This exploration evaluates AI's potential to enhance engineering judgment, indicating a transformative impact on the field.
Engineering judgment has many facets forged through knowledge, skill, and experience. Forty-nine years ago, Ralph Peck stated: “Almost all people in the practice of engineering would agree that successful practice requires a high degree of engineering judgment.” When he said these words in 1977, the world was very different from today. The handheld scientific calculator was climbing the technology hype cycle toward the slope of enlightenment. Today, that calculator has morphed into AI, still in its infancy, yet providing anyone who asks with on-demand access to all public information. AI is capable of answering any question, reviewing any calculation, and coaching new skills. However, though this tool has Ph.D.-level intelligence, it possesses no firsthand experience. So, can AI improve our engineering judgment? Will it redefine what we mean by judgment, or displace it all together?
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Lato et al. (2026) studied this question.
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