This is a guest post by Peter C. Atherton, P.E.
“Better, faster, cheaper.” This is the old “All 3,” a timeless desire unlikely to ever change.
It wasn’t long ago that our professional services provider response to All 3 requests was to “pick two”:
- We can design your project to be better and more cost effective, but it will take more time.
- We can pull together some plans to meet your budget and time constraints, but you’ll need to assume more risk.
- We can design you a top-quality project and meet your timeline, but it will cost more as we reprioritize our workflows and team.
However, with the rapid emergence and accessibility of more powerful artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced technology, more of our competitors will not be so constrained by past norms.
Ensuring our growth and prosperity in this new era of unparalleled marketplace and practice space changes requires something both new and different.
A NEW REALITY
Knowledge, client focus, good communication, and responsiveness used to be enough to safeguard our business and professional success. Although these are still (and will always be!) critical, more is needed.
Knowledge — the facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education — used to differentiate us.
However, when the cost and availability of basic knowledge — technical or otherwise — is essentially free and immediate with an intelligent “prompt” into a powerful AI-powered large language model, what’s the advantage of paying or waiting?
The same is true in terms of design when a smart prompt placed within a powerful graphics model can instantly generate an image of possibility.
