#384 - The AI and Expertise Paradox, with Chris Parsons

Summary

ARCHISPEAK #384 SUMMARY
The AI and Expertise Paradox, with Chris Parsons
(March 20, 2026)

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Episode Overview

In this candid and far-ranging conversation, hosts Evan Troxel and Cormac Phalen are joined by Chris Parsons—founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture—to unpack the “AI and Expertise Paradox” in architecture. Drawing on Parsons’ recent (and, as of recording, unpublished) provocative article and his industry insights, the trio explore how the rapid integration of AI in architectural practice is colliding with challenges of expertise, generational shifts, mentorship, and the structure of the profession itself. The episode is full of real talk about upskilling, the evolving apprenticeship model, licensure, and how architecture could—and should—embrace change, all with characteristic Archispeak honesty and humor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Do Architects Wear Black? (00:00–01:55)

• Chris opens lightheartedly about his minimalist “Steve Jobs” wardrobe formula, tying it to creative focus.
• Quote: “Pick a name radically simple in your kind of day to day life so you can be wildly creative in your creative life.” — Chris Parsons (00:48)

2. The AI and Expertise Paradox: Introduction (02:25–06:01)

• Chris clarifies Knowledge Architecture’s pivot from intranet to a true knowledge and learning platform (incorporating AI).
• The crux: AI tools for things like QA and code-checking are supposedly meant to boost efficiency, but actually require deep expert oversight.
• Concern: Who will oversee AI outputs as seasoned technical experts retire and younger staff prefer specializations other than technical practice?
• Parsons: “It takes, like, a real discerning, experienced mind to like, really get the most out of those kind of systems…” (04:13)

3. Apprenticeship’s Collapse & The Missing Middle (06:01–09:09)

• Firms are struggling to transfer knowledge as the traditional “apprenticeship,” especially after COVID, erodes.
• The sharp loss of “missing middle” professionals (post-2008 recession) compounds the challenge.
• Younger staff are often more adept with tech, but less interested in technical expertise routes traditionally needed for oversight.

4. Who Benefits from AI? — The Old vs. The Young (09:09–13:00)

• The paradox is AI best serves those already expert—who can spot and contextualize errors or subtleties.
• There’s a concern that junior professionals, skipping old-school reps (site visits, risky calls with contractors), may miss the nuanced experience needed to supervise AI or use its recommendations effectively.
• Evan: “If AI really is a tool for the people who can actually leverage it and use it with the wisdom… This stuff isn’t just, you just can’t look it all up.” (12:03)

5. Practice Complexity & The Biological Limits (13:00–15:57)

• Parsons floats the idea: Is practice becoming so complex we’ve outstripped what long-term, organic expertise can keep up with? Will we need to radically simplify process or buildings themselves? Or “declare bankruptcy” on the old apprenticeship model?

6. The Demand for Perfection vs. Ground Reality (15:04–18:19)

• Cormac highlights how new digital demands (BIM, COBIE standards) are increasing, often with unrealistic calls for “perfection.”
• There remains a divide between digital/planning ideals and construction’s messy, human reality (“the contractor… is going to move it”).

7. AI = Perfection? The Liability Paradox (18:22–21:08)

• Parsons, referencing medicine, notes there’s a growing expectation: “Well, you had AI to back you up, so you should never make a mistake.” But liability stays with the human expert—a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.
• “If you make a mistake, you can’t blame it on the AI because you should have professional judgment to know when it’s wrong.” — Chris Parsons (18:24)

8. AI Capabilities Lag Human Nuance (21:08–25:37)

• Questions around AI’s “IQ” vs. emotional or contextual intelligence (EQ) and the risk of overreliance on superhuman (but jagged and limited) tools.
• Discussion of “jaggedness” in both AI and human intelligence and the power—and risk—of close collaboration.

9. The Hype Cycle, Learning, and Realistic Expectations (25:37–28:48)

• Chris shares he’s moved through the “hype cycle” to a “slope of enlightenment” on AI. Success means learning what AI can—and cannot—do, and building deterministic guardrails around it.
• Quote: “Our AI products, we try to have as little AI as we can in them and surround the genie… with a bunch of deterministic logic.” — Chris Parsons (27:44)

10. What Happens to Licensure and Expertise? (28:48–36:39)

• Evan and Cormac probe how licensure, learning, and the very idea of “an expert” might be transformed.
• Chris: He foresees greater use of AI as an on-demand knowledge resource (“Matrix-style” brain downloads?)—but notes someone still needs substantive foundational knowledge.
• There’s a parallel with legal education: memorizing everything is unrealistic; knowing how to research and ask the right questions is vital.
• Discussion: Will experts of 2035 spend more time “building the system that makes the machine run”—documenting, digitizing, and externalizing knowledge so AI can be truly useful?

11. Generalists vs. Specialists in the AI Age (36:39–39:09)

• Firms will need both—generalists able to ask the right broad questions, and deep specialists to create and curate complex knowledge bases. But “knowledge-building” may become a key expert responsibility.
• Parsons: “As an expert of 2035, more and more and more is a knowledge builder.”

12. Shifting Mentorship, Acceleration, and Safe Failure (49:22–56:54)

• Can architects accelerate “reps” (real experience) via simulation, role-play, and giving younger staff a safe place to try, fail, and ask questions?
• Cormac describes evolving firm mentoring: “Let them take the lead… If you stumble, we’re here to help you… This is where you practice. This is where you can feel the safe zone of just trying and erring and failing.” (54:26)

13. Knowledge Sharing, Unlearning, and Cultural Change (62:08–64:37)

• Not all “hard-won” old knowledge should be passed on—some habits are obsolete or damaging. New generations must learn to “unlearn” and reinvent.
• Parsons: “We have to learn how to unlearn also as organizations and let go of some things that are no longer helpful for us.” (62:44)
• Both hosts and Parsons signal optimistic cultural shifts—toward more humble, curious, and experimental mindsets in the profession.

14. The Feedback Loop Problem in Architecture (76:16–78:00)

• Architecture’s slow feedback cycle (projects can take a decade) retards innovation compared to fields like software.
• Parsons: “Our feedback loop from our work is one of the longest of any of the professions… You make a design decision… you’ll find out if it worked in 2029.” (76:16)
• There’s a call for more industry-wide, not just firm-specific, knowledge sharing and learning.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It takes an expert… That’s not a product for junior people. That’s a product for senior people… the problem is these folks are retiring.” — Chris Parsons (03:34)
• “You would never expect an intern to do a job perfectly the first time, right? And that’s how working with AI can actually be.” — Evan Troxel (11:28)
• “The amount of knowledge and the speed at which it changes… the practice has just been on this very steep upslope… does that at some point… mean we have to declare bankruptcy on the way we teach?” — Chris Parsons (13:35)
• “What does it do to professions? What does it do to jobs?… I get it, like we’re slower to adopt stuff… for once, I’m kind of like, oh, maybe that’s a good thing right now.” — Evan Troxel (20:28)
• “A lot of times, I will say it is going to be your responsibility to unlearn the bad habits that all of the generations before have created… It really is up to you to undo the bad habits that we’ve created in this profession.” — Cormac Phalen (62:51)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:00–01:55 – Icebreaker, minimalist wardrobe, architects' sartorial choices
• 02:25–06:01 – Knowledge Architecture’s AI platform & the Paradox, retiring experts
• 09:09–13:00 – Who really benefits from AI? The youth, the old, or both?
• 15:04–17:51 – Digital utopias vs. hands-on construction realities
• 18:22–21:08 – AI and liability: Perfect, or perfectly dangerous?
• 25:37–28:48 – The AI hype cycle and practical realities
• 28:48–36:39 – Rethinking licensure, learning, and the future expert
• 49:22–56:54 – Accelerating expertise, mentorship evolution, simulated “reps”
• 62:08–64:37 – Passing (or refusing) the torch: Good knowledge, bad habits
• 76:16–78:00 – Why architecture changes slow: the decade-long feedback loop

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Tone & Language

The conversation balances wit, humility, and candor. No sugarcoating—just authentic architect-to-architect exploration of real issues, leavened with empathy and (sometimes self-deprecating) humor. The tone is inviting and hopeful, but grounded in real anxieties as well as “let’s get real” assessment of what change actually requires.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• AI can’t replace judgment, experience, or learning-by-doing—but it can supplement, accelerate, and democratize expertise if knowledge is captured, curated, and shared.
• The apprenticeship model is under severe pressure. Firms must proactively reimagine upskilling, mentorship, and knowledge-sharing—especially as experts retire and traditional “reps” are lost.
• The knowledge base for tomorrow’s architecture is being written now—both literally (in digital systems) and procedurally (in new norms for learning, testing, and licensure).
• The next generation must not just learn from its elders—it must also selectively “unlearn” outdated ways and help redesign the whole process, from QA to client presentations.
• The future expert must be adaptable, humble, and a builder of systems, not a gatekeeper of secrets.

