AI to human: Your place or mine?

lsquoAI can never do what the human touch canrsquoVilas Nagalkar senior architect and member of the Practising engineers architects and town planners association IndiaI believe AI is a great tool to plan bigscale projects or even when you have to design small homes where the need is a oneroomkitchen I have seen it being used in public infrastructure when we have a short period time in which a lot of work has to be done in terms of creating 100 to 200 design modelsBut when it comes to me personally I am still a penandpaper architect I do believe that the kind of detail thought and design layout done in the oldschool way doesnrsquot come from using software including Autocad While I welcome AI in the architecture field it is something that ismdashat least for nowmdashviewed as a tool that probably eases our work a bit But if you want finesse it is best that there is drafting involvedVilas NagalkarIn public infrastructure I have seen it being used by and large for projects that as I said are planned on a massive scale like town planning etcWith older software like Autocad etc we had seen that most commercial or residential high rises in Mumbai began to look pretty much alike So there are these issues as well and the primary element in these designs were the glass facades which we later have seen have caused several other issues like overheating as wellSo while I view it as a good massproduction tool I do not think AI will be able to do what the human touch canlsquoAI can empower the client to express their vision betterrsquoKeith Menon sustainable architect and cofounder of Spiro SperoAI portals such as seaartai can also generate interior layoutsI think AI is already here I understand the insecurity surrounding it and that many look at it as something that will come and take our jobs but itrsquos a great tool Earlier in architecture you had to learn drafting today you donrsquot see too many people drafting For the last few decades we have witnessed software like SketchUp AutoCAD and many more but no one complained about their usemdashit just made our life simpler Hand draft layouts and designs are rareI donrsquot think that this technology will make us obsolete we still have to have human intervention Like the other software the end goal is to come up with a visual that is beautiful I feel that most of us have already been working with technology for more than we realise so to blame only AI for coming in and computerising the process is not very trueKeith MenonI also feel that AI empowers the client who can feed their wishlist into the software and it renders a reference image which they can then show us to explain what they want Today clients are also getting familiar with the technology so we are seeing the AI renders getting closer to the clientrsquos vision But of course these are just reference images like Pinterest You can use these as something to understand what the client wants It is finally us who will tell them what part of the design is feasible and what isnrsquotIf you want an example we can say that a nonwriter might think that using AI for creative writing is the best discovery ever but good writers will steer clear of itAnother advantage of AI is that it helps us jump a few steps ahead Most of my work is in landscaping Here AI can help us to envision where the stream should be and maybe the way you can put it together Finally we step in and see what is feasible as an executable plan