AI Is Coming for the Construction Industry

I spoke recently at an annual meeting for owners and managers of large commercial construction firms and, of course, a great deal of the conversation was about the impacts of automation, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) on their industry.

I departed the meeting and the many side conversations with one overwhelming impression—these folks think that their industry will be one of the very last to be adversely impacted by AI because, as one guy put it, "software can't swing a sledgehammer." The necessity for large quantities of manual labor in all of their projects would be their salvation for the foreseeable future.

They had all seen charts projecting the relative degrees of exposure that various industries had to new technologies, and typically construction was at or near the bottom of the lists. They admitted that every few months they were seeing new tools, equipment, and computer-driven machines being introduced which augmented the abilities of their workers and took over certain manual functions, but they didn’t envision a time any time soon when those folks would actually be entirely replaced. Watching a mobile robot with an extendable arm equipped with a nail gun handle an entire ceiling of precise installations instead of some poor guy with a ladder, bursitis and a sore shoulder trying to do the same overhead job, but taking five times as long, tells you everything you need to know about where we’re ultimately headed.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Inc.