A geotechnical engineer reviews an AI-generated retaining wall design.
The calculations are correct. The code checks pass. The specifications are met. But she looks at the site photos and says: “I don’t like this ground”.
Nothing in the numbers tells her that. It’s decades of experience with London Clay. It’s a memory of a similar site where a service trench nobody documented had altered the drainage.
It’s an instinct – built from hundreds of projects – that something here does not add up.
She asks for additional boreholes. They reveal a perched water table that the original investigation missed entirely.
That instinct is engineering judgement. And as AI systems grow more capable, understanding what judgement actually is, and where it remains essential, has never been more important.
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