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Listen for More

For architects at any stage, this episode is a must-listen for its honest assessment of the AI moment—and a call to actively shape where architectural expertise goes from here. Future episodes (and Chris’s upcoming article) will continue to probe these vital questions for the profession.

Transcript

[Cormac]

Like, we do this all the time.

[Evan]

How many. How many of those shirts do you have, Chris?

[Chris Parsons]

I've got. I've got two. Two. Two Buck. Two. Two stacks of them. One of them are kind of like I wear every day, and then I've got, like, nice ones for events. So I probably got like, you can 12 in the daily and I've probably got like seven in the event.

[Cormac]

His dress T shirts,

[Evan]

they're more black. More black.

[Chris Parsons]

They're definitely more black. Yeah, right, exactly. There's a little less. Like, if you zoom in closely, the letters are starting to crack.

[Evan]

So.

[Chris Parsons]

No, we just got a fresh order this summer, so I'm all good.

[Evan]

You have the. The Steve Jobs wardrobe.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah. No, no turtlenecks. I've worn a turtleneck for a long time. But I heard.

[Evan]

But you got. I mean, what. You just have this. You're like the. Okay, the Barack Obama wardrobe. The same thing. It's like they're all the same. I don't have to decide.

[Chris Parsons]

There's a great. I think it was. It was one of those 17. 1700s French guys. Voltaire, let's just call it, said something about being like, pick a name radically simple in your kind of day to day life so you can be wildly creative in your creative life. And so just try and streamline and simplify as much as you can.

[Cormac]

Maybe that. Maybe that's the best explanation on why architects wear black.

[Chris Parsons]

Who was I listening to? Do you guys know the brand? Eileen Fisher. They make like. It's like a women's clothing brand. Like, my mom loves them and they have historically been like kind of like 55 plus kind of thing.

[Evan]

I know that that was a test, Chris, and I also know that I just passed when I shook my head no.

[Chris Parsons]

So the woman that started it's interesting because she was in Japan and they're very, like, simple. They're like blacks, grays, they're boxy. They're like, just like, just very. You can mix and match all the pieces. And she was in Japan, and apparently that's something like architects and like designers, and it's just like a way of simplifying your life and freeing your mind.

[Evan]

And.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah. So then that led her to start this American brand, that tech, kind of the same principle. So.

[Evan]

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah.

[Evan]

How am I doing on the question so far, Cormac? How am I doing?

[Chris Parsons]

I mean, on the.

[Cormac]

So far. I mean, you know, you've just explained why architects wear black. To free your mind and be more creative. And that's why I'm wearing blue

[Evan]

because. Because what, you're not an architect or not creative or what?

[Cormac]

A cluttered mind. A cluttered mind, yes.

[Evan]

Well, just look at how many notebooks and pens you have.

[Cormac]

Geez.

[Evan]

All right, well, joining us tonight is Chris Parsons, founder, CEO, Knowledge Architecture. And Chris, you recently wrote provocative article. I don't know. It wasn't provocative. It was just like, hey, here's what I've been seeing. You got off a call with the CEO of a firm that you work with, Chris. For those who don't know, Chris makes an Internet called Synthesis. Knowledge Architecture is his company, and we've actually been doing some work together on the Troxell podcast to create a series around knowledge management and what I like about. You know, I subscribed to Chris's newsletter and the latest. I don't think it was a newsletter. But it was just a post, wasn't it, that you put up.

[Chris Parsons]

It was a newsletter issue.

[Evan]

Was it a newsletter?

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah. The AI and Expertise paradox.

[Evan]

That one. Yeah. So that's what it's called, the AI and Expertise Paradox. And I'm just wondering if you could kind of introduce this topic because Cormac didn't read the article. Wow.

[Cormac]

Just call me straight out.

[Chris Parsons]

We just got right there real quick. We just went, yeah, yeah. So just slight correction. So Synthesis started as an intranet platform. It has now become a knowledge and learning platform because we've introduced learning management to it, which is important for the story, and we've also added AI to it. So the coo, I'm not going to name the firm, but like, he and I were talking because he's going to speak at an event with me later in the year. And just at the end, he's like, there's this thing that's really bugging me. We're sitting in these pitches from AI products that are going to do things like streamline quality assurance, code checking, all the kind of like that. The stuff we don't want to do. And he's like, here's the thing. It takes an expert. Like, that's not a product for junior people. That's a product for senior people. Like, senior technical experts have to oversee it because it's going to help. It's going to catch some things you missed.

[Evan]

Great.

[Chris Parsons]

It's going to miss some things that should have caught. It's going to flag some stuff as problems that aren't actually problems. You know, they're just like, you know, kind of decisions. And so it takes, like, a real discerning, experienced mind to like, really get the most out of those kind of systems. And I think everything I hear in the technology space is the same. It's like the senior people benefit most from these AI automation tools because they're sophisticated enough to evaluate the output. And so he. And I said, he's like, okay, that's great. But the problem is these folks are retiring. The people that we very much need to evaluate these AI products are actually leaving the profession. And then we started talking about, well, the next generation, at least at their firm. And I've heard this. I don't know if it's true across every firm in Cormac. I'd be interested to hear your take. Like, more and more kind of emerging professionals don't want to go down a more technical track. Like, they don't want to become that senior technical architect CA qa. Like, they want to do other stuff. Right. And so then the question is, like, so if we're ever going to use these AI tools, who's going to do it? Like, who's going to know if they're right or wrong? Will we have the expertise within our firms to be able to evaluate that? Yeah, so, I mean, that was. That was kind of some of the heart of some of these, like, conflicting pieces that go together. And. Yeah, good.

[Cormac]

I was going to say.

[Chris Parsons]

Well, actually, I say one more. One more thing on that. Like, the apprenticeship model also is like, kind of like transitioning at the same time that, like the way that we used to bring architects up to the profession, somebody looking over their shoulder, like, he got talking about, like, ever since COVID it's been really hard to do that. It's been hard to, like, listen over the shoulder and kind of in. And so you've got all these forces happening where it's harder to upskill people. They don't necessarily want to do it, but you need them to evaluate AI. And it's kind of like, well, where's all this going? That's kind of where our discussion went.

[Cormac]

It's kind of interesting because these are. And, you know, where I work and because you helped create our Internet. So, but, and so it's an interesting conversation that we're having with a lot of our retiring, you know, senior management that has already retired. And we're trying to look for, you know, the next people up. And, you know, we've, you know, we've. We've got, as the profession knows, you know, with the 2008 recession and stuff, we've got that kind of, like, missing middle. And so we rely a lot on our junior staff for a lot of like, technology integration and things like that. And they don't want to do what you're basically saying this, you know, this. This one CFO was coo. Yeah, we'll go with that. Was. Was looking for in, you know, the next, you know, generation and you know, the generation of mine that is like right ahead of that missing middle we're looking for maybe not necessarily retirement per se. Oh, scratch that.

[Evan]

Anyway, I was going to ask what. What is the average age of a retiring architect nowadays? Is it. Is it. Is it what I think it is? Is it older than I think it is or. Yeah, curious, because I think architects tend to. Tend to hang out a little longer than.

[Cormac]

I just had my typical horrible cormic response. I think Frank Geary just retired. I'm sorry.

[Evan]

Right.

[Cormac]

I love him. Too soon?

[Chris Parsons]

No, but like Bob Stern. Same. Same thing.

[Cormac]

Right, Exactly.

[Chris Parsons]

So, but like, I think to your point, Evan, it's like those are that kind of architect like. But you're kind of non starchytech architect. When are they retiring?

[Cormac]

Well, so we were having this conversation about the generalist architect versus the specialist architect. And you know, the generalist architects is my generation. Generation before that where basically we were asked, forced and kind of demanded to do everything and now everybody wants to specialize. I want to be a designer. I want to be, you know, that, you know, the sustainability route. I want to go, you know, the research route and things like that. And even yesterday I had final exams or final reviews for my studio that I'm teaching, and a couple of students were asking me, say, hey, Cormac, you know, where do you see AI going in the profession? And I'm like, that's a loaded question. Because there are in. And you're trying to solve this or at least have that discussion all the time where we're just trying to figure out where is it the practical? Is it the research? Is it the productivity tools? Is it the knowledge sharing? Is it all of those? Yes, but I think the profession itself is sort of struggling on where it fits in because we're sort of struggling on what's next for the profession anyway.

