CEO's Corner: Insight & Interaction

[Eduardo Bell]

Hi all,

I am excited to propose the addition of a new permanent discussion section titled "CEO's Corner: Insight & Interaction." This space is designed to bridge the gap between our community of BIM software users and the software developer's executive leadership, particularly inviting the CEO to engage directly with our discussions.

Purpose and Benefits:

• Direct Communication: Foster an open channel where users can share insights, feedback, and questions directly with the leadership team.
• Exclusive Insights: Gain a behind-the-scenes look at strategic decisions, upcoming features, and company vision shared by the CEO and management.
• Community-Driven Dialogues: Encourage thought-provoking conversations that reflect the real-world needs and ideas of our global user base.

Outcome:
This section aims to enrich our forum by making it more interactive and influential, strengthening the partnership between users and the software's leadership team.

I hope this initiative garners your support and becomes a valued part of our community!

[Funfun Yan]

oh, and also BIG from Denmark is using Revit now.

[Jp1138]

On the conversation, Daniel says many users don´t pay for the SSA, and that is a problem for Graphisoft. The solution is then to may everyone pay a pricier subscription? It seems those who didn´t pay for the SSA would stay the same, as they didn´t think the updates were worth it anyway. And many of SSA payers may not want to triple o more their payment and lose control of the software completely, so they will loose these income too 🤔

I suppose they have made all kind of studies that tell them that GS will earn more money with the change, but around me what I see it´s demoralized users thinking how to jump ship in a few years time... As Vectoworks and Allplan work this way too now, Nemetschek must be still making money, so, in their view, it will probably eventually make sense to GS to drop all the dead weight of we old perpetual users.

Still seeing this as a very risky move.

[Eduardo Bell]

This friendly podcast did not ask something I would like to hear, which is what are the long term objectives of GS/Nemetschek when it comes to the subscribers intellectual property, as it relates to the current AI AEC learning models they are training, and the specific future use of AI AEC design delivery systems they intend to deploy.

[Laszlo Nagy]

The only info I can give you regarding this is that the Nemetschek Group recently announced its vision of ethical AI:

https://www.nemetschek.com/en/news-media/artificial-intelligence-layer

"Nemetschek’s vision for ethical and trustworthy AI focuses on transparency, data privacy, and reliability. AI decisions should be understandable to users, with clear explanations provided. Stringent data security measures are in place, including user consent and anonymization where possible. Before deployment, AI models will undergo rigorous testing and validation, with human oversight in critical areas. Clear accountability needs to be established within the organization. Additionally, AI is used to promote sustainability and the well-being of our society as well as to help its users adjust to new realities, and therefore adapt to evolving job roles and expectations."

[Eduardo Bell]

When I read "including user consent.... where possible", alarm bells sound off. We are usually required to sign a user agreement, I suspect that includes to all sorts of cleverly worded consent to data manipulation we are not understanding.

Let us not be naive, as we all know the architectural design profession- to a large extent-is one of the professions that will largely be replaced by AI systems. What I am fast becoming aware of, is that the axe that will cut us off is in the hands of our software of choice. Of course written agreements will not say it, he/they/GS/Nemetschek need us to feed their AI models until they can largely replace many of us. The subscription model is the mechanism by which we are forcefully milked, while our intellectual property stored in their cloud servers is being fed to the machine that will replace us. Unless we creatively device legal means to protect our best interests, AEC practitioners will be led as lambs to the AI slaughterhouse (please forgive the crudeness of the parallelism). 

[Eduardo Bell]

@Jp1138 "On the conversation, Daniel says many users don´t pay for the SSA, and that is a problem for Graphisoft"

I don't buy the CEO's SSA argument. The upgrade avoidance strategy has long been dealt with by GS. Those who bought the software and did not upgrade yearly, progressively lost the value of their investment. Faced with obsolescence, there were forced to pay hefty penalties for skipping upgrades. The year over year advances in operating systems and hardware requirements have made it all but impossible for anyone to be too many years behind without the software being rendered un usable. So no, I don't buy that smoke screen of an argument.

