Human or artificial intelligence? It’s all a matter of trust

David Bucknall, RLB’s late former chair, was passionate about his profession. He liked to look ahead, and he loved to innovate.

He challenged his peers and colleagues across the industry with the mantra that our profession was endangered and needed to reinvent itself to stay relevant. Bucknall saw this as a huge opportunity, rather than something to be downbeat about. Resistance to change is what frustrated him.

Near the start of my career, the sentiment seemed strange. How could the profession that I had only just joined and worked so hard for be endangered?

Bucknall’s warning comes back to me now whenever I am discussing artificial intelligence, and against that backdrop some now even argue that all professionals are becoming irrelevant in the 21st century.

So, with the Procurement Act due to go live in the new year, I thought it might be opportune to look at this key stage of a project through the lens of where trust may be best placed, and if AI spells the start or the end of our professions. With the act’s aims for public procurement including “making it quicker, simpler, more transparent and better”, it would seem that AI ought to be able to support some of those objectives.

Trust in professionals

As professionals, we trade off trust – we seek the trust of our clients and of the public. At a macro level, trust in professions has been waning, almost inversely proportionally to the rise in popularism and disinformation. The annual IPOS veracity index shows trust in some professions at a 40-year low.

In her independent review of Building Regulations and fire safety, Dame Judith Hackitt commented on the lack of clarity on industry roles and responsibilities “There is ambiguity over where responsibility lies, exacerbated by a level of fragmentation within the industry and precluding robust ownership of accountability.”

And moving specifically to procurement, she said: “The way in which procurement is often managed can reduce the likelihood that a building will be safe.”

Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report should be a necessary and sobering read for the entire industry that drives change in all professions

Again, not exactly a ringing endorsement for all professionals involved in the process.

So, while there may not have been any direct criticism of individual professions in Hackitt’s words, the systemic failure of the professionals to bring order to this complexity may have seen trust wane in our sector too.

Hackitt does more positively describe the profession’s response to her interim report and their work on competency standards. Perhaps the professions also see that their very survival relies on the rebuilding of trust.

The phase two report from the Grenfell Inquiry published last month tells of the many failings that led to the tragic event and observes that “a number of common themes can be seen running through the story which, due to their nature, we think are likely to be repeated widely across the construction industry”.

Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report should be a necessary and sobering read for the entire industry that drives change in all professions.

Trust in technology

Our new government has promised to deliver “measurable objectives driving a sense of purpose”. It therefore seems right that much of the progress in procurement practices has been a focus on outcomes.

Procurement ought to be a process of objectively measuring which supplier is likely to provide the best outcomes against a set of clear criteria. AI ought to have an edge on the professional here, ditching the nuance of bias and focusing on the applied logic of what will best deliver the outcome.

It is also paradoxical that the very use of AI may force better practice by the humans participating as it will require the articulation of the desired outcomes by those directing a project.

And yet the recent Post Office scandal has demonstrated that sometimes trust in technology can be misplaced, and human direction needs to be applied to ensure that strong ethics and appropriate governance complement a technology solution.

Empathy

There is certainly a need for empathy in procurement. In an exercise of selecting a team to collaborate, both during the procurement process and with the selected contractor, this is undoubtedly so. Those tendering need to feel that they have been heard – as do the project stakeholders that their objectives will be met.

Allowing selection to just be by machine risks distrust. As AI learns, it may not be able to clearly articulate its reasoning, but may also learn bias from its gathered intelligence.

While a solely AI-driven procurement exercise therefore seems a way off, it could also risk abuse through gamification – client’s AI procurement “bot” pitted against contractor’s AI bid-writing “bot”, all the time focused on the contract award and not the project outcome. Contracting for the desired outcomes may help to bridge this conflict, but in the meantime, it may not be best left to the machines.

Empathy may not always be the sole domain of humans. Machines are becoming better at detecting human emotion, and embedding empathy in AI may improve accountability in the technology.

The verdict

So, was Bucknall right? Are our professionals endangered? Well, I suspect he had in mind a certain type of professional; those unable or unwilling to adapt. After all, it was resistance to change that frustrated him. He also loved his profession and rose to the challenge of driving change.

Arguably the fragmentation that Hackitt describes is in response to the more complex industry we now have. This complexity of our industry is unlikely to abate, but AI may help us to navigate it.

>>See also: Top 150 Consultants 2024: What AI and machine learning tools are you using?

>>See also: What does artificial intelligence mean for construction?

I suspect that a new breed of professional will emerge as a result – driven by the values of their professional institutions, adept at navigating new technologies but empathetic to the social constructs that make our built environment. I suspect that is what David also had in mind.

It is likely that this balance of trust will continue to evolve and probably quickly. Here I can turn directly to Bucknall for some words of wisdom, as he once put it in Building magazine: “At the risk of mixing my metaphors, public sector procurement is a dinosaur (although it is clearly ahead of the private sector in many areas). But it is an evolving dinosaur… I suppose, like dinosaurs, our brain is small and distant and any message we send to the feet to change direction can take an awfully long time to arrive.”

We should remember that much of what we do is also a social process manifested into a built form

Our institutions and their professional members will need to be agile, which in itself will require a change in mindset. One of our current evolutionary challenges is AI and we may now be over the inertia that Bucknall described; we are gathering momentum, but we still need to go quicker or face extinction.

We may utilise the power of the technology, we may take pride in our professional rigour, diligence and training that equips us with a strong ethical compass. But we should remember that much of what we do is also a social process manifested into a built form.

Our industry should embrace the productivity gains of AI, cherish the values of our professions, but ultimately remember that our greatest prized asset may simply be human empathy. Trust me, I’m a human!

Paul Beeston is RLB’s head of industry and service insight