The AEC Matrix

Welcome to the Matrix.

It is early 2023 and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is advancing at breakneck speed. A new large language model (LLM) called ChatGPT launched to the public in November 2022 and since then the news has been fast and furious.

Some things you may have missed:

• AI has taken (and passed portions of) the Bar Exam.

• Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into AI-developer OpenAI and appears to be planning to bring AI-powered results to Bing and AI-powered writing tools to Office.

• Tech news website CNET has gotten into hot water for using a home-grown AI to write its articles without telling anyone.

• BuzzFeed has said "AI-inspired content" will become part of its core business in 2023.

• Coding Q&A site Stack Overflow had to ban AI-generated answers because they were good enough to be dangerous.

The (AEC) Matrix will be a weekly newsletter highlighting and discussing AI developments with a specific focus on the architecture, engineering, and construction industry.

The goal is to talk about how this rapidly-advancing technology is impacting the industry as well as potential implications looking forward. AEC is an interesting context to discuss AI because AEC incorporates both blue and white collar work—analog and digital.

While I genuinely believe AI can be a powerful tool for good, there is reason for concern as well:

What happens when services like ChatGPT start putting copywriters, journalists, customer-service agents, paralegals, coders, and digital marketers out of a job? For years, tech thinkers have been warning that flexible, creative AI will be a threat to white-collar employment, as robots replace skilled office workers whose jobs were once considered immune to automation. In the most extreme iteration, analysts imagine AI altering the employment landscape permanently. One Oxford study estimates that 47 percent of U.S. jobs might be at risk.

- Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic (emphasis mine)

We already have AI-powered building inspections and AI-powered photo tagging. How big of a leap is it from AI-generated news articles to AI-generated construction specifications?

One thing seems clear: change is coming. Whether AI becomes the 21st century version of the calculator (i.e. a tool that makes humans massively more effective) or turns into The Matrix will depend a lot on people’s attitudes towards how it’s implemented and used.

I want this newsletter to be one step towards finding powerful, life-enhancing ways to take advantage of this fascinating new technology, while raising awareness of potential pitfalls.

So... red pill? or blue?