is also the co-editor of Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press, 2019) with Laura Forlano and Mike Ananny, an edited volume that asks, “If the Bauhaus were around today, what would keep it up at night?” Currently, she is writing about the stakes in the emerging conversation on AI, ethics, and design.

The lecture, including a lively Q+A session, is available to watch below.

Dr. Steenson is Senior Associate Dean for Research in the College of Fine Arts, the K&L Gates Associate Professor of Ethics & Computational Technologies, and Associate Professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University. She has also been an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, adjunct faculty at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and an associate professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. She holds a PhD in Architecture from Princeton University and a Master of Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture. Prior to her career in academia, she began working with the web in 1994 at groundbreaking design studios, consultancies, and Fortune 500 companies.