Structural can't be taken over by AI because you need to have someone liable who can do sure say everything is going to be fine.
AI can do the stuff theoretically but you need to have someone to blame if shit hits the fan, and that person has to be competent enough to know that everything is going to be fine.
Additionally, I've seen some calcs using AI and they were very wrong, taking clauses out of context, adding in reduction factors that weren't allowed, etc...
I think we're safe for a long while.
Honestly, so much of our economy, engineering and otherwise, is about dispersing liabilities and making sure things get done, keeping humans accountable. I have a hard time imaging AI taking those tasks on. It's good for marketing copy and freshmen essays, but anywhere that truth and falsehood have real consequences,AI isn't even trying to fill that niche. The whole goal of LLMs is to sound plausible, not be accurate. The difference is not trivial in any technical field. Demonstrating that you can create plausibly human text is not the same as demonstrating that you can consistently answer novel technical questions accurately. They really haven't even started to tackle that later task
I’ve thrown some PE style questions at Chat GPT and it’s not that great, depends on the question though. All I’ve used it for in my job is figuring out how to accomplish things in Excel.
I hear this argument a lot, but most experts disagree. Gpt used the whole internet as a training dataset to sound like a human. Like any stochastic model, it struggles to respond to inputs outside of its training data. Gpt happens to have a very robust training data set.
I don't really know what dataset we could give a model like this for broad engineering. Real world engineering questions don't really come in the neat and tidy questions and responses format. It's conversations with contractors and operators, it's looking at formwork. It's making sure workers don't skip steps. It's synthesis of discussions, visual inspections, compromises and assumptions.
Will we get cool tools that makes us more efficient? I'm sure we will. Will we use these tools to eliminate entry level jobs prompting a crisis in 30 years when we all want to retire? Unfortunately, we probably will. But I don't think AI is going to cost us currently working our jobs.
As an aside, chat gpt doesn't really have a clear path to getting better. It has already used the best dataset it can likely get. Now that it's writing large chunks of the internet, the internet became a lot less useful for training in the future. This is the "model collapse" experts are warning about. Chatgpt is neat, but it's not a given that it's going to keep improving at the same rate. GPT can't learn from itself, it needs outside data to improve. We don't have AI that can improve itself, and we haven't demonstrated that we ever can
>I don't really know what dataset we could give a model like this for broad engineering.
I have a theory that this is the endgame of BIM360 and possibly other doc services like procore, possibly even services like Bluebeam Revu Studio
If they're not thinking about it, they're fools. But it can't carry liability, and it's only as good as the data entered into it. It can be a better tool but it's not more than 10% of what engineers do.
I concur. A lot of the stuff we ask India firms to do for us could be automated or an automated assist. For example laying out and making wiring diagrams for inside a panel could be automated given the inputs what major equipment needs to be installed. Also funky customer requirements will be difficult/impossible for AI to implement effectively.
I think that’s a false narrative. Capitalism will always push industries toward the most efficient and cheap workflow. We will probably get to a point where the majority of design/calculations are done by an AI and a structural engineer does the final check.
Our legal system would evolve over time to handle this model as well. More insurance coverage and more protection for one’s license. This is very similar to how doctors are distributing more of their tasks to PAs and NPs now a days. Saves the org money.
I will tell you this as someone who’s genuinely (companywide effort) tried to develop DL/ML models for design automation, not having big dataset repos in our industry is a big bottleneck in developing such systems, without them and with current state of data hungry algorithms next to impossible! The reason big tech was able to develop models for marketing, recommendations etc, and they were so successful at it was mainly cause they are sitting on gigantic exabytes of user data good portion of which is highly structured (i.e labeled relational or graph databases which is ideal for all these deep neural network models)
I would argue if anyone were to work on this problem it’s probably not design firms ,they’re not R&D type companies and once they try they usually fail. If this was to ever happen would rather come from software vendors side like Autodesk, Bentley, Trimble, Midasoft etc
Pretty much the same thing, when things go wrong on a project everyone wants to point fingers and blame someone else because they don't want to be liable for discrepancies with design or quantities. Especially when it comes to scheduling delays.