In his recent podcast interview, the current CEO clearly states he has been a successful agent of change at his previous job and that he was hired to implement the same business strategy at GS. He mentions converting perpetual license holders by forcing them into the subscription based model that will ultimately only benefit the corporate interests of the AI revolution.

Let us remember it is we, the AEC professionals who contributed to financial and intellectual advance of the AEC software development year after year for decades. Yet we are the ones now being used as fuel for the Human-run-AEC industry transition into the nascent AI-run-AEC industry.

New generations of AEC professionals will deal with modernity as they may. I know change is inevitable, however, it is only fair that long time SSA perpetual license owners who faithfully contributed to the current success of ArchiCAD for years, sometimes for decades, be respected and honored as we do with our war veterans, and not just fed to the corporate owned AI machine.

[mthd]

AI = is just artificial algorithmic plagiarism that creates presumptive solutions. Really AI is not capable of human intelligence and never will be because it’s the human who creates the algorithms for machine learning. Architects will never be fully replaced by AI its only those who want to boast that their building was produced by AI that will use it. It probably will become a FAD  for a while and that’s about it.

CAD software is a form of AI but it needs a human brain to drive it just like AI does. Architects are all still here using CAD software and paying money for it to develop because it is inherently dumb. We all could design buildings with our hands and pens we didn’t really need machines. The amount of time and resources we waste on having machines ready and up to date could have been spent with our hand drawings.

I am not paying out subscriptions to feed the development of AI or the spying on us humans to help machine learning. Don’t farm out your intelligence to a machine to make design decisions for you. Use the machine to show what you have come up with. If the machine gives you a design solution, whose brains did it pick to come up with that solution ??? We learn by seeing things that we like but in the end every building or house will have its own unique design from the input of the Architect, Interior Designer and the clients. That is if we can afford to design our own home.

AI may have to face law suits in the future for plagiarism of ideas from us humans. Just another FAD to me.

[Eduardo Bell]

@mthd you are right but perhaps you fail to see the future capabilities beyond the initial birth of AI. In any case I can sense that soon after the subscription model has fed the AI models, things will begin to change at a faster pace. For example a real estate developer with a specific commercial tenant to target for a lease project, will not hesitate to contact directly presumtive GS-AI-AEC-Services, to provide them with a viable set of site plans to select, and they will all be fully compliant with local regulations including vehicle and parking requirements. AI will provide them faster and at a lower cost than any architect can. Maybe the facade design of the building will still be entrusted to a human star architect, but most all of the other aspects of the AEC will be replaced by AI, perhaps with minimal human supervision as you may be right on this.

When I was a kid, I would walk into my dad's small architectural office and meet the six employees that worked for him. They worked collectively on a few dozens of projects over 30 years. I started using ArchiCAD in 1994, and since I have collaborated on hundreds of projects by myself, effectively replacing the work many previously needed aids. The point is CAD/BIM replaced hundreds of architectural staff from the pre-digital rea; I have no doubt AI will in a few years have a similar impact on the reduction of the number of practicing architects. Some will still be needed as you say, but who knows what their morphed roles will then be.

[mthd]

@Eduardo Bell, AI technology will certainly play a bigger role in the near future but you really need someone to run the AI technology in the first place. I think people like to talk to other people not just a machine that provides data. What if you don’t like what AI is proposing or you want to change and edit it to suit the client better ? Have you ever had clients go with your first concept and made no changes ? Likely you have to put a cap on the number of changes that is included in your fees before you start billing for extras ?

Then AI needs to manage a project so they create an AI robot to supervise the project or to manage other AI construction robots. Maybe they build modular homes in a factory and send them out to site with driver assist technology. Who will supervise or program the Architect AI robots ? Factories with robotics still need humans to run the show and robots can’t do all the tasks that humans can for now. With a world of robots and robotics we should have more time play but what is the reality ? Spending days setting up and trouble shooting technology. When it was just drawing boards I had more time to play guitar lol.