u/HobbitFoot

You're focusing too much on technology and not on humanity. You're expecting major political change to occur at the pace of technological change when that has rarely ever been the case. Furthermore, the current political system doesn't preclude the use of AI in engineering. Humans stay in the loop and the cost of keeping humans in the loop ends up being a rounding error when it comes to overall construction.

I expect several careers and professions to go away or be minimized by the use of AI. I just don't see that happening with professional engineers happening soon because there is so much more lower hanging fruit available.

And by the time that humans are removed from the loop regarding engineering, will it really be human civilization any more?

The biggest thing Einstein did after evacuating was advocate for the development of the atomic bomb in the USA, and even then he didn't do too much in its development. It is possible that the US atomic bomb program would have been significantly delayed without his intervention to the point where it wasn't used in World War II.

They don't want to fire any engineers since they bring in money, but expect major changes to any coworkers who are on overhead. Those positions will get cut.

You'll start to get more training and development, but it will mostly be sales and other skills to grow the company. It may be good, it may be bad, but the gist is that you need to make the line go up somehow.

If you are in any financial meetings, expect these to become more painful as the PE firm likely changed how the recognize revenue and now need to get paid ASAP. Major early changes to policy are going to be centered around this.

There will likely be a merger in the future if it isn't there now. These firms want to grow and buying existing companies is usually the easiest way to do so.

If you wanted to stay at a small and/or employee owned firm, it might be a good idea to spruce up your resume.

If autonomous AI systems eventually demonstrate greater reliability than human engineers, why wouldn't companies and insurers develop business models around offering those services and assuming responsibility for them?

We're still in the process of finalizing liability for autonomous vehicles, and it isn't all going to the manufacturer. I can see the law lagging behind on liability for professional services for buildings as case law gets settled. This will likely be a decades long process.

I also look at the law regarding the companies who can vend professional services. Companies which sell professional services generally must be run by professionals. This is why engineering companies are run by licensed professional engineers in the USA and some other countries. A tech company which doesn't have a certificate of authorization is likely to not be allowed to bypass existing law and there will be pushback.

Until a professional service, and parts of radiology is likely the canary in the coal mine, has protections removed, I expect that the timeframe for removing existing regulations to be in the decades and value of completely removing engineers won't be worth it as engineers will adopt the tools rather than be completely replaced by them.

Maybe it happens in the future, but the time frame for such a change will be decades, not years.

And I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding what goes on when it comes to design.

How do you validate the design? yes, AI can provide an answer to a design question, but how do you validate that the answer is correct?

I'll use another example with Finite Element Modelling or specialty design software which is designed from the ground up to perform the calculations for a structural element. Vendors for those programs, which are designed to do a specific task, don't take ownership of the calculations it performs. You also run into the issue of "garbage in, garbage out", where programs perform the calculations as directed but they do not reflect the reality of design. I've seen it happen with design software and I'm sure it will happen with AI.

Who is liable for the inputs?

If I ask AI a bad question and get a technically correct answer but my bad question kills someone, who is liable?

That mindset got thrown out in the Great Recession. Part of the issue for a lack of talent in the industry currently is that a lot of engineers who should be here left the industry during the Great Recession and didn't come back.

Maybe, but we are a generation into using computers for design and I am not aware of any company out there currently who will validate their own design software to the point where they take liability if the software is used correctly. Tax software in the USA only started offering liability guarantees a few years ago for easier submissions and the market for tax preparation is so much larger. Then, you still have liability on the engineering judgement regarding the inputs used for design, which is something that AI may not be able to self verify.

There is no reason to see AI being any different than any current set of software out there; you still need a qualified person to run it and the market is so small that it isn't worth it for a tech company to try to take over the industry. Instead, it will get used by licensed professionals as a tool like Excel and CAD were to perform the job more efficiently. Hours will drop and the multiplier will rise to compensate for the added cost.

By the time that society allows an AI to be the Engineer of Record, I'll be dead. I suspect that most current practicing engineers will be dead as well.