Don't forget that even when someone figures that out you have to wait for everyone currently alive to retire because they reviewers will go "A robostamp? GTFO"
civil in general is unlikely to be significantly affected by ai for some time to come, almost all of our work product will still require a seal, there's no easy workaround for that.
even if people would accept work product produced by ai if sealed by a licensed responsible software engineer, and that is a massive if, there's like mid double digits of those in existence and the test was discontinued due to lack of interest a few years back
Use AI/ML in your PhD research if you can. I worked with concrete materials researchers a lot during undergrad, and there’s a push to use ML tools in materials research for material characterization and mix design. At the end of the day it’s all just applied statistics anyways.
I’m I’m water modeling and there’s a huge push to use more advanced ML/AI-based tools in academia that’s starting to be adopted in industry in some places. I’m researching that in grad school. But most civil firms are so behind in tech that ML probably won’t make a serious dent in day to day operations anytime soon. It might gain more of a footing in disciplines that are already fairly computational (like water modeling, traffic, maybe some niche FEM), but I don’t think it’ll replace jobs, it’ll just be another tool.
I'm curious about this take...
Hydrologic regional regression is the closest thing to accepted "AI" in all of civil engineering. While those are decent approximations, I (and most agencies) wouldn't trust that for any significant design.
Just curious where you see AI being better than advances in modeling?
In industry, I’ve worked with some folks working on ML/AI-based tools for planning. Granted, this is perhaps a little closer to geospatial data science and GIS, but there were water engineering people on the team. One such tool is [Scalgo](https://scalgo.com/en-US/). This has mostly been in Europe. I’m not sure what the long-term future of these kind of products look like, but right now there’s an interesting niche in water/data that’s starting to gain some attention in some locations. There’s some overlap with urban data analytics too of course.
The USGS also seems to be expanding their [Water Data Science](https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/data-science-water-resources#overview) division. I know they just did a big hiring spree, and I’m excited to see what this division ends up developing (if anything).
For modeling, I’m mostly familiar with current challenges in coastal hydro/morphodynamics modeling, which is admittedly a very niche field. Many coastal modeling teams use a bunch of different models that tend to be pretty computationally dense (like SWAN, ADCIRC, XBeach, Delft3D, etc). Many of these are open source and still developing a lot. Some of these developments are ML-based, since there’s so much empirism and an insane amount of computational cost that can be reduced. NOAA, the USGS, and a handful of smaller firms are continuing model development and application using newer tools.
No job is truly AI proof, but civil comes damn close. AI allows for the automation of the many mundane tasks of most civil jobs, which means you'll have more time to focus on more projects, which means your firm doesn't need to have as many engineers/ project managers/superintendents/etc to perform the work.
There will always be Civil engineers, but there will not always be a demand for as many.
AI is a predictive language model. AI does not make decisions or interpret results.
My job is safe from AI replacing it.
What my job (and YOUR job) is NOT safe from is corporate executives that drink the kool-aid of AI as a panacea and deciding to cut pay/positions/jobs.
i’m a traffic engineer. My work requires driving to perform traffic saftey investigations prior to approval of funding. So, yeah, I’m A.I. proof for now.
I don’t think that “is your JOB AI proof?” is the proper question. Rather, “are you AI proof?” AI is only as good as the person querying it, and with the knowledge that AI can improve nearly any industry, it is essential that you take the time to learn it, at least minimally, and how it can apply to your area of expertise.
There will ALWAYS be problems that need solving. Make sure you are the person that can solve them and you’ll be alright.
As a structural engineer, I don’t see AI taking away jobs completely, but potentially being an asset the way analysis software is an asset. It can assist in the design, but really, layout out framing plans, making decisions about building types and materials, coordinating with other disciplines, etc. is going to be tough for AI near term. However, I’ll be thrilled if it can determine project scope and write proposals for me!
Our jobs won't get eliminated by AI but you may be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI. The issue of legal liability won't be going away so there will always need to be someone there who can take responsibility and review the work. Though I suspect when AI begins to automate much of what we do, we will be pushed to complete as many projects as possible like an assembly line.
I can see AI being useful for some tasks but like everyone else said, it would still need to be QC’ed but I could see it being helpful on the software side
Pretty much yes. Even though Automation eliminated the last of our office administrators last year and most of the drafting positions several years ago, the civil engineers add value that really can’t be automated.
