Lately, it feels as if we have been cast in an alternative production of Groundhog Day, where weather reporting in Punxsutawney has been replaced with discussions around artifical intelligence in architecture. Who cannot empathise with Bill Murray’s rising sense of trepidation when dealing with a constant loop of déjà vus?

These AI debates usually revolve around the same themes: what is AI; what are the opportunities; how is it used in architecture and construction (translation: how many different ways can we use the likes of MidJourney and ChatGPT)? 

It is not that these are not worthy questions, but one would have hoped that, by now, the industry would have moved the discussion further forward. There is an array of ways AI can be used in the AEC beyond diffusion models.