CIOB says any AI deployment must be ethical and have ahuman-centric approach. Justin Stanton reports.
The CIOB Innovation Advisory Panel has welcomed the government’s artificial intelligence (AI) plans, announced in January.
The 50-point AI Opportunities Action Plan seeks to make the UK a global leader in AI and includes recommendations for a national data library, the identification of AI growth zones for the rapid build of data centres and increased computing capacity.
Furthermore, an Innovate UK-funded accelerator programme will back startups and SMEs to design AI solutions to challenges presented by golden thread compliance, digital design and 3D printing of buildings.
Dave Philp FCIOB, chief value officer at Bentley Systems’ Asset Performance Services and chair of the CIOB Innovation Advisory Panel, said: “The construction sector has much to gain from embracing AI and these new measures will both support and fast-track businesses in doing that.
“Data is today an ever-increasing strategic asset, equal to its physical counterpart. AI, along with machine and deep learning, will enhance its use cases, analysing and contextualising large volumes of project data across the value chain, spotting potential safety risks and offering insights for smarter decision-making.
“AI will turbocharge our sector modernisation and will fuel more efficient, assured delivery of our capital projects and more effective maintenance of our critical infrastructure.
“It will provide infrastructure asset operators with the ability to better monitor and, through simulation modelling, intelligently predict, asset health and maintenance needs – not wait for failures to occur. It will improve asset resilience and performance and help us respond to the challenges of net zero and climate resilience.”
Energy strategy
Philp welcomed the government’s focus on SMEs: “AI technology will have a significant impact, enabling them to compete at a larger scale and level the playing field with larger enterprises – a point stressed in CIOB’s Artificial Intelligence Playbook 2024.”
He also noted a number of caveats, including the need for the UK to have a robust energy strategy to support the government’s ambitions for AI. “It is critical though that the government’s commitment to AI, both in the plan and in the accelerator, needs to be matched by a commitment to a considered energy strategy. This needs to both support the AI proposals and provide long-term resilience and security of supply.
“The AI action plan positively promotes the need for AI growth zones to help encourage data centre developments where new more innovative energy models can be developed. These should fully consider the role of new technologies such as small modular reactors, as viable routes to provide sufficient, clean power to ‘feed’ the data centres necessary for the ever-increasing demand for AI.”
Philp concluded with an important reminder: “We must be mindful too that we need to take a human-centric approach to AI and ensure that any deployment is ethical, non-biased and value-driven.”
Download the AI Playbook for free at www.ciob.me/AIPlaybook.