[Evan]

Yeah. Can. Can I lay out kind of the theory that's been tumbling around in my head? And in your article, I rekindled this and. And shifted even what I thought because I. I've kind of gone through different waves of who I'm concerned for. So at first I was really concerned for the young architects because, you know, we started to see articles pop up on LinkedIn and it's like, you know, obviously these are the people we rely on in firms like Cormac mentioned, right? To, to keep us technology forward and to introduce things and to. Because it's, it's just digitally native a little bit easier for these students. But they're also. The appetite is there to learn new tools all the time, whereas older architects. The appetite isn't there as much. It's like, well, this is how I've done it. It works for me. And I've got deadlines and I've got like, Cormac's been on meetings all day long since 6am, right? And it's like, when do you wedge in learning new tools into your busy day? I don't know. So I was concerned about the youth because, you know, these tools really are, as Chris stated in his article, for the people with the experience and with the wisdoms, because they're the ones who actually know to call BS on something or to say, oh, that was actually useful. And so. And that's a tool, right? And it's like, it's, you actually can treat it just like an intern. And you would never expect an intern to do a job perfectly the first time, right? And that's how working with AI can actually be, right? It's like, look, here's, here's what I need you to do. Here's some guardrails. I don't have time to explain them all, but here's some. And then it presents something back and then you check it and then you make some adjustments to context and then you send the intern or the AI back out and it does a little bit more, right? It's like you basically say, don't try to do the whole thing. Get started, come back and let's, let's check and then let's keep going from there. And then I was concerned for the older generation again because it's like, well, the young people are the ones who know the technology and they're the ones who are going to really be able to leverage it because these older generations are the ones who are not going to take the time to do it. And I keep kind of going back and forth on this. My latest landing spot is that I'm extremely concerned for the young generation who doesn't have the experience because it takes so damn long in this profession to earn it and to learn it, because you have to go through projects, rubber meets the road, go on site visits, overhear the pm, you know, yelling at the contractor on the phone, talk with the person in Risk mitigation department. And, you know, it's like, it's all that stuff that I think, to Chris's point, like these. The younger generations are missing out on that because various, many, many different reasons. And so if AI really is a tool for the people who can actually leverage it and use it with the wisdom, what, like this stuff isn't just. You just can't look it all up, right? The tool, the tools will not just give you the answers that you need because of all the nuance and the intertwined weirdness in our building industry. And every project's on a different site with a different set of owners, with a different jurisdiction, with a different, you know, version of the codes, et cetera, et cetera. That's the nuance I'm talking about that kind of lives in this whole system. It's. It's interesting to me to see all of the pressure from the outside on AI and even from the inside, even from top AI officials saying, get on the AI bandwagon. And it's like, well, you know, I don't know if that's the right thing. I just don't know.

[Chris Parsons]

So will we keep doing so just to kind of throw more? Maybe what we can do is we can make it sound really, really bad, and then we can start making it sound better. So you've kind of said, like, I wrote a provocative article. I haven't published the provocative article yet. I actually was going to publish today, and I showed it to my editor and sanity check person. She's like, this is. You went too far. So I doubt I'm going to. I'm going to kind of like, take a step back and calibrate. But I was trying to answer the question, like, what will it look like to be an expert in 2035 and right now already, Cormac, since you've been in practice, Evan, since you've been in practice, the amount of knowledge and the speed at which it changes and the complex. The practice has just been on this very steep upslope in terms of just getting more difficult. And it doesn't. I'm channeling my best Willy Wonka. Like, it shows no signs of stopping. It doesn't. And so that thing that you said, like the kind of apprenticeship model where it's like you learn by doing and you kind of get the Swiss cheese understanding of the practice and the different phases and the things that can go wrong, like, that can take 20 or 30 years, but if this keeps getting more complicated, like, does that at some point, do we have to clear bankruptcy on. That's the way that we teach people on how to do this thing. Or do we have to radically simplify buildings and. Or the process of putting them together. Right. And so it's like first we shape AI, then it shapes our buildings, then it shapes us. Like, I don't know, like at some point to kind of bastardize the church or whatever. Yeah, yeah, right. I don't know, it just seems like we're on a trajectory where we're kind of accelerating beyond the biological limits of the human brain and the amount of time it takes to understand and master this profession. So, yeah, again, let's make it more complicated and then maybe we can find hope.

[Cormac]

So I'm going to throw this. So I've been struggling on a project with the way things are being done now versus the way things used to be done in the whole process of, you know, just documentation, you know, into implementation, you know, through construction and whatever in. So, you know, for the first time I've been doing an international project and they've demanded more out of what we produce on the digital practice side of things with, you know, I've never heard in my life, you know, Cobie Standards and all of these other things that are part of the, you know, BIM execution plan and that I've heard of. But, you know, these, these other things that they're asking for, stuff that aren't

[Evan]

typically happening in the US what you're talking about.

[Cormac]

Exactly. And so, you know, we've gone through these, you know, this process of reviewing and re. Reviewing all of these, you know, the, the, the BIM submissions that we do, and they're like, you know, well, you know, we really can't move forward until you, you know, have a Clash free model, which, you know, is, you know, somewhat, you know, ridiculous.

[Chris Parsons]

Ouch.

[Cormac]

But, you know, I just look at it and I'm just like, you, you do know that. And this is, I guess, the old man yelling at the clouds kind of like figurative here. But, you know, it's just that, you do know that if the contractor sees that the ductwork is, you know, here. But our model somewhat shows it into the, the beam. They're not going to build it into the beam. They're going to drop it down and move around the beam and keep on going. That's just the simplicity of, you know, the contractor says, yeah, no, that, that doesn't go there. And it just happens and it's. But, you know, there's this, this greater and greater demand for. I don't want to call it perfection, but it seems like they're asking for perfection in a process that just isn't as complicated as it. If everybody's making it seem, it doesn't need to be. It doesn't need to be. You know, it's just like, you know, and so you look at it and you're just like, you know, hey, I get it that, you know, the model itself isn't in. And this is kind of like the argument that I have is until we start building from the model and, you know, with, you know, greater, greater impact on like say, you know, robotics or this or that, you know, we don't really need that perfection because we're still building by hand, we're still building with trades, we're still building with, you know, both skilled and unskilled labor that is going to just say, that doesn't belong there. I'm going to move it.

[Evan]

Or, hey, architect, human in the loop. This is even with the AI, right?

[Chris Parsons]

You just got at something really interesting, Cormac. So plug. We are launching our podcast Smarter by Design in January. And episode two is with a guy named Chris Myers, who's actually at John Hopkins University. He teaches in the business school, but obviously because it's Johns Hopkins, there's a lot of healthcare stuff. And so we got talking into what is it? You've heard? You've heard of it?

[Cormac]

It's one of my projects.

[Chris Parsons]

It's one of your projects?

[Cormac]

Yeah. Great.

[Chris Parsons]

So we got talking about his particular area is around knowledge intensive industries like medicine, but he's also kind of branching some other stuff. And we started talking about this, was it mean to be an expert in 2035 thing? And he's like, here's what terrifies the profession is the expectation of physicians is going to be, well, you had AI to back you up, so you should never make a mistake. But if you make a mistake, you can't blame it on the AI because you should have professional judgment to know when it's wrong. And so it's a very funny position or a box to put somebody in. And you kind of started going there. You could see kind of getting there with architecture, it's like, well, how are there any mistakes in these drawings? Like, you had AI, right. But also if there are, you sign the drawings. Exactly. You know, exactly.

[Evan]

To go back to your question, Chris, though, like, one of the things that makes me nervous is that, like, what's the average IQ of any AI right now? It's probably one.

[Chris Parsons]

Depends on the task.

[Evan]

120.

[Chris Parsons]

Yes.

[Evan]

But it's it's the average IQ of, of people. Average is 100. Right. Like, that's the scale. Right. And it's, it's across the board. It's, it's that, let's just call it 100 also. Right? What is it going to be in 2035? Yeah, it's going to be a thousand or let's just say 400. I don't know. It's going to be better. And, and so, like, I don't see that number, that, that curve stopping anytime soon. And, and I think that's, that's pretty interesting. What does that do to professions? What does that do to industries? What does it do to, what does it do to jobs? What does it do to income? There's all kinds of questions around that that I think are, and, and, and again, like, it makes me go back to why are people pushing so hard? Like, I get that there's people who are optimistic about this, but why are we pushing so hard to get somewhere we were where we're really not thinking about, like, really deeply before we do it? Because these companies that are trying to do this are actually trying to own it. All right? Like, let's not mistake kind of the capitalistic intentions behind what's going on here. I mean, it's, it's really, really trying to be the next big thing, like, and, and buy and own it. All right? Like, and so I'm, I'm very concerned about the, the, the, the push because I get it. Like, we're, we're slower to adopt stuff in it, and for once I'm kind of like, oh, maybe that's a good thing right now, but, but the world isn't going to slow down and wait for us either.

