AI Redraws Boston

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Harvard Square:

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Clearly the model is not trained on Boston or Cambridge. A large, legible, sign plainly identifying the square would never exist in reality.
 
Clearly the model is not trained on Boston or Cambridge. A large, legible, sign plainly identifying the square would never exist in reality.
It is pretty laughable, especially since "Harvard Square" is plainly marked on the subway kiosk right across the street. These AI depictions are reminiscent of the virtual reality in The Matrix movie, almost convincingly real, but so tellingly half a bubble off.
 
That looks very real, like how Boston could have looked with some different twists and turns in its long history. No Charlestown Naval Shipyard, a smaller Boston Common, no Public Garden, no Fort Point Channel, the Charles River basin configured differently, etc.
One thing ive always wondered is what boston would have looked like had they not laid the back bay grid on its own plane and instead lined it up with columbus ave and huntington ave making it so it was moreso one cohesive street grid across the south end, bay village, into back bay vs how it ended up with the back bay being at a 45* angle to the rest of the grid. That image kind of gives that feeling where most of the grid is going the same direction.
 
ChatGPT is a fun toy to play with. I typed in "Central Artery Boston Massachusetts 2045", and this popped out. Take away the two cars on the elevated structure, above what appears to be the RKG, and it's not a bad idea.

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What an incredibly useless technology.
Seriously. They were telling us all of the amazing benefits that ai would bring, but instead we just get shitty youtube thumbnails and a bunch of slop. For the amount of energy being wasted to create so much trash its incomprehensible.

Not to mention weve been presented with 2 options, both shitty.

1. Ai is successful and steals all our jobs or
2. Ai fails and takes the entire economy down with it

Wonderful.
 
This almost looks like the Bowker?
Good point. As much as I would like to see a N-S rail connector, even if it has to be an elevated structure over the RKG, it would have the negatives of an overpass over a park, much like the Bowker. Also, I don't think the existing Central Artery tunnel roof could support the piers of an overhead railway structure.
 
This one from Chat GPT is interesting. I asked it to depict Boston in 2026 if urban renewal projects had not happened. I actually like the way the elevated Central Artery looks, and the industrial and dystopian look of the cityscape:

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Seriously. They were telling us all of the amazing benefits that ai would bring, but instead we just get shitty youtube thumbnails and a bunch of slop. For the amount of energy being wasted to create so much trash its incomprehensible.

Not to mention weve been presented with 2 options, both shitty.

1. Ai is successful and steals all our jobs or
2. Ai fails and takes the entire economy down with it

Wonderful.
If you're not finding a dozen ways that using AI can make your life much easier and more productive, you're missing out. It's being built into every industry with huge success. Medicine, law, customer service. 6G rollout with incorporate AI to intelligently control radio bands and tower choice; stoplights will use it. I could go on and on. There's an intelligence infrastructure being built into everything. I couldn't disagree more with this binary nonsense: it'll succeed and ruin us or it'll fail and ruin us. Some real luddite vibes in this thread.
 
2. Ai fails and takes the entire economy down with it

Not the economy, but the stock market.

I hate the fact that people are betting their (in theory) retirement on the fascination with consuming all the world's resources to generate memes.
 

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