Your article in the July-August issue highlights well what has been & what we should expect to follow with AI, which I sarcastically refer to as Absence of Intelligence!
As an entrepreneur who created his own business from scratch, I continually witness AI giving commercial providers the excuse for doing poor work, not using their brains to connect the dots. It is only going to get worse from my empirical observations.
I am a former software developer from a long way back in the days of disk operating systems & before the internet. Currently, and for 14 years, I have operated under two state licenses in our nation’s 4th largest State of Montana, Professional Land Surveyor & Real Estate Broker. I recover property corner monuments, then map, then sell rural & remote acreages. As far as I can discern I am the only individual in the State with these two licensure credentials. I surmise, that because of the marketing aspect of what I do I encounter more lazy people in business who are incompetent but who hide behind the aura of AI.
Keep up the nice work of proving thought-stimulating articles.
—Tony Novotny, Professional Land Surveyor-Mapper-Broker/Owner
Lathrop replies
Many thanks for your message, as I can never tell if what I write is even read. When automation, AI or otherwise, becomes the norm in many arenas, it seems there are always going to be people who use it as a reason to turn off their brains and let the black box do the work without bothering to monitor and check the output. Hopefully there will always be enough of us who stick to verifying everything.
You may be the only surveyor/realtor in Montana but I have encountered others with that combination of expertise elsewhere. Surveying links so well into a variety of dual professions, giving us unique insights and abilities in our second fields. Hopefully it also builds awareness of the value of surveying among those we meet in our second fields (at least, I try!). With the upheaval relating to real estate commissions these days, I’m not sure what will happen there.