[Chris Parsons]

Right.

[Evan]

And so I, I, I don't know. These are all the things kind of tumbling around my head, but, but this 2035 number that you're throwing out there, I think it's, yeah. What, what really are we going to be dealing with in 10 years? Like, because I, we can't, I don't think. You know, 10 years before the iPhone came out, nobody thought that was going to be a thing. Ten years before, that would have been

[Chris Parsons]

1997, before the iPhone came out.

[Evan]

Right.

[Chris Parsons]

So what were we thinking about technology in 1997?

[Evan]

Yeah, in 1997, I think.

[Cormac]

I mean, it was like, it was even before the race.

[Evan]

We were barely on the web. And then all of a sudden, you know, the web's in everybody's pockets and you can do anything with it. And now it's a device that you can literally ask anything and get and answer.

[Cormac]

You know, it's interesting about what you're saying there is that, you know, if, if the, let's just say the average IQ is 100 and, you know, the average IQ for AI is 120, but then, you know, we're looking forward to, you know, 20, 35, and that average IQ for AI is still, you know, is what, 10 times is what you were saying. You know, how do, how do we know how, how is the user, you know, going to basically benefit from that if their intelligence hasn't kept caught up with or are able to understand what's being, you know, the outcome of what is, you know, being created, you know, because, you know, there's so many people who use AI and say, hey, this is, you know, you know, this is what AI has said. And then you look at it and you're just like, well, that's, as you just said, an opinion or that's one thing. But, you know, how are you discerning whether or not that's the truth or, you know, are you looking for other truths to kind of substantiate, you know, what it is that you're looking for? And you know, if it just keeps surpassing us, we're not going to know any better. We're just going to say, okay, yeah, that's right.

[Evan]

That's.

[Cormac]

That's what it said, you know, it.

[Chris Parsons]

Who's going to train the AI? Who's going to train the AI? Who's going to evaluate it? Like, there's this guy named Ethan Moloch who is a great writer on AI and he talks about it, the frontier being very jagged. So it's like very, very good at some things, very, very poor at other things. And like the continuing art is kind of understanding what the shape of that jagged nature of its capabilities are. EQ that Evan, you went to iq, but eq, an emotional like quotient. And that kind of emotional intelligence piece seems to not be at least today, a super high thing. And so I wonder to some degree there's also kind of scenario, like I listen to a lot of venture capital, tech, podcasty kind of stuff and like the community is split on how fast AI is actually going to progress. There are people that think it's kind of topped out now. Like large language models aren't going to get much better. Like they kind of hit diminishing returns for. There's a variety of reasons for why, but like, is, are we going to hit a plateau in the next year or so, and then there has to be another technology to leapfrog it. And then there's other people that are like, we're in the first inning of this thing and it's going to keep accelerating and compounding. And so you kind of have to think like, well, you have to imagine if either of those scenarios or a range of other scenarios are true, because you could be living in very different 2035s depending on what actually happens with that technology. But I'm also thinking if you take the average IQ of a human, and we are jagged too, in terms of our intelligence as individuals and as a species. And so if you kind of could take a jagged human plus a jagged AI and combine their IQ EQ together, like, what does that integration of person and machine look like? And what are we capable of? And if we start learning at. At an early age, like, you've probably both been around people that are really, really good with AI right now and people who are not. And when you or I don't know if either of you consider yourself really good with AI. I feel like I'm really good with AI in a handful of tasks. And I think back on the way I worked six months ago, 12 months ago, 18 months ago, and I'm blown away by, like, how much more I can go after, how much more ambitious it's made me, like, how much more productive I am. Like, it feels great. And so there is a world where it's like, if we figure out how to have AI as a dance partner, the future of expertise is super bright.

[Evan]

Do you feel like that's a Gartner hype cycle curve? Your enthusiasm, your look. What I am able to make the machine do is kind of at the height. Do you see it like that or do you see it just keep. Do you see the crash coming or do you see it just keep going up? Do you see yourself experiencing the trough of disillusionment at some point? I'm just curious.

[Chris Parsons]

I've already been through it. I mean, I think, yes, I've done up through the hype cycle trough of disillusionment. Now I'm up the slope of enlightenment to kind of like, talk about the graph actually.

[Evan]

Useful.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah, it's a useful metaphor.

[Evan]

It sounds like it's.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah, yeah, no, because. But I'm also like, I'm a history major and I like to read about the history of technology. So, like, as soon as the AI start coming out, I'm like, it's going to be good at some things and not good at other things, it's going to take time. Like, um, there's a very famous quote that goes along with what you said called macromyopia. And it's like we tend to overestimate how things are going to change in the short run, but underestimate how they're going to change in the long run. And so like, all of that has been my prism as soon as I came out. Like, I've been around a few of these re platforming big technology transformations before. Yeah. So I don't. I think, I think there are people that are very much still in the hype cycle. And I think the more the simplest answer to your question is I've spent a lot of time learning how AI works, like actually works. And I think when you understand how it actually works, it helps you not get swept into a hype cycle or also see places where people are selling it short. And the more you kind of work with it and then obviously for knowledge architecture, building AI tools really makes you familiar with what can work and what can't. In the same day, my director of engineering and I will experience. I can't believe this is possible. And oh my God, like, you know, the state of the art of trying to get an AI model to do something is write instructions. And you can try and write it in all caps with a bunch of exclamation points. It's like, no, please don't do that. And like, literally that's how you're supposed to interact with these things. It's just like, try and write more emphatic prompts, cross your fingers and hope that it does the thing that you want it to do.

[Evan]

Your life depends on this.

[Chris Parsons]

And then when the next version comes out, like, all bets are off and you have to start again. And so that kind of like. But like, that's what, that's the nature of these things right now at this phase in very wild west. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like we are continuously trying to make our products more deterministic and rely on that. With the Dieter, the Dieter Rams had a book called as Little Design as Possible. And like, we've borrowed that. And Sean and I, that's my director of engineering, have a presentation called as Little AI as Possible. And so our AI products, we try to have as little AI as we can in them and surround the kind of the genie, you know, who's going to do magic tricks with a bunch of deterministic logic to help corral it and put it down and make guardrails, guardrails to make it more predictable, you know. And so that's what we're doing in 2025. I wonder if to some degree we're always doing that. Just like you would put processes around people because people are unpredictable too, you know?

[Evan]

Yeah. What do you guys think is going to happen with. Well, okay, so now my thinking is around licensure because of the way that this is playing out right now. I mean, and to kind of go in a little bit deeper on your thesis.

[Chris Parsons]

Right.

[Evan]

As far as who it's the most useful for right now is experts. Right. And to be able to have that discernment over what the work product, is it useful? Is it not?

[Chris Parsons]

Is it.

[Evan]

What did it miss? What did it get? What did I miss? What is it helping me see that I couldn't see in that experience? And I'm curious what you guys think, especially when it comes to, like, who's using the tools and where the rubber meets the road in a firm. What do you think that this means for licensure?

[Chris Parsons]

So I think. So I'd like to. I'm glad you framed it that way because I, I think that it's true that the AI is really helpful for experts in this kind of like, I'm going to augment you on your job accomplishing these technical tasks. I think that for learning and I think that's kind of in the, in the neighborhood of where you're going with this. Like the tools we're building and I'm seeing other people's build, like, if I'm an emerging professional and I have to navigate, like, and I've been thrown onto a healthcare project for the first time and I don't know all these acronyms and I don't know all these procedures and I don't know what all these medical equipment are. Like, there's just all this stuff that's like, oh my God, it's a sea, a sea of stuff coming at me. I think AI is going to help people, like, learn more quickly, like to be able to first of all just search and find what they're looking for, get up to speed, get very precise answers to very precise questions from a broad corpus of data. And I think that the, you know, I think that because the tools are just synthesis and beyond are getting better. I just think that the recall is there. See, would you kind of learn something? I think that you imagine yourself almost kind of like an operating system. Like, I think you need to build some like, foundational knowledge with like core concepts like project phases and here's how buildings Kind of like roughly here are the major systems and blah, blah, blah, blah. Then I think you need another layer on top of that that's awareness of like here are all the things that are things, but you don't have to remember all the details of that. And then there's a third layer on top of that which is just in time, knowledge. You can go get it when you need it. I think that the AI is going to really unlock, it's going to allow people to shift more and more of the details out of their working memory and out of their brain, out of their biology and you can have more room for awareness of here. I can go through a course and I can kind of be like, all right, all right. So I've never been on a site visit. I kind of know site visits are a thing I should be careful of what I'm taking photographs of. I don't have to remember all the details. And so when I ever go do that thing in the future, I know I should get myself back up to speed on it. I just feel like that ability to learn just in time or on demand that I think is really, really promising. And so if things are getting more complicated and stuff's moving faster, like the ability to work with AI to get the knowledge you need exactly when you need it, a la the Matrix, getting the kind of like, here I need to know how to fly a helicopter. Great. So I think there's some truth to that. I mean, obviously just because you watched a video on how to fly a helicopter doesn't mean you should go fly a helicopter. Like, I'm not making, I'm not making that argument, but I don't know. I do think that emerging professionals are going to have a wealth of on demand advice and expertise and help that like no generation ever had before.