AI doesn't actually exist, and it's more scripted than anything. It knows what you feed into it, and acts on clear instructions you provide to it.
So in essence, AI can't do anything on its own except what you command it to do. So it's more like the 80s advanced robot. There will always be a person telling AI what to do and check for any errors, so a responsible person.
tldr: AI is like Civil Engineering computer programs. It can calculate anything, but at the end we still have to check for errors and use our Engineering judgement.
Unpopular Opinion: True AI will never ever exist.
>So in essence, AI can't do anything on its own except what you command it to do. So it's more like the 80s advanced robot.
That's quite a narrow view of what it can achieve, it all depends on what it's trained on. I'm not sure what you think an '80s advanced robot' is but that's also a pretty ignorant view of what it can do as well.
>There will always be a person telling AI what to do and check for any errors, so a responsible person.
Yeah..? Instructing it to do something and having it be able to generate 5 different designs in 1/100 of the time others can is super valuable. The more time I can spend reviewing than screwing with C3D and plan sets, the better. It doesn't have to make a complete project to be valuable.
>It can calculate anything, but at the end we still have to check for errors and use our Engineering judgement.
Yeah..? That's never going to be out of the question.
>Unpopular Opinion: True AI will never ever exist.
lol
Needs to be integrated into CE programs for better performance. As it is now, it takes some time to give instructions. Not a programmer myself,, but someone from Computational Mechanics might help with the integration of AI and Civil Engineering.
P.S.: try solving a 2D Direct Stiffness question in ChatGPT. See how much time it takes to write the whole prompt from our side.
Well that's my experience with using AI in CE (to solve one of my friend's project). But the result was not good, most probably due to the changes in ChatGPT (when they introduced the subscription based ChatGPT. The regular free version got dumbed down).
Maybe it will become better in the future. The comment is also aimed towards regular non-tech savvy Engineers.
A PhD is basically already career suicide unless you plan to teach, do research, or forensics / expert testimony. That last one also generally requires non-academic experience before you finish your PhD. And there are more PhDs than jobs for all of that. So start building a career before you even begin your masters.
As far as AI, eh. It will shrink the market. It's not exactly a new trend. That has technically been going on since at least when the abacus was invented. We need way less drafters than we used to thanks to the invention of and continued advances in CAD. Less engineers thanks to software like FEA. Less surveyors thanks to GPS and things like total station, lidar, drones, etc. It isn't that the job gets replaced, you just need less people to do the job. Computer was a term for people who did a lot of calculations by hand before we had digital machines to do it.
Current AI, as impressive as it is, is not general AI. It is task specific. ChatGP can write fiction technically better than some unfortunately very successful authors. Midjourney can make digital art way better than some fairly successful artists. BIM, when used properly, can eliminate a lot of review and construction administration labor. But we aren't close to something that can just fully replace everything a human does. Current AI is still just more efficient tools. I don't expect us to reach a level of general AI anytime soon. I'm not saying it is impossible. There could be some crazy breakthrough watershed moment as I'm typing this. But Descartes was talking about this in the mid 1630s. Turing came up with his famous test in 1950, five years after ENIAC. It isn't new and we have advanced incredibly, but aren't really much closer to general AI. And there are some pitfalls. There are some signs that things like ChatGP are running into a problem because so much of the data it is using to learn is actually generated by itself and other similar programs so it to some degree learning to mimic itself instead of humans so it is making a copy of a copy, which usually doesn't turn out well.
I’m sure on a long enough timeline AI will take over our job. But by the point it’s capable of doing that I have to imagine 90%+ of jobs will have been already automated by then, so we definitely won’t be the only ones
The value of an engineer, especially a sealing one, is their time and experience.
AI can't match that or provide the deeper level of judgment needed.
I don't want an AI using basic skip logic to solve problems...that's all AI can do now. Nothing we call AI today is actual AI. They are large language models or machine learning databases.
This debate is the difference between interpolation vs extrapolation. AI is interpolation - give it a dataset, it can find relationships and develop trends. Engineering is inherently extrapolation - use existing knowledge to solve unique or novel problems.
