Many firms have implemented (or begun implementing) A.I. use policies, but many still have not. And among the policies that do exist, many could be much better. Following is an edited excerpt from PSMJ’s 2024 book, A.I. Meets AEC: How to Harness Artificial Intelligence to Supercharge Your Firm, advising on ways to develop an ironclad A.I. policy.

“You need a policy in the organization about how A.I. is used, and how that use is governed,” says Lud Eng, Director of Information Technology for Stratus, a multi-disciplinary engineering, architecture, and consulting services network of firms. “A.I. systems can still confidently provide incorrect information, so it’s particularly important to review it before it goes anywhere.”

“You need everyone in the organization on board with the same understanding of where they can use the tools, and where they can’t. Everyone must be clear on how to review and validate results before they impact a project or decision – well before a client would ever see them.”

Martin Gardner Architecture got ahead of the A.I. curve. “When ChatGPT came out, it opened our eyes to needing to be as early an adopter as we could be on some of the generative A.I. platforms,” says MGA COO Justin Hoff. “We had a lot of junior staff, five or six years graduated, who really wanted us to be early adopters, and to get our arms around A.I. as quickly as possible. I, and others on our leadership team, said, ‘Hold on.’ We purposely slowed it down. We knew we needed to make some type of policy before some of the staff started using ChatGPT, Midjourney and some of the others out there.”

Taylor Design is a 100% employee-owned firm, and they treat their staff like the owners they are. The firm’s leadership gives people guidelines to follow, then trusts them to do the right thing. This is their approach to social media, which has resulted in exceptional, positive engagement, and the firm employs a similar policy for A.I.

“We released an A.I. policy to the company early [in 2023],” says Senior Associate and Director of Design Technology Steve Bennett. “We realized quickly that it was a hot topic that we needed to get in front of. We held a lot of open discussions and roundtable meetings. I went to each of our five offices, surveyed people. We settled more around principles of A.I. use, rather values is entrepreneurialism. We don’t have the kind of rules that a large company might have. That’s the only way to remain nimble enough that we can compete with larger firms that have more resources. A lot of our work is in healthcare, so there are obviously privacy concerns that you may not have in other types of work, but so far, we haven’t blocked any sites to prevent people from using certain types of A.I. Even if we did, that isn’t going to completely prevent people from using A.I. If people want to give information to get information from an A.I., they will find a way around methods preventing them.”

The strictest guideline in Taylor Design’s A.I. policy is to verify the accuracy of any A.I.-generated content in client-facing deliverables. “If we’re using it in a proposal and use ChatGPT, we have to vet that it’s correct. We want to be sure that the program hasn’t produced any hallucinations (which occur when a large language model perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent or imperceptible),” says Bennett.

To create a more detailed policy in your firm, or to ensure the one you have works, consider the following guidelines:

• Establish Purpose and Scope.

• Stress Ethics.

• Address Legality and Compliance.

• Address Data Quality.

• Encourage Transparency.

• Focus on Security.

• Build in Training.

• Let the Benefits Flow.

• Communicate frequently and Solicit Feedback.

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