The NCSEA AI team participated in NCSEA’s Leadership Week on June 4-5. The event took place in Chicago and brought together nearly 100 SEA leaders, NCSEA Board Members, and NCSEA Committee Chairs from across the country to collaborate on the profession’s future.
As a member of the NCSEA AI Grant Team, Andrew Sundal (HGA, Minneapolis) presented at the event in effort to engage local SEAs and committees in the dialogue around AI in structural Engineering. Sundal presented an overview of the NCSEA Foundation’s vision on artificial intelligence, outlining the AI Team’s objectives for the year.
Member organizations engaged in meaningful discussions around AI. Some key questions were:
- How do smaller firms engage in AI? Can AI “level the playing field” for smaller firms, providing them with tools and insights previously only available to larger companies?
- Will the lack of data at small firms be a limitation to AI engagement?
- What tools can we use? Where do we start?
The ISE Grant teams believe there are two models of AI engagement, consuming and developing. Small firms may have an advantage at being agile and adopting new AI tools while big firms have more hurdles with firm-wide engagement for new tools. Large firms may have resources to develop bespoke AI tools based on large datasets, but everyone is producing large amounts of data. Whether you’re big or small, the discussion highlighted the importance of initial steps around education and strategy. What technology is available now, and how can firms leverage free or low-cost tools into small manageable projects? The AI Grant team has been discussing these ideas extensively over the past several months. Stay tuned for more content around these topics!