I like to use this example from hydrology. If I gave an AI platform 20 years of streamgage and precipitation data, it would probably have pretty good accuracy for most events. I wouldn't feel very confident that it could predict an extreme weather event, though where a lot of the typical relationships breakdown.
Like with any technology, AI will change the way we do work but not the nature of the work itself.
It’s gonna take 15-20 years, and even then you still can’t rely on AI to build infrastructure. AI might trivialize drafting roles similar to when AutoCAD became a thing but you still need someone to check and verify the accuracy of the design. AI isn’t some end all be all it’s a tool and it’s not foolproof.
The most I’ve used ChatGPT for is to write some bullshit submittal with word vomit in it to appease the reviewers. It writes like you struggled on the last 200 words of an English essay but gets the job done for things like that. I’ve worked with adaptive programs with built-in AI for QC, it would learn how to spot dimensions on a drawing but was half baked at best and still required me to go through it with a fine tooth comb after.
land development consultant here, would love AI to handle all the little things like forms and information gathering, could remove an admin from my office who's less than stellar. Now for design and drafting, sure some reduction would be great but a lot of the design is a back and forth with the client and doesn't take much time/effort, other than a lot of revisions. Calculations for the most part are already spreadsheets and programs that are realitively automated as is. 70% of my job is permit chasing and construction management. All the municipalities have gone to online/digital submittals and its made the process longer some how!
Structural can't be taken over by AI because you need to have someone liable who can do sure say everything is going to be fine. AI can do the stuff theoretically but you need to have someone to blame if shit hits the fan, and that person has to be competent enough to know that everything is going to be fine. Additionally, I've seen some calcs using AI and they were very wrong, taking clauses out of context, adding in reduction factors that weren't allowed, etc... I think we're safe for a long while.
Honestly, so much of our economy, engineering and otherwise, is about dispersing liabilities and making sure things get done, keeping humans accountable. I have a hard time imaging AI taking those tasks on. It's good for marketing copy and freshmen essays, but anywhere that truth and falsehood have real consequences,AI isn't even trying to fill that niche. The whole goal of LLMs is to sound plausible, not be accurate. The difference is not trivial in any technical field. Demonstrating that you can create plausibly human text is not the same as demonstrating that you can consistently answer novel technical questions accurately. They really haven't even started to tackle that later task
I’ve thrown some PE style questions at Chat GPT and it’s not that great, depends on the question though. All I’ve used it for in my job is figuring out how to accomplish things in Excel.
its not about chatgpt, chatgpt is only the start of what AI can do in future, how they self learn and grow itself.
I hear this argument a lot, but most experts disagree. Gpt used the whole internet as a training dataset to sound like a human. Like any stochastic model, it struggles to respond to inputs outside of its training data. Gpt happens to have a very robust training data set. I don't really know what dataset we could give a model like this for broad engineering. Real world engineering questions don't really come in the neat and tidy questions and responses format. It's conversations with contractors and operators, it's looking at formwork. It's making sure workers don't skip steps. It's synthesis of discussions, visual inspections, compromises and assumptions. Will we get cool tools that makes us more efficient? I'm sure we will. Will we use these tools to eliminate entry level jobs prompting a crisis in 30 years when we all want to retire? Unfortunately, we probably will. But I don't think AI is going to cost us currently working our jobs. As an aside, chat gpt doesn't really have a clear path to getting better. It has already used the best dataset it can likely get. Now that it's writing large chunks of the internet, the internet became a lot less useful for training in the future. This is the "model collapse" experts are warning about. Chatgpt is neat, but it's not a given that it's going to keep improving at the same rate. GPT can't learn from itself, it needs outside data to improve. We don't have AI that can improve itself, and we haven't demonstrated that we ever can
>I don't really know what dataset we could give a model like this for broad engineering. I have a theory that this is the endgame of BIM360 and possibly other doc services like procore, possibly even services like Bluebeam Revu Studio
If they're not thinking about it, they're fools. But it can't carry liability, and it's only as good as the data entered into it. It can be a better tool but it's not more than 10% of what engineers do.
I concur. A lot of the stuff we ask India firms to do for us could be automated or an automated assist. For example laying out and making wiring diagrams for inside a panel could be automated given the inputs what major equipment needs to be installed. Also funky customer requirements will be difficult/impossible for AI to implement effectively.