[Cormac]

And if you think about it, it's something that's always updating, always evolving, always changing with the changing technologies, the changing way that we do things. You know, construction is evolving. And you know, the way that I had that kind of like root knowledge of going and conducting site visits, that's all changed from, you know, the time that I started to where it is now. It's completely changed. You know, I'm not walking around with, you know, stacks and stacks of papers and rolls of drawings and things like that. I'm walking around with my iPad, you know, and I'm, you know, interfacing in a completely different way and being able to kind of stay real time with the changing atmosphere of, you know, the profession is One of those things that, okay, I don't need to know everything about it. I just need to know how I can go about finding the knowledge that when I do go out there that, you know, I'm at least not, you know, tripping over myself.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah, it's kind of like the way they educate lawyers, right? Is the idea is like you're not trying to memorize all the case law that's ever, ever happened. You're trying to understand broad kind of legal principles and then how to go find the information when you need it. Like really, you have to be a very expert knowledge acquirer.

[Evan]

Yeah, yeah. It seems like there's tools available now where if you have the right resources plugged in, you could basically make your own. I know, and Chris, we've talked about this before. Like your own rag model, right? Your retrieval augmented. It's like this, this ability to have, have it maybe on your commute to work, teach you about the thing that you need to know that day because you have those resources available. So you could say, hey, like, make me a document to review because I have this going on. I have a site visit or I have my first OAC meeting and I need to learn like, what, what, what to say, what not to say. I don't know what normally happens in these things.

[Cormac]

What is an oac?

[Evan]

You know, you, you could see what is an oac?

[Chris Parsons]

What is oac? Yeah, I heard someone say oac. What is it? Yeah, right.

[Evan]

This is on, this is on my calendar. What, what am I signed up for? But, but it seems like there's some really interesting use cases for, for the kind of thing you're talking about. And I guess what I come back to is, is you're basically making the case back to what Cormac was talking about originally, which was, I'm a generalist and everybody wants to be a specialist now. And what you're actually making the case for is that like, yeah, everybody can up their level of generalist and then get what they need only when they need it in that kind of on demand way.

[Chris Parsons]

I think so. I mean, someone has to build the knowledge base. So, you know, someone has to know enough about site visits or OAC meetings or sustainability.

[Evan]

Is that a profession thing or is that a firm thing? I mean, that sounds like a very much a firm thing, but Cormac wants to talk.

[Chris Parsons]

But that's a very interesting question.

[Evan]

Imagine if, imagine if our profession could get his act together and create something.

[Cormac]

Okay, so, you know, going back to this generalist specialist, you know, concept I mean, in a way. So I always have this, you know, conversation with students about, you know, you need to understand the rules before you break the rules. And, you know, so if you have that core knowledge of the generalist, it's not really that you have to know everything about it, but you need to have enough, just basically core knowledge of like, you know, what, you know, where do I go to ask those right questions? What do I need to think about when I'm doing that? Like, if I'm designing a lab building and I've never designed a lab building before because I have my core knowledge of that generalist, I can now say, okay, I need to ask certain questions, you know, what kind of, you know, H VAC system, what kind of this or that. But I don't need, you know, all I'm doing is, you know, just saying I need to know what kind of, you know, systems I need to think about when I'm doing that and have an idea of where to go and look for it. So, you know, it's just, I don't, I don't know.

[Evan]

But you're also making the case for specialists because then you need to know who to talk to and who is creating that material.

[Cormac]

Oh, absolutely.

[Evan]

I mean, of course, of course we need, we need both. And I'm curious, who do you think this affects more in a negative way? Does this, does this affect generalists or specialists? The negative part, the tooling, the tooling kind of just replacing you in some way.

[Chris Parsons]

So I've been talking to Corey Squire a lot, who, you know, Evan from Bora. And like one thing we talk about all the time is like trying to build a robo query, you know, at Bora for him for sustainability. And. But the goal isn't like nobody ever talks to Corey again or Bora no longer leads Corey. The goal is people can get 101 and 2. One level question answered the low level stuff 24 by 7. And Corey works on harder things. But part of Corey's job as an expert and I think that the expert of 2035 more and more and more is a knowledge builder. As you know, there has to be time carved out for building the system that makes the machine, meaning the business run, you know, like if we're agreed that the apprentice thing isn't going to work and we're going to need to build really solid knowledge foundations for our firm, like who's building it? And to your point, like, maybe some of it is industry wide, like we can make investments across the industry to like lift all boats or whatever.

[Evan]

Well, just so that not everybody's duplicating this.

[Chris Parsons]

Not everyone's duplicating effort, but firms are doing that now. You know, ASG is going to have their secret sauce that's going to compete with XYZ for, like, there's some stuff that's going to probably be firm, firm specific, too. But I think, you know, if we really want AI to help us, it has to have access to that knowledge foundation too, which means it has to be digitized and externalized out of people's heads. And I just feel like, generally the right lens, if you're an expert kind of person, like, I wrote a post like two or three weeks ago saying, like, I don't hear people saying that, like, people are knowledge hoarding anymore because knowledge is power. And I'm not going to share because I need people to go through me so I can be the choke point. Like, that was a real thing in knowledge management, like, 15 years ago. Like, people talked about it all the time and I don't hear it anymore. And I think people are just so busy. They just, like, they would love it, you know, to, like, be able to offload, you know, more and more of their knowledge. So I don't know. I think it's just this awareness that, like, if I'm learning something, I should probably be, like, documenting as I'm learning. So, like, not only can I go find it three months or six months down the road, but that other people can too. Like, especially again, that biology thing. Like, maybe I'm just getting older, but, like, I will make design decisions for our product. And six weeks later, I won't remember what. I know that we said, like, we're either going to do A, B or C, but I won't remember which way we chose. But it's all doc. But part of that is because I documented at the time and made it available so I can go search it and find it when I need it. So, like, I'm. I don't know. I don't. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I do believe there's something to our brain understanding that, like, if it knows it's parked somewhere, it can get it. It doesn't try and write it, you know, into memory.

[Evan]

Yeah, I don't know if that's true.

[Chris Parsons]

I can't name any phone numbers.

[Cormac]

Right.

[Evan]

They're gone. I could barely remember my own.

[Cormac]

But if you remember. If you remember back in the day, though, I mean, we could remember all the phone numbers that we wanted to, but, you know, you know, the more and more we keep piling.

[Evan]

Because there was no choice.

[Cormac]

Exactly.

[Evan]

Yeah.

[Cormac]

But the more and more we kept piling things on, they just became a button, you know.

[Chris Parsons]

Right.

[Evan]

Yep.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah.

[Evan]

So. So back to my licensure question. A little more context with that, I think, is that, and I don't want to assume that the way we do achieve licensure or earn licensure now should be the same. I just think the title or the, the aspect of being a licensed professional, I think has potentially more merit because of the democratization and access to information to way more people. And so I'm curious if you guys have thought about that at all. Or maybe we just play this out in real time. Like, what do you, do you think that that adds any, anything extra to like the idea of regulation, liability, risk, and right now like the requirement of a stamp to do certain building types. Right. I'm just curious if you guys think that with this development happening with AI and democratization and access to like they say the richest person in the world has the same phone you do. Right. They're using the same iPhone you do. Right. People who are. Everybody has it. So what happens then to architecture and licensure?

[Chris Parsons]

I feel like Cormac is way more like in a position to answer this question, so I'm going to let him go and then I'm going to think

[Cormac]

a little bit, well, so you're sort of directing that question, if it's directed towards me, to somebody who truly believes that this is an open book profession, which so, and what I mean by that is that it's so weird that the way that we judge somebody's knowledge is based off of what they can retain for tests. Now we're also talking about a notorious, horrible test taker.

[Evan]

Yeah. And again, I want to stress that I don't necessarily think that the way we've achieved license should necessarily be the way that test continues. I know, so, so it's just, I'm just kind of framing it around like the idea of regulation and risk. Well, assuming risk with that, that thing that, that tangible thing called a stamp and licensure.

