A mix of AI, a wild Nineteen Seventies plan to construct underwater cities, and a designer creating furnishings on the seabed across the Bahamas is perhaps the answer to the widespread destruction of coral reefs. It may even save the world from coastal erosion.

Industrial designer Tom Dixon and technologist Suhair Khan, founding father of AI incubator Open-Ended Design, are collaborating on regenerating the ocean ground. “Coral reefs are endangered by climate change, shipping, development, and construction—but they’re vital,” Khan explains. “They cover 1 percent of the ocean floor, but they’re home to more than 25 percent of marine life.”

Currently, Dixon says, coastal erosion is prevented by dropping concrete constructions to strengthen the shoreline. These harm marine life and ecosystems—however coral could possibly be a “regenerative replacement.”

Dixon considered the concept having come throughout architect Wolf Hilbertz’s plan to construct a metropolis underwater, then float it to the floor. In 1976, Hilbertz invented Mineral Accretion Technology: a charged metallic framework that accumulates calcium carbonate in seawater like a kettle accumulates limescale in hard-water areas. The result’s a limestone deposit often known as Biorock.

“It also grows back eroded reefs and regenerates coral, and species like oysters and sea grass grow twice as fast,” explains Dixon, who has experimented with the method by creating limestone furniture off the coast of the Bahamas. The duo now collaborate, utilizing AI to foretell the end result of importing Biorock to totally different websites at totally different water temperatures, in numerous climate circumstances, with totally different quantities of solar energy.

They purpose to trial their work off the coast of Northern Australia, in response to Khan, and hope to recruit affected native communities to advise and champion their plans.

This article seems within the March/April 2024 challenge of WIRED UK journal.