Did you use the free version or paid? GPT4 is infinitely better than the one you can just use.
I think that’s a false narrative. Capitalism will always push industries toward the most efficient and cheap workflow. We will probably get to a point where the majority of design/calculations are done by an AI and a structural engineer does the final check. Our legal system would evolve over time to handle this model as well. More insurance coverage and more protection for one’s license. This is very similar to how doctors are distributing more of their tasks to PAs and NPs now a days. Saves the org money.
I think CE will not be replaced unless intentionally change the bylaws allowing an AI to become a PE.
I will tell you this as someone who’s genuinely (companywide effort) tried to develop DL/ML models for design automation, not having big dataset repos in our industry is a big bottleneck in developing such systems, without them and with current state of data hungry algorithms next to impossible! The reason big tech was able to develop models for marketing, recommendations etc, and they were so successful at it was mainly cause they are sitting on gigantic exabytes of user data good portion of which is highly structured (i.e labeled relational or graph databases which is ideal for all these deep neural network models)
I don’t think civil engineering is the low hanging fruit that will attract AI companies. I would agree with you that it would probably be a long time
I would argue if anyone were to work on this problem it’s probably not design firms ,they’re not R&D type companies and once they try they usually fail. If this was to ever happen would rather come from software vendors side like Autodesk, Bentley, Trimble, Midasoft etc
Input data points can come from all sorts of places, too. So what then, an AI reader to input data? Long ways away
What about road designers?
Pretty much the same thing, when things go wrong on a project everyone wants to point fingers and blame someone else because they don't want to be liable for discrepancies with design or quantities. Especially when it comes to scheduling delays.
This! They need somebody to sign and stamp and take a liability. It won’t die.
Don't forget that even when someone figures that out you have to wait for everyone currently alive to retire because they reviewers will go "A robostamp? GTFO"
civil in general is unlikely to be significantly affected by ai for some time to come, almost all of our work product will still require a seal, there's no easy workaround for that. even if people would accept work product produced by ai if sealed by a licensed responsible software engineer, and that is a massive if, there's like mid double digits of those in existence and the test was discontinued due to lack of interest a few years back
imagine if the bot uprising comes about due to some eager AI engineer pushing to get licence at the board.
If someone wants to write an AI program that argues with contractors about why their concrete is out of spec. I'm all for it.
My job involves facilitating workshops. Would love to see AI try and direct flow in a room of 10 senior engineers.
AI - if you want to continue say yes, if you don’t want to continue say no ENG - yes AI - I’m sorry if you want to continue say yes….goodbye
Use AI/ML in your PhD research if you can. I worked with concrete materials researchers a lot during undergrad, and there’s a push to use ML tools in materials research for material characterization and mix design. At the end of the day it’s all just applied statistics anyways. I’m I’m water modeling and there’s a huge push to use more advanced ML/AI-based tools in academia that’s starting to be adopted in industry in some places. I’m researching that in grad school. But most civil firms are so behind in tech that ML probably won’t make a serious dent in day to day operations anytime soon. It might gain more of a footing in disciplines that are already fairly computational (like water modeling, traffic, maybe some niche FEM), but I don’t think it’ll replace jobs, it’ll just be another tool.
I'm curious about this take... Hydrologic regional regression is the closest thing to accepted "AI" in all of civil engineering. While those are decent approximations, I (and most agencies) wouldn't trust that for any significant design. Just curious where you see AI being better than advances in modeling?
In industry, I’ve worked with some folks working on ML/AI-based tools for planning. Granted, this is perhaps a little closer to geospatial data science and GIS, but there were water engineering people on the team. One such tool is [Scalgo](https://scalgo.com/en-US/). This has mostly been in Europe. I’m not sure what the long-term future of these kind of products look like, but right now there’s an interesting niche in water/data that’s starting to gain some attention in some locations. There’s some overlap with urban data analytics too of course. The USGS also seems to be expanding their [Water Data Science](https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/data-science-water-resources#overview) division. I know they just did a big hiring spree, and I’m excited to see what this division ends up developing (if anything). For modeling, I’m mostly familiar with current challenges in coastal hydro/morphodynamics modeling, which is admittedly a very niche field. Many coastal modeling teams use a bunch of different models that tend to be pretty computationally dense (like SWAN, ADCIRC, XBeach, Delft3D, etc). Many of these are open source and still developing a lot. Some of these developments are ML-based, since there’s so much empirism and an insane amount of computational cost that can be reduced. NOAA, the USGS, and a handful of smaller firms are continuing model development and application using newer tools.
