Will AI Replace Architects?
Spoiler: Not in the near future. But how can it assist us?
Will AI take over architect’s jobs? Thomas Lane in the May 2023 edition of the Building magazine reported that AI can automate 37% of architects’ and engineers’ work. This, however, will likely mean that we can automate more mundane tasks and focus more on strategic and creative tasks. Just as Revit, digital NBS specifications, 3D modelling and real-time rendering software did not overtake architects’ jobs but just changed the way we work, the same is likely to be true of AI tools. New tasks — to do with AI management, for example — will also emerge.
At the time of writing this article we are in the second quarter of 2023 and AI has only fairly recently emerged into public consciousness. It rapidly established itself as the trend of the year, after Open AI’s ChatGPT was made available to the public as a free trial version at the end of 2022. Despite its limitations and originally only having access to data up to the year of 2021, the internet and social media exploded with chatter about ChatGPT and AI in general and the race is on for who can find the best use-case for it.
Many Architects are among the professionals left wondering what it all means for them. Rumours of AI taking over white-collar jobs has caused some concern and reactions range from declining to engage with ChatGPT/ AI…
