Industry insight: Why engineers should stop trying to break AI and start designing with it

This article has been provided by Aly MacGregor, property executive at WSP

Have you heard the one about an AI that couldn’t create an image of a bike with square wheels, since all its training data had bikes with round wheels? You could take that as a humorous illustration of AI’s limitations – or a cautionary tale of the limitations of human engineers.

Most engineers I know take a degree of pleasure in demonstrating how clever they are, in this case outwitting AI. Yet, I question whether that’s the best demonstration of intelligence. After all, breaking a model isn’t necessarily that hard, if that’s your goal. We would be far smarter and better served to figure out new ways to use AI to address more meaningful questions.

Instead of figuring out how to break a model, engineers should be asking how to optimise design, improve efficiency, or solve complex challenges. For example, rather than ask about bikes with square wheels, we should be asking about practical challenges, such as creating...