[Cormac]

Yeah, but I mean, again, it's one of those, I guess, in a weird way I bring it back to this kind of like understanding of a generalist. And, and when I say generalists in, in a way, I also mean it's what I, my, my core knowledge is basically given me the ability to go and find it somewhere else to go and look things up in other cases. Whether it's through AI, whether it's through a book, whether it's whatever. It doesn't mean that I possess that knowledge, but I have the ability to be able to go and find that knowledge.

[Evan]

Who doesn't?

[Cormac]

And, but that's the thing is like the way that we like judge somebody's not ability, their, their credentials to be a licensed professional is all based on this knowledge.

[Chris Parsons]

And also just hours too.

[Evan]

Right?

[Cormac]

Like, right.

[Chris Parsons]

It's part of internship. Yeah. Right. Okay.

[Cormac]

In really for me, it's like I find I'm like, okay, I'm working on this building. And Chris, you said this is where I work on this building. I may not have ever worked on this building before, but I know buildings. So I'm going to go and I'm going to look for that information and I'm going to kind of build that specialty knowledge for that particular building at the time I need it. I may never need it again or when I've never needed it before, but now I'm going to need it for the now. And, and so again, you're also talking to somebody who took, as Evan can attest to this, a long time to get licensure. And some of it was just through my own kind of like putzing around in other ways. It was a horrible test taker and I kept putting it off because of nerves or this, that or the other. And, and honestly, what was interesting about the evolution of me starting in are 3.0, then to 4.0, then to 5.0 when I finished, when I finally finished everything up in 5.0, what was really interesting about that test was the fact that you had dropdown menus to be able to search the information that could help you find the answer to the question that they're asking.

[Evan]

Wasn't there in the in 3.0.

[Cormac]

It wasn't in 3.0 and it wasn't in 4.0. And I'm like adapt. I was like, this is how we actually do it in the profession. If I can't, if I don't know something. Right. I'm gonna go look for it.

[Evan]

Phone a friend.

[Cormac]

Yeah, exactly.

[Evan]

Yeah. I I thinking about this because, because I agree like you, that's just in time thing is huge. But I re the value in being the expert who is that? You've been through it before.

[Chris Parsons]

It's reps.

[Cormac]

Yes, right. Yeah, it's reps. Yep.

[Evan]

And it's like, oh. And so that that really does for AXP hours. Going through five years of school, like that is all Part of licensure. For there's multiple paths to licensure, but that is kind of the, the main one that, that, that most people do. And I'm. I'm just curious if that needs to get even more, Become even more of a thing when we see the world changing around us so quickly. Because what I guess I'm concerned about also is that it just won't change. Like, the way that we go about doing this won't change and won't adapt quickly enough when the entire world is changing faster than it ever has before. And so the way we do architectural education, I also feel, needs to change. The way we do licensure needs to change and like, readdress the current situation, not continue to address the old situation.

[Chris Parsons]

I'm going to say this kind of in a provoc. Like, I want to kind of like just take a stance that I would just caveat. This is not my position. I'm just going to say some things. Why do we have professions at all, lawyers, architects, et cetera, that have licensure that get to like, you get to do this thing and you don't get to do this thing. The, the, the bull, the bull case for it is like, well, health, safety, welfare, of course, we need to make sure that somebody that knows what they're doing is Sampanist Drive.

[Evan]

We need somebody responsible.

[Chris Parsons]

Somebody responsible. The bear case is the aia and architects are a cartel that gets to decide who gets to practice and who doesn't. Right. And the same thing goes for in my city, barbershop licenses or like law degrees or medical degrees, like these degree systems. Like, you can look at it kind of both ways.

[Evan]

Taxicab medallions.

[Chris Parsons]

Taxicab medallions. And then in. But in like legal, like we saw like Nolo and all those kind of things emerge where you could just get kind of cheap contracts on the web. Like people are writing contracts using ChatGPT now and not going to lawyers. So it's like. But I would do a ChatGPT contract if I was trying to figure out something with my neighbor, if I was selling him a whatever, like a bike or something, and he really wanted a contract that's good enough. I'm not going to use CHAT GPT, I don't think, to do a contract. That's our master Services agreement with our clients. And so, So I wonder, like, does that dynamic come into. I mean, it's probably already come into architecture in some ways without AI, does it just become more and more. I'm answering your question, Evan. I'M just kind of like, well, why do we need licenses in the first place? And is it some kind of signal that you have the reps? Maybe less and less. That you memorize some stuff into your biological brain, regurgitated on a certain day at a certain hour and then got through it. Cormac, it's cool to hear that more of that test taking is involving your ability to search for things, because that is. It's like in these cooking shows where they give these people these random ingredients and they have to cook something in 30 minutes. Like, yeah, that's not how chefs cook. Like, that's a crappy test. Like, what are we doing? It's a game. It heightens the drama, blah, blah, blah. But it's not simulating reality. And I think the more that those licenses simulate reality and are like some proxy for. You've done a bunch of these projects before that gives a consumer guidance.

[Evan]

You have insurance, you've got liability insurance, you've got.

[Chris Parsons]

You.

[Evan]

You have. Yeah, it's like to me, it's like, oh, it's this checklist of reassurance. And I mean, it goes way beyond that. Right. But it actually comes down to liability.

[Cormac]

Yeah. And so I'm kind of recounting what I was saying and just kind of replaying it in my head while you guys were talking about all of this

[Evan]

and so you weren't listening.

[Cormac]

No, no, no, no, no. I was. You were forcing me to think about what I said. Because as you guys were talking about just this, this knowledge base and the reps and everything else, it's like the reason why I know where to go search, the reason why I know what to say when I'm in a meeting are because of the reps. It's because of the exposure to all of the different things that throughout the years that have been able to put me in a position of being a subject matter expert for buildings. Now when I say generalist, I mean that there's. Give me a building and I can put it together. But if it's a specialty building that I may not have never worked on before, I'll have to go and do some research. But because of my reps, I understand what I need to look for, where I need to look.

[Evan]

You're not starting from.

[Cormac]

I'm not starting from. Like, please tell me what a building is.

[Chris Parsons]

So here's a question. So as we think about the future of educating architects, can we find ways to get people reps faster, more reps across a wider diverse thing faster, and what you See, in. I don't know where this started, but like, simulators, like, certainly flight simulators, like, people get a bunch of hours in a bunch of conditions on a simulation long before they get into a real plane. And my godfather was a vascular surgeon and chief of whatever the. That program at nyu. And they brought in a. There's that. That's really taken off in medicine is these simulations.

[Cormac]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Parsons]

So. So right. So the doctors aren't getting their first reps on live patients. They're doing it in all these simulations first. And so, like, what's the AEC version of a simulator for our people?

[Evan]

My God, I hope it's not spending more time behind a screen. Like, we do that enough.

[Chris Parsons]

Could it.

[Evan]

Could it actually be on site? Could it actually be with real building materials?

[Cormac]

So two things. One, okay, so we design a lot of nursing schools and things like that. And one of the main things that is in a nursing school or SIM labs, because they do it over and over and over again for repetition, so that when they do go out there, they have that muscle memory of how to.

[Evan]

But it looks and it feels, but it's like they actually have the real, like. I'm glad you said muscle memory. Like, not. And not just. It's not just figuratively.

[Cormac]

Exactly.

[Evan]

Literally.

[Cormac]

So where I, Where I'm teaching, the bulk of the professors that are there are adjunct. They're out there, they're practicing every day. And what I found very interesting is that we do this. We had 54 students in. In my. In my studio, and we had four professors. And each of them have very different experiences in the profession. There's some that are residential, some that are residential in multifamily. Some are more commercial, like myself, and some have a similar background as me. But every time we sat down and talked with students, we were giving them basically real, real life experience of how we understand architecture. And what was re. What's really interesting about this model is we are. We are legitimately telling them this is how the. The profession works now. I mean, I would like to go a little bit further and have kind of a conversation about how we make it better and how, like, they are, like, in the. Like. I was, I was telling the. The person who was asking me yesterday, she was asking me specifically about AI and how AI is implemented. And I told her, I was like, I don't know the answer of that, but what I hope is, is that you will find the answer to that. That. That you will have the energy and the desire to actually, like, see what that is. But also understand that if you're looking at AI as how it's implemented in the profession, you also need to understand the profession. And it's, it doesn't necessarily. So I'm like putting her both on the hook of like, you're the one who's got to get to somewhat figure this out. But I'm also challenging her to. If you want to figure it out, you also need to understand like why we need it. And I don't know where I'm going,

[Evan]

but I mean it makes me wonder if more hands on is what is actually needed, not less. And I feel like the trend has been going away from that for so long, I don't know that we could even get back to that. Because a lot of architectural education is sitting at a screen and just doing rudimentary mundane stuff over and over again and asking why and getting red lines and implementing them and asking why and going through this kind of repetition over and over. But it's not real. Hands on. It's not real. I mean it's project experience. But it's not like the meat to me. It's just kind of the, the trimmings around the outside. It doesn't seem to really. A lot of our, of our education is spent in those mundane tasks.

