Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly encroaching into many parts of our lives, and while it can be fun and useful for innocuous tasks such as creating music playlists or planning road trips, it’s also having a rapid and dramatic impact on the shape of today’s business landscape.

AI use in Australia has ballooned to 50 per cent of the population, up from 38 per cent three years ago, while 52 per cent of Australian businesses have adopted it. Take this figure global and you’re looking at roughly one in six of the world’s population now using generative AI tools. 

So the big question is, what does all this mean for your business?

At the recent HIA National Conference, AI – and what it means for your business – was a hot topic. Cyber expert and media star Adam Spencer gave delegates a crash-course in ChatGPT, which was followed by a workshop titled ‘Your AI Apprentice’, delivered by award-winning author, speaker, business collaborator, entrepreneur and qualified interior designer, Therese Tarlinton.

With a focus on demystifying AI, she suggested that building professionals could use the technology to sieve emails, quote clients, issue progress reports and generate invoices – delivering a potential time-saving of five hours a week.

Sceptical? Plenty are, because the key statistics on AI use reveal that 78 per cent of Australians are concerned about the negative outcomes of AI (inaccuracy, misinformation and the collapse of human interaction), while 41 per cent are concerned about getting left behind professionally if they don’t use it.

‘It’s understandable because AI is moving so fast,’ Therese tells us. ‘When I started doing AI sessions back in mid-2023, which was about six months after this thing called ChatGPT had come out, there were around 1500 tools. Now, there are more than 40,000.’

However, Therese assures us that from an AI perspective, no-one is stealing a builder’s job. ‘But there are a thousand builders and a thousand photographers and a thousand hairdressers. There’s a thousand of all of us, and customers get to choose who they work with, so what if AI could help you give your client a better experience?’ she asks.

‘AI is not going to take your job as a builder. But you might lose work to another builder who is using AI to give the customer a better experience.’

The modern servant

So what does AI use look like in a hands-on industry like construction?

According to Therese, it can look like a builder feeding the entire plans of a build into an AI tool, adding the local council DA requirements and state building codes, and asking the tool to identify any mistakes. In one particular instance of this, the AI tool identified that a bathroom wall was out 20 millimetres, which saved the builder three months and a stout council rejection.

Builders could use AI to process emails and identify those that need to be actioned, or to flag weather conditions ahead of deliveries.

It could also look like apprentice instruction videos or flowcharts, with details as specific as what to do if a stud is in the way, and what to do if a stud isn’t in the way.

‘The essence of AI is if you do something more than once, AI should be doing it for you,’ Therese says. ‘Anything you do regularly is a repeatable task, and you can teach an agent to do a repeatable task.’

The language barrier

Understanding the language around AI can be half the battle.

An ‘AI tool’ is the software application that’s powered by machine learning, such as ChatGPT. By definition, it has been designed to automate, augment and solve complex tasks, but it requires human input and is usually used for a single, isolated outcome.

An ‘AI agent’, on the other hand, is autonomous. Without human input it sets goals, chain tasks and acts independently. An example of an AI agent at work could include: ‘Look at tomorrow’s jobs and the forecasted weather, identify potential delays, reallocate resources across jobs, and send updates to everyone affected.'

In other words, AI, be it a tool or an agent, can and should make life better.

‘If it can give you back an hour of your day, an hour that might have you at the kitchen bench each night doing quotes or paperwork, is it worth it?’ Therese asks. ‘What does an hour mean to a builder? Does it mean you can get to your kid’s soccer game, or have a real conversation with your partner when the kids go to bed?’

Start simply

Therese recommends that HIA members first open their attitudes to the benefits of AI, then be clear about the quality they input into it, because ‘the quality you put in is the quality you get out, just like training an apprentice’. Thirdly, she says to use it, initially, for one particular element of your business, such as social media or financial forecasting.

‘Find one thing and build the AI out for that one thing. The builders who win won’t be the ones doing everything; they’ll be the ones doing one thing exceptionally well and then systemising it across the business.’

In an era where AI is inevitable, where its uptake into daily life has moved faster than any technology in history, accepting it – and busting the fear barrier around it – will be critical.

As Therese says, it all starts with understanding that AI exists to make daily life better, and once that thinking breaks the glass ceiling in Australian construction, it’s likely that practical AI will be the industry’s next competitive edge.