Three Years In: What We Got Right (And Wrong) About AI in the AE Industry

Three Years In: What We Got Right (And Wrong) About AI in the AE Industry

Way back in January 2023, in “Artificial Intelligence—First- and Second-Order Effects for the AE Industry,” I played a trick on our readers. ChatGPT had just debuted two months earlier and due to overwhelming demand and capacity issues, new individual users had to “wait in line” to use it. Finally, I was able to access it and some ChatGPT knockoffs in January. My Word on the Street article opened with four paragraphs about AI’s impact on the AE industry—predictive maintenance, the usual consultant-speak about “immense potential” and “careful integration.” It read fine. Competent, even.

Then I fessed up: I didn’t write those paragraphs. An AI copywriting tool called Anyword did. I gave it a topic. Three seconds later, it gave me copy.

But the parlor trick wasn’t the point. The point was what came next: two predictions about what AI would actually mean for the AE industry—the first-order effects and second-order effects.

The Two Predictions

First-order effects, I argued, would be about how AI transforms how the industry works. AI copywriting was a sideshow, I wrote. The real disruption would come from AI’s impact on planning, design, and operations…Read more