[Chris Parsons]

Right.

[Evan]

At least that's the way we treat it. Like, like you need to do what I learned, how I learned how to do it. And because that's how I did it, now you're going to learn it the same way.

[Chris Parsons]

And I think that to me, like we got, I got into this and for episode one of our pod, like that's coming out in January and it was with the head of QA at Professional Services at one of our clients and he's like, this is the thing that we need to overcome. Like in maybe some cases the way that people learn, that are in charge of how people learn now is relevant. In many cases it isn't the best way to learn. And you're wanting them to go through this hard thing because you went through this hard thing. And, and it's kind of like a pay your dues kind of mentality and like an opportunity to redesign how we're doing learning now that we've got new technologies. But you've also got, I mean we got talking about like Gen Z a little bit and we kind of got to this question, it's like, are they entitled or are they ambitious and they're impatient. Right, right. They want to like do more faster in their career and they want to progress faster. They don't understand why they can't. And he's like, yeah, I have a really good example. Like, we have a rule that in order to go to an interview with a client, you have to have a speaking role. Like, we don't just, like, have people come hang out in the back of the room who are part of the interview. You can't just shut up. And they're like, well, I don't understand why I don't have a speaking role then. And it's like, well, we've never seen you speak in front of a client. Like, there gets to be like a chicken and egg game there. And like, could you guys do, like, lawyers do these mock trial things? Could there be, like, simulated role play, like getting them reps in a contained environment first? Right. Or same thing with, like, running client meetings. Like, are there ways to, like, design learning experiences that can help people move faster?

[Cormac]

It's interesting is because we have tried to kind of do that in. So at the firm, we've now kind of broken up into what we're calling communities rather than studios. And in these communities, we've got a lot of very young talent who's just exactly. Eager, ambitious, and impatient. And. And so what. What we've done is we've kind of shifted the model of mentoring to not only let them ask the questions that they need to ask, but let them basically take the lead on presentations or. Or all of these other things that normally would say, just sit back and watch me. And instead of saying, sit back and watch me. Okay, do it. And then if you stumble, we're here to help you. We're not here to critique you. We're not here to, like, laugh at you. Look at Evan. He totally messed this up. It's.

[Chris Parsons]

It's more.

[Cormac]

This is where you practice. This is where you can feel the safe zone of just trying and erring and failing. And it's like there are. And as. As a father with a 25 and a soon to be 23 year old, I understand that there is a lot of fear of failure. And so that is a preventer of trying. And so if you create a zone where they can fail, that when they actually are called up to do something, they've done it enough where they feel they. They've gotten over that anxiety. I mean, it took me a long time to get over that anxiety of

[Chris Parsons]

sitting public, speaking in front of a client, that kind of thing.

[Cormac]

Yeah, I mean, I used to just freeze up and it's just like, oh, two more. Two More slides and it's cormix time. And I'm just like, starting to get all, like, worried intense and everything else. I'm like, oh, shit, I'm going to screw this up. And. And then just like in. In learning how to do that because I hadn't done it enough. And. And so now we're creating this opportunity to. To do that, but also this. And you guys were talking about. It's like the people with the knowledge.

[Chris Parsons]

Can I just. Can I ask you about that? Like, so when you say you haven't done it enough, like, meaning you haven't done it enough in a safe space, you went from like, zero to 60. Right. Like, it's like, I'm not speaking to front of anybody. To, like, now it's in front of a client.

[Cormac]

Yes.

[Chris Parsons]

Don't mess it up.

[Cormac]

Yes.

[Evan]

Trial by fire.

[Chris Parsons]

Yes, trial by fire. But like. Yeah. So then there's this concept in learning called desirable difficulty. Right. And so you need to get somebody into a hard spot, but they should have a safety net. Yeah. And you got thrown into a hard spot without a safety net.

[Cormac]

Yes.

[Chris Parsons]

You know, and that was like, too far.

[Cormac]

Exactly.

[Chris Parsons]

And I think people mistake confidence. Like, they think confidence is some kind of, like, inborn thing that people have, and they're right, they're charismatic or whatever. Like, confidence comes from, like, successfully doing something over and over and over again. And now you believe it's like, when I do this thing, I'll be fine. And. Yeah, no, I love, I love what you're guys talking about doing, because I think that that's a really neat, neat idea.

[Cormac]

And, and so you had mentioned about qa. And so we just had this presentation the other day with two graybeards, me being one of them, talking about the QA QC process and what it was all about. And so we started talking about the process, but we were also. What we did is we treated it, rather than a presentation, as a conversation about how we can integrate the new tools in. With our kind of, like, standard written practice of the QA QC process. What they didn't realize is what I was explaining to them was how we've always done it. And so we sort of got away from that because we were allowing other things to kind of, like, dictate how we did that processing. And so then I was like, like, okay, but how do we. How do the things that interest you, how is that going to be able to kind of like, help the QA QC process? Whether it's just like this integrated, like, what tools are out There that we can use to kind of like streamline this and keep your interest actually doing the thing that we're kind of required to do, which is produce a really good set of documents that we're checking along the way, making sure it's right. That instead of at the very end when we're scrambling, which is a very typical thing in architecture where we're scrambling to get somebody to take a look at it and say, hey, is this right? You're like, well, when is this going out to bid? Like, oh, it goes out to bid in two weeks. Can you check it? And then they come back and they bleed all over it and you're like, wait, I don't have time to do all of this. It's what I'm getting is like, it's like how to feel comfortable with like integrating this, this whole process in, but more in like what are the tools that you have now? What are the tools that you like, what, what is going to be able to help streamline this where you can actually take a, an active interest in doing.

[Chris Parsons]

Defining the next way that QA 3.0 or QA 4.0 or whatever it is.

[Cormac]

Yes.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah, but like the, you're setting the outcomes. Those are non negotiable.

[Cormac]

Right.

[Chris Parsons]

But the process and the tooling is, is like more flexible.

[Cormac]

Yes.

[Chris Parsons]

Right.

[Evan]

Yeah.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah, I like it.

[Evan]

Well, a quote that I read today that, that I think is totally applicable is, is like we have all the answers of all the things that we, we need to fix and then there's no one willing to actually do it.

[Cormac]

Right.

[Evan]

It's like, it's like the thing you just talked about with qa. It's like imagine an AI agent that's just your code designer as you're designing the whole. It's actually doing it as you design. It's not waiting until two weeks before it's going to bid.

[Cormac]

Yeah.

[Evan]

To do that qa, it's just doing it as you go along. It's like that kind of thing is there are so many things out there like that. And yes, they take time to learn. Yes. They need to be implemented well. There need to be guardrails. There need to be. But we kind of refuse to do it because the tunnel vision man. I know how to do it this way. I've done it this way before. I'm, I'm comfortable with that last minute rush because I know it's only going to last for a short period of

[Chris Parsons]

confident in that last minute rush. Because you've done it before, but you're not confident in the new thing because you've never done it before and you're not even sure it can happen. Right?

[Cormac]

Yeah, but you know, it's, we're relying more and more on people who've never done that before.

[Chris Parsons]

Right.

[Cormac]

And those are the people who need to learn and know how to do this. And I think to like your earlier point in some of the other, other podcasts that I've listened to you on, Chris is talking about that knowledge sharing and how do you get that knowledge shared and push that out there? And that's, that's sort of what I'm trying to get at. It's like the, the, the, the end result is non negotiable. How we get there is something that, let's work within your comfort zone. But also let like help, let me help guide you in understanding where like I've seen the pitfalls and I kind of understand these things and, and like the, this, the seriousness of when you do make mistake or when you realize, oh, it's too late. I forgot that I was supposed to have two stairs here instead of one. But now I'm knee deep into construction documents and I've got to figure out where to put another stair and things like that. And so it's this. Yeah, I always say that like I know how to put together a building, but I may not know the technology of the changing technology. And so that's when we need to have that kind of very symbiotic relationship. And I think that's where that's one of the things that I'm kind of hoping that AI is able to do is back to the knowledge sharing is like, how do you get the, these senior level people to basically kind of distill all of like the, the learned muscle memory reps that they've done into something that's understandable for people who've never done it before.

[Chris Parsons]

What's interesting about that, I was, I totally, I'm generally there with you on this, but then I got an email from one of our clients and he's like the Chief Process and Innovation Officer. He's got a cool, cool fun title like that. And he's like, yeah, but like there's a lot of stuff that's in that hard won knowledge of those people that we do not want to transfer to the next generation. Like old ways of working that they are just like determined to push on to the next generation.