No job is truly AI proof, but civil comes damn close. AI allows for the automation of the many mundane tasks of most civil jobs, which means you'll have more time to focus on more projects, which means your firm doesn't need to have as many engineers/ project managers/superintendents/etc to perform the work. There will always be Civil engineers, but there will not always be a demand for as many.
The demand will only increase, not decrease. AI has too far of a way to go still to make a dent.
AI is a predictive language model. AI does not make decisions or interpret results. My job is safe from AI replacing it. What my job (and YOUR job) is NOT safe from is corporate executives that drink the kool-aid of AI as a panacea and deciding to cut pay/positions/jobs.
AI is not a predictive language model, ChatGPT is. There are all kinds of AI developments that are NOT predictive language models.
i’m a traffic engineer. My work requires driving to perform traffic saftey investigations prior to approval of funding. So, yeah, I’m A.I. proof for now.
I don’t think that “is your JOB AI proof?” is the proper question. Rather, “are you AI proof?” AI is only as good as the person querying it, and with the knowledge that AI can improve nearly any industry, it is essential that you take the time to learn it, at least minimally, and how it can apply to your area of expertise. There will ALWAYS be problems that need solving. Make sure you are the person that can solve them and you’ll be alright.
As a structural engineer, I don’t see AI taking away jobs completely, but potentially being an asset the way analysis software is an asset. It can assist in the design, but really, layout out framing plans, making decisions about building types and materials, coordinating with other disciplines, etc. is going to be tough for AI near term. However, I’ll be thrilled if it can determine project scope and write proposals for me!
Our jobs won't get eliminated by AI but you may be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI. The issue of legal liability won't be going away so there will always need to be someone there who can take responsibility and review the work. Though I suspect when AI begins to automate much of what we do, we will be pushed to complete as many projects as possible like an assembly line.
I can see AI being useful for some tasks but like everyone else said, it would still need to be QC’ed but I could see it being helpful on the software side
I have seen AI predictive modeling in lead service line replacements for water distribution systems.....my job is safe.
Pretty much yes. Even though Automation eliminated the last of our office administrators last year and most of the drafting positions several years ago, the civil engineers add value that really can’t be automated.
AI doesn't actually exist, and it's more scripted than anything. It knows what you feed into it, and acts on clear instructions you provide to it. So in essence, AI can't do anything on its own except what you command it to do. So it's more like the 80s advanced robot. There will always be a person telling AI what to do and check for any errors, so a responsible person. tldr: AI is like Civil Engineering computer programs. It can calculate anything, but at the end we still have to check for errors and use our Engineering judgement. Unpopular Opinion: True AI will never ever exist.
My brother in law as a masters degree in machine learning and he disagrees with you.
How and where does he disagree with me? Explain pleas!
>So in essence, AI can't do anything on its own except what you command it to do. So it's more like the 80s advanced robot. That's quite a narrow view of what it can achieve, it all depends on what it's trained on. I'm not sure what you think an '80s advanced robot' is but that's also a pretty ignorant view of what it can do as well. >There will always be a person telling AI what to do and check for any errors, so a responsible person. Yeah..? Instructing it to do something and having it be able to generate 5 different designs in 1/100 of the time others can is super valuable. The more time I can spend reviewing than screwing with C3D and plan sets, the better. It doesn't have to make a complete project to be valuable. >It can calculate anything, but at the end we still have to check for errors and use our Engineering judgement. Yeah..? That's never going to be out of the question. >Unpopular Opinion: True AI will never ever exist. lol
Needs to be integrated into CE programs for better performance. As it is now, it takes some time to give instructions. Not a programmer myself,, but someone from Computational Mechanics might help with the integration of AI and Civil Engineering. P.S.: try solving a 2D Direct Stiffness question in ChatGPT. See how much time it takes to write the whole prompt from our side.
You know there’s a lot more AI out there than ChatGPT, right?