Most people are focusing on the state of the industry, where CAD deliverables are common in some parts as the sealed deliverable or in other cases where it is contractually required to be provided along with the signed and sealed documents.

The big issue? That requires the CAD work to be at a far higher standard than hiding only behind PDF's. The drawings need to be drawn to the expectation that they are drawn to scale even if they are labeled as Not To Scale. A CAD standard should also be followed a lot more rigorously, including using a defined level structure to state what the lines actually are. If you are using Civil 3D or InRoads, the model should match what gets printed out exactly.

I've seen a lot of sloppy CAD work done where the drafters/architects don't draw to scale and make it up by overriding annotative text. Those drawings are going to be worthless to a Contractor, since they want the CAD files to work off of. Even if you send a release saying that the CAD files are effectively worthless, the Engineer of Record should have an idea of the condition of the files and how useful they will be to the Contractor.

It depends on the work they do. I've worked at firms where having a Master's degree gave me a leg up because they were doing work above and beyond the basics; having those additional technical courses really helped. I've also worked at firms where having a Bachelor's only was fine because they didn't do a lot of complex design and those complex designs generally only went to a couple of engineers with more experience and higher degrees.

The Jet Lag people have already been on Dirty Laundry.

FIVE

Any coordinated protest movement would be crushed by force until Gorbachev as a matter of policy. That the Soviet Union fell soon after these protests became a major point of concern for China, which sees mass protests as an existential threat to the Communist Party.

Regarding experience, they can choose not to verify the experience, but it is usually considered to be a dick move. A lot of states have changed the wording to allow for a larger pool to verify the experience stated, in part because it can have impacts regarding future jobs.

Regarding competence, a PE can absolutely choose to not verify or state that the applicant does not meet the qualifications. You should know if a PE is willing to sign off on your competence before you give them the form. I've told applicants not to use me as a reference since they wouldn't want me to be honest on the form.

I've had one case where someone didn't use me as a reference for competence but needed me to sign off on the experience. They filled out the experience form to my satisfaction far better than they actually did the work.

I don't know if I can make it here in two weeks. I might "accidentally miss my flight".

I seen them several times in zoos. They are quite pleasant.

I think the issue with AI is that a lot of people who use it tend to output AI slop without actually reviewing it.

As it is now, AI will make math errors to the point where validating its output is near the level of validating hand calculations. So, it should only really be used as a fancy search engine or as a way to help generate information to go into existing workflows, since at the end of the day AI has yet to be able to take over validation.

create internal tools with AI to replace spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are an internal tool. If you want AI to write a program, you then need to audit the program enough to so that the signing engineer can be comfortable with the design. Usually, it is a lot easier to find people to audit spreadsheets or MathCAD.

A lot of people settle with their partners in some form, in part because being with someone requires mutual attraction.

The big thing with Ozempic now is that someone can take a pill which allows them to radically change their attractiveness, usually in relation to their partner.

Wow, my heart is breaking.

I would ask for examples on argumentative and overconfident to understand what the feedback is.

Regarding argumentative, I would try to discuss the thought process behind what should happen if there is a disagreement and how it gets resolved. Is there an instance when you can point to reference material which can resolve the argument. Are you also addressing the reasons why people are arguing or is someone just repeating the same argument over and over again without addressing what the other person is saying?

Regarding overconfidence, are you answering questions with external people without checking in regarding coordination or verification? Are you agreeing to items without authorization to agree to those items? Is your response "because I said so" rather than approaching some questions with independent facts?

Those rides looked so janky.

Oh yeah, I can see it too.

A lot of immigrants don't move to get to better weather, but because they can make more money elsewhere.

I could see Moroccans missing the weather and food from home even as they would still choose to live in Europe.

Most municipal streetcar lines were built as private entities. They were only taken over by local municipalities after those companies went bankrupt.

That will never happen. The tolls fund existing operations and other infrastructure in the area. Politicians aren't willing to replace that toll money with anything else, especially because out of state traffic also pays the tolls while only in-state people will pay the taxes.