The future and the civil engineering surveyor
WHAT’S our role? What does our future look like? Are we at risk of losing our jobs to AI?
I was in discussions on Twitter with a games developer who was ‘gate keeping’ (my daughters tell me this is the term) the realm of AI and the technicalities of what things like ChatGPT actually do. They were very clearly saying ‘this isn’t new, ignore the hype’.
I’ve started to call it ‘shype’ but that’s a different phrase, related to the constant barrage of negative media and resistance to change articles that state largely ‘in my day it was better’. This anti-tech agenda doesn’t sit well with me and those that have discussed this with me may know how I aim to focus on people first. Quite likely a surprising thing to say given my tech background.
Later, during the same time period, the subject of cobots (a collaborative robot) and automation of the construction site came up. Neil Thompson, the Institution of Engineering and Technology chair, was pushing mid-journey to create images of cobots in action. Conceptually easy to understand the application but missing the angles of implementation.
This is early industry stuff in construction, but as an institution we need to understand where we contribute, how we can gain and how we can add value as the technology becomes more and more pervasive. Unmanned dozers, predictive planning, dynamic and near real-time cost engineering, digital/smart contracts, Spot the Dog – all of this needs our expertise and professionalism to become reality. Come with us!
Andy Evans FCInstCES, President