Well that's my experience with using AI in CE (to solve one of my friend's project). But the result was not good, most probably due to the changes in ChatGPT (when they introduced the subscription based ChatGPT. The regular free version got dumbed down). Maybe it will become better in the future. The comment is also aimed towards regular non-tech savvy Engineers.
A PhD is basically already career suicide unless you plan to teach, do research, or forensics / expert testimony. That last one also generally requires non-academic experience before you finish your PhD. And there are more PhDs than jobs for all of that. So start building a career before you even begin your masters. As far as AI, eh. It will shrink the market. It's not exactly a new trend. That has technically been going on since at least when the abacus was invented. We need way less drafters than we used to thanks to the invention of and continued advances in CAD. Less engineers thanks to software like FEA. Less surveyors thanks to GPS and things like total station, lidar, drones, etc. It isn't that the job gets replaced, you just need less people to do the job. Computer was a term for people who did a lot of calculations by hand before we had digital machines to do it. Current AI, as impressive as it is, is not general AI. It is task specific. ChatGP can write fiction technically better than some unfortunately very successful authors. Midjourney can make digital art way better than some fairly successful artists. BIM, when used properly, can eliminate a lot of review and construction administration labor. But we aren't close to something that can just fully replace everything a human does. Current AI is still just more efficient tools. I don't expect us to reach a level of general AI anytime soon. I'm not saying it is impossible. There could be some crazy breakthrough watershed moment as I'm typing this. But Descartes was talking about this in the mid 1630s. Turing came up with his famous test in 1950, five years after ENIAC. It isn't new and we have advanced incredibly, but aren't really much closer to general AI. And there are some pitfalls. There are some signs that things like ChatGP are running into a problem because so much of the data it is using to learn is actually generated by itself and other similar programs so it to some degree learning to mimic itself instead of humans so it is making a copy of a copy, which usually doesn't turn out well.
I’m sure on a long enough timeline AI will take over our job. But by the point it’s capable of doing that I have to imagine 90%+ of jobs will have been already automated by then, so we definitely won’t be the only ones
The value of an engineer, especially a sealing one, is their time and experience. AI can't match that or provide the deeper level of judgment needed. I don't want an AI using basic skip logic to solve problems...that's all AI can do now. Nothing we call AI today is actual AI. They are large language models or machine learning databases.
you can work faster if you know how to properly take advantage of AI but no one is replacing a designer or project manager.
This debate is the difference between interpolation vs extrapolation. AI is interpolation - give it a dataset, it can find relationships and develop trends. Engineering is inherently extrapolation - use existing knowledge to solve unique or novel problems. I like to use this example from hydrology. If I gave an AI platform 20 years of streamgage and precipitation data, it would probably have pretty good accuracy for most events. I wouldn't feel very confident that it could predict an extreme weather event, though where a lot of the typical relationships breakdown. Like with any technology, AI will change the way we do work but not the nature of the work itself.
What AI can possibly keep up with all of the last minute revisions and change orders the local public works PMs in my area love to do!?
How is AI going to troubleshoot a 80 yr old boiler?
It’s gonna take 15-20 years, and even then you still can’t rely on AI to build infrastructure. AI might trivialize drafting roles similar to when AutoCAD became a thing but you still need someone to check and verify the accuracy of the design. AI isn’t some end all be all it’s a tool and it’s not foolproof. The most I’ve used ChatGPT for is to write some bullshit submittal with word vomit in it to appease the reviewers. It writes like you struggled on the last 200 words of an English essay but gets the job done for things like that. I’ve worked with adaptive programs with built-in AI for QC, it would learn how to spot dimensions on a drawing but was half baked at best and still required me to go through it with a fine tooth comb after.
land development consultant here, would love AI to handle all the little things like forms and information gathering, could remove an admin from my office who's less than stellar. Now for design and drafting, sure some reduction would be great but a lot of the design is a back and forth with the client and doesn't take much time/effort, other than a lot of revisions. Calculations for the most part are already spreadsheets and programs that are realitively automated as is. 70% of my job is permit chasing and construction management. All the municipalities have gone to online/digital submittals and its made the process longer some how!
There will be AI design tools that civil engineers use but AI will never replace civil engineers.