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Are we preparing engineers well enough for the age of AI?

Gaurav Mishra

Over the last few months, while attending the Executive Programme in Business Management at ISB, I have had more exposure to AI and generative AI. It has made me think seriously about how engineering work may change over the next few years.

AI can certainly help us review information, prepare documents, compare requirements and explore possible solutions faster. But engineering is not only about producing an answer. It also involves understanding the actual process conditions, questioning assumptions, assessing risk and taking responsibility for the final decision.

This becomes even more important in safety-critical areas, where a technically convincing answer may still be wrong or incomplete.

So, I have been reflecting on a broader question:

How should engineers prepare for the growing use of AI without losing the technical judgement, practical understanding and professional accountability that define engineering?

I would be interested to hear how other engineers are approaching this in their own fields.

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  • I presume that the  spell check function when I am now using when preparing reports now has an AI element to it, rather than just highlighting or correcting misspelt words it is substituting them with completely random words, that often bear no resemblance whatsoever to what I actually wrote.

    I am having to ensure that I read back through what I have written to check for accuracy, just typing this post I have had to retype several  words, for example “preparing” was altered to “perusing” and I am sure I spelt it correctly.

    As for AI electrical certificates, they are going to require close scrutiny. Back when there was the long schedule of inspections, on NAPIT Desktop there was an option to tick all boxes, but then you had to go through and untick the boxes which did not apply. One year my NAPIT CPS assessor passed comment that I had tick the boxes which did to say there was an earth electrode, when there wasn’t one, I said “you know what I have done” he said “you used the option to tick all the boxes, then missed unticking that box. Just go through the schedule and tick them, it reduces mistakes”. AI pre-populating the certificates and EICRs is going to lead to the same happening, it will bulk out the paperwork, but then everything will need to be checked for accuracy and it gets to the point where you might as filled it all out yourself.

    As a side note, there is still an article about that assessor, Paul Chambers who was my first NAPIT assessor and went on to be a regional manager, here on the IET website.

    electrical.theiet.org/.../

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  • I presume that the  spell check function when I am now using when preparing reports now has an AI element to it, rather than just highlighting or correcting misspelt words it is substituting them with completely random words, that often bear no resemblance whatsoever to what I actually wrote.

    I am having to ensure that I read back through what I have written to check for accuracy, just typing this post I have had to retype several  words, for example “preparing” was altered to “perusing” and I am sure I spelt it correctly.

    As for AI electrical certificates, they are going to require close scrutiny. Back when there was the long schedule of inspections, on NAPIT Desktop there was an option to tick all boxes, but then you had to go through and untick the boxes which did not apply. One year my NAPIT CPS assessor passed comment that I had tick the boxes which did to say there was an earth electrode, when there wasn’t one, I said “you know what I have done” he said “you used the option to tick all the boxes, then missed unticking that box. Just go through the schedule and tick them, it reduces mistakes”. AI pre-populating the certificates and EICRs is going to lead to the same happening, it will bulk out the paperwork, but then everything will need to be checked for accuracy and it gets to the point where you might as filled it all out yourself.

    As a side note, there is still an article about that assessor, Paul Chambers who was my first NAPIT assessor and went on to be a regional manager, here on the IET website.

    electrical.theiet.org/.../

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  • in reply to Sparkingchip

    There's a vast array of software algorithms for 'spell checking', along with alternate dictionaries (usually US) for getting the wrong alternate word..

    Then there's the grammar checkers that enforce US Chicago style, much the the chagrin of older UK typists and grammar purists.

    AI will help, like calculators vs slide rules.. [etc.]

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