If We Agreed AI Is a Tool, the Argument Would Mostly End

Spend enough time on LinkedIn, X, or any design-adjacent comment section and you would think we are locked in an existential war over artificial intelligence. One side insists AI will replace architects, designers, artists, and engineers within a few years. The other side treats every AI tool as a threat to human creativity itself. Both sides speak with certainty. Both sides talk past each other.

And neither side represents how most people actually live or work.

The vast majority of the population goes about their day either using AI in small, practical ways or not using it at all, without strong emotional attachment either way. They are not cheering for replacement. They are not organizing resistance. They are solving problems, meeting deadlines, raising families, and getting through the day. To them, AI is either a convenience, a curiosity, or irrelevant.

That quiet majority already treats AI the way most technologies eventually land. As a tool used by humans within a process.

If we could simply agree on that point, much of the online drama would collapse into what it really is, an argument over semantics amplified by social media incentives.

The volume of the debate does not reflect its importance. It reflects the platform.

Social Media Is Not Reality

Social media rewards absolutism. Nuance does not perform well. Calm explanations do not spread. Measured skepticism gets buried. What rises to the top are confident claims, bold predictions, and emotionally charged statements that demand allegiance.

AI discourse has followed that same path. On one end, you have people promising total automation of complex professions with little understanding of what those professions actually involve. On the other end, you have people assuming any use of AI is a moral failure or a slippery slope toward creative extinction.

Most working professionals do not live at either extreme.

They evaluate tools the same way they always have. Does it help? Does it save time? Does it introduce risk? Does it remove responsibility, or does it support judgment? Those questions are boring, which is precisely why they matter.

Eye Candy Versus Real Work

I would be astounded if current AI systems could reliably create a SketchUp model from scratch, let alone a coherent BIM model that could survive professional scrutiny. At this point, AI derives content from patterns it can scrape and remix. It does not create understanding.

I use AI myself. I use it to generate imagery that only needs to vaguely resemble my prompts. The moment I ask for something specific, something constrained by real parameters, expectations, or accountability, it falls on its face. I could give the same information to an intern and receive acceptable results because the intern understands intent, context, and consequence.

That difference matters.

When people claim AI will take a sketch or image and automatically produce a buildable BIM model with wall types, assemblies, systems coordination, and all the invisible requirements baked in, my skepticism rises to the same level I reserve for flat earth arguments. Not because the technology will never improve, but because the claim fundamentally misunderstands what design professionals actually do.

A pretty image is not architecture. A convincing render is not a building. A layout that optimizes floor area ratio is not a human environment.

There is a dangerous confusion happening between visual output and meaningful content. Between appearance and responsibility.

Why False Claims Devalue Entire Professions

Many of the loudest voices making sweeping claims about AI replacing design are either underqualified to make those claims or are qualified and willing to sell certainty for attention or profit. That is not innovation. That is marketing.

The real damage is not theoretical. When the public is repeatedly told that architecture, design, or engineering can be automated from an image prompt, it dilutes the perceived value of those professions. It reinforces the false idea that design is just arranging shapes, choosing finishes, or maximizing efficiency.

That misunderstanding existed long before AI, but AI hype accelerates it.

When you reduce a profession to its most visible output and ignore the invisible decision-making behind it, you strip it of its legitimacy. Liability, coordination, judgment, experience, and ethics disappear from the conversation. All that remains is eye candy.

That is not progress. It is erasure.

What Defines Architecture, Really

This is where I have to be honest with myself as well.

I strongly believe illustrators like Frank Frazetta and Norman Rockwell are every bit the artists, and in many cases more influential culturally, than many fine artists who historically dismissed illustration as lesser work. Yet the fine art world often looked down on illustrators because their work was applied, commercial, or accessible.

When it comes to architecture, I sometimes worry we fall into a similar trap.

What defines architecture? Is it simply churning out efficient floor plans designed to optimize FAR and squeeze maximum monetized units onto a site? If that is the definition, then perhaps automation makes sense.

But that definition feels empty.

To me, architecture is about creating spaces that inspire, support human behavior, and provide psychological well-being. It is about how light enters a room, how a space makes you feel when you arrive home tired, how environments shape dignity, focus, calm, or connection. Exteriors matter just as much, but even inside the building, architecture lives in human experience, not metrics.

Efficiency has its place. Profit is not evil. But when optimization becomes the primary goal, architecture collapses into spreadsheet geometry with doors.

If that sounds elitist, maybe it is. Or maybe it is simply refusing to lower the bar.

Where AI Actually Belongs

None of this is an argument against new tools. I welcome them.

I look forward to AI performing code reviews, identifying conflicts between building systems, flagging coordination issues, and handling repetitive validation tasks that drain human time and attention. These are areas where machines excel and where human energy is better spent making decisions, not checking boxes.

That is what tools are for.

The problem arises when tools are framed as authors. When assistance is marketed as replacement. When automation is confused with understanding.

AI can support process. It cannot carry responsibility. It does not own outcomes. It does not stand behind decisions when something fails.

People do.

The Argument We Are Actually Having

The real debate is not whether AI exists or whether it will improve. Of course it will. The debate is whether we are willing to pretend tools have agency, authorship, and accountability simply because they produce convincing output.

If we agreed AI is a tool, most of the temperature drops out of the conversation. Designers stop feeling erased. Technologists stop feeling attacked. The public regains clarity about what expertise actually means.

Most people already live in that reality. They use tools when they help. They ignore them when they do not. They do not build their identity around either position.

The culture war persists because platforms reward extremes, not because the middle does not exist.

If we let the majority quietly lead instead of the loud minority dominate, we might finally have a useful conversation.

And if that happens, design does not disappear.

It becomes clearer who actually understands it.