Generative AI: The New Geotechnical Assistant?
Travis A. Shoemaker, Charbel Beaino, Dylan M. Centella R., Wendi Zhao, Carine Tanissa, Jack Lawrence, Youssef M. A. Hashash
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines (McCarthy et al. 2006).Generative AI is a subcategory of AI that generate new content such as text, images, or sounds.Some examples of generative AI platforms include ChatGPT, Google Bard, DALL-E, and Musico.Researchers have explored the intersection of AI and civil engineering for several decades, and some early implementations include neural networkbased material constitutive models (Ghaboussi et al. 1991).Generative AI is different from these earlier AI applications in that it produces new content, such as written reports.In March of 2023, ChatGPT-4 was introduced as OpenAI's most advanced chatbot, capable of reasoning and problem-solving.In a technical release, OpenAI showed that ChatGPT-4 performed well on several academic and professional exams, but civil engineering exams were not included.The authors prompted ChatGPT-4 with National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) civil and geotechnical practice exam questions.ChatGPT-4 correctly answered six of nine provided questions, a score of about 67%.Questions with images were not included because the authors did not have access to ChatGPT-4's vision capabilities.This score encouraged the authors to investigate ChatGPT-4's usefulness for performing common geotechnical engineering tasks.