The Role of Geotechnics Researchers in the Era of Rapid AI Advancement

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) presents both significant opportunities and critical challenges for geotechnical engineering research. This paper explores the evolving role and responsibilities of geotechnics researchers in the AI era, highlighting how AI can substantially enhance information acquisition during the investigation, design, construction, and operation phases of geotechnical projects. It identifies key AI technologies — such as transfer learning, probabilistic machine learning, data privacy techniques, physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), and large language models (LLMs) — that are particularly valuable in addressing complex, uncertain, and data-scarce geotechnical scenarios. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes essential guidelines for effectively integrating these AI methods into practice, including the importance of rigorous validation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and establishing standardized benchmarks. Ultimately, strategic fusion of AI capabilities with deep geotechnical domain expertise promises to significantly advance the field, enabling more reliable, efficient, and interpretable engineering solutions.