[Evan]

But I've seen that firsthand too and it's like, I'll watch a senior project Manager, train a project manager. And I'm like, not like that. Not like that.

[Chris Parsons]

Right, yeah. So we have to learn how to unlearn also as organizations and let go of some things that are no longer helpful for us.

[Cormac]

Well, a lot of, A lot of times I will say it is going to be your responsibility to help unlearn the bad habits that all of the generations before have created to get us into kind of like the mess that we sort of are in. It's just like, okay, you can see what the end result is. You can see how you get there, but you can also see the struggle or the bad habits or the asking somebody to do 80 hours a week rather than 40 hours a week and learning this working smarter aspect of things. It's like now you, the, the impatient, ambitious. What other words we were using for. To kind of explain the Gen X. It's really, it's, it's sort of like, and I keep telling this, everyone, every young person that will listen to me or at least not be able to like, run away fast enough when I say it really is up to you to undo the bad habits that we've created in this profession.

[Chris Parsons]

It's a design problem.

[Cormac]

Yeah.

[Evan]

Yeah.

[Chris Parsons]

Right. I mean, I think business, Business is a design problem, just like projects are a design problem and figuring out process is a design problem. And I feel like maybe the kind of. Some of the glimmers of hope is I feel like Gen X is a little less attached to, like, you have to do it the way I. I don't know, maybe I'm biased because I'm a Gen Xer, but I feel like a little bit more chill. Yeah. And kind of like, also, I think pragmatically this doesn't get talked about enough is there are less Gen Xers demographically than baby boomers and millennials and Gen Z. It's not only like people left the profession and we have a missing middle. It's also there were just less born.

[Cormac]

Yeah.

[Chris Parsons]

And so, like, that's why you see millennials moving so fast into positions faster than anyone ever has before. It's just like a numbers game to some extent.

[Evan]

Yeah, Yeah, I, I was. You actually mentioned that in your article. Right. You mentioned that there's, there's, there's less quantity of Gen Xers than there were boomers. And then, so the natural thing is. Yeah. Plug those holes with whoever's available.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah.

[Evan]

And, and I'm curious though, do you, like, how do you see that? Have you, how have you heard that's going. I mean, because, like, once again, we get back into the chicken and the egg thing. It's like, well, yeah, you're plugging holes. I. I experienced this in my career. It was like, you're going to manage this project. And it's like, I've never managed a project before. And there. And you're thrown into the deep end immediately. And it was like, well, because they needed a warm body in that spot.

[Chris Parsons]

Right, right.

[Evan]

And so now is that. Is that what we're seeing? Or are there. Is it more proactive nowadays?

[Chris Parsons]

I've been thrown into deep end. Not all deep ends are created equal. And like, kind of back to Corman's, Cormac's point, like, I've been thrown in deep ends where I'm like, we have told the client, like, literally, this has happened in architecture before. Architecture. And I was through two years out of school. And it's like, we've told the client that you are an expert in this technology. And I said, I've never heard of this technology. I'm like, cool, the meeting's in an hour. And I'm just like, this is some bullshit. Sorry. Can we swear on your podcast? I don't know if people do or not.

[Evan]

All right, all right.

[Chris Parsons]

And that was just. I was furious. Like, I'm like, I cannot, like, represent myself the next. It was a terrible experience. But then I've also been like, we think you're ready to take a swing at this thing. Someone's here that has your back. We support you. Like, we understand this, the learning experience, blah, blah, blah. And, like, that's a whole different. So I think some of it depends, like, how much intentionality and care is it done with, how well resourced is it, like. Like, yeah, I mean, I. I think it's an. Actually a great thing because some of those people can come in with fresh eyes and, like, see all the, like, weird things in the way that we do things. Like, yeah, if you've ever handed off a process to someone smart, that's thinking, they're just like, okay, I have nine questions for you. Like, I don't understand why. And I'm like, yeah, you're right, it's not the best way. But I started doing it, and then, like, it worked and all those things. So, yeah, I know Cormac. What do you think?

[Evan]

I. Cormac is that guy. He's the guy. He's the guy who cares, and he's the guy who cares. He's the nurturer.

[Chris Parsons]

He's a nurturer. Right? And.

[Evan]

And So I, like you said, it depends. Like, not all deep ends are created equal. It's also not all mentors are created equal either. Right.

[Chris Parsons]

So, yeah, Karmic, you started saying something earlier that I, that I don't know if I thought you were going to finish. And then you went in another direction. Are you were talking about the way mentoring.

[Cormac]

Right.

[Chris Parsons]

I think you were saying something like, we're expecting mentees to kind of drive their mentorship process a little bit more and kind of take a little bit more ownership of their own learning and guidance. Did I hear that right or I'm making that up?

[Cormac]

No, you. You heard it right. So, so one of the things that I usually always tell any, like, new hire that's like fresh out of school, very first thing that I say is, look, you are the one who is going to drive and make your career. Don't let anybody else kind of shape your career without your active involvement in it. And so what that typically means is that. And we do this often at the start of projects where we'll say, what do you want to get out of this? What do you want to learn from this project? What do you want? Is there a. Some strengths that you say that, hey, I can support somebody else and help train them on some of my strengths, or I've got these weaknesses that I really want to get some experience in and really kind of like, ask them what you want to learn. And so if we're always asking that question, what do you want to get out of this? They're always going to be asking that question, what do I want to get out of this? What do I want to learn from this? How do I want to grow from this? And that kind of like, puts the onus on them to always be thinking about, like, the next step, whether it's the next step in their career, next step in the project. Like, every little, any little thing is like a thought of, like that. I always talk about going exactly this, this cause and effect. You've made a decision now, what does that mean? And, and so that's the kind of way that I typically try to mentor. And, and I also find that when I'm mentoring, I'm being mentored as well, because now I'm learning how other people think, how they, how in able to kind of like learn from them. And I've, I, I'm a, I'm a, I, I try to be a sponge enough to look at the way that somebody else is doing it, and maybe they've got a different process that is Actually, a little bit easier. I'm like, hey, show me how you did that so that I can learn from that and grow from that and maybe kind of like change, take again my own muscle memory, take again my, My expertise, but then shape it in a way to actually make it better. And, and those are the things that I'm kind of always asking. And, and I think that that's something that we're. We've been encouraging more and more in the office, specifically in, like, my community, where we are really trying to take. We've got a lot of, like, really young, ambitious professionals, and we see that they want to learn and. But they're not willing to just sit back and not ask the questions. They're willing to ask the questions. And we want.

[Chris Parsons]

And I think that, that something we're starting to see really taking off is the idea that that generation will also document and build the learning materials and build the training for other people. Like, they'll kind of interview experts or spend time. They'll write it up. They'll ask like, did I get this right? Like, do I sign off on this? And like, through the process of developing that content, you're also learning yourself.

[Cormac]

One of the interesting things that is. Seems like it's frustrating to a lot of people is, oh, my gosh, they ask so many questions. Clearly they don't understand what's going on. And it's like, no, what it really shows is they actually care about.

[Chris Parsons]

Terrifying if they weren't asking questions.

[Cormac]

Yeah, absolutely. That's some of the worst. Some of the, the, the worst people that I've worked with are the ones who stay silent and they're like, hey, do you know what? Do you understand the task? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm good.

[Evan]

They assume they do or you assume they do, right? Either one.

[Cormac]

Exactly.

[Evan]

Not right.

[Cormac]

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

[Chris Parsons]

Thinking about just now, I'm just being selfish and like, thinking about this article I'm writing. But, like, there was a dynamic in what you were saying, Cormac, that seems important to me. If I think about an expert of 2035. Like, we've all met experts who are more brittle with their expertise. Like, they're more. They're worried about that they're actually an expert. There's some imposter syndrome there or insecurity. Therefore, they vociferously defend the way that they do things because they can't possibly learn something from someone that's not at their stature level. And then you've met experts who are just like, and I.

[Cormac]

And I.

[Chris Parsons]

From the way you're describing. You're working with people more like generous, humble, like, always learning. Beginner's mindset. And I think, like, expertise is so funny because it gets used as a noun a lot. And I think it's more like a verb. Like, you're never experts. Like, if I stopped learning about technology three years ago.

[Cormac]

Yeah.

[Chris Parsons]

Like, I would be horrible at my job right now.

[Cormac]

You'd be obsolete.

[Chris Parsons]

I'd be obsolete. Like in the. And then I would be like. And then if I felt. Then I'd be defending the fact that like, no AI is a hoax or like, it's never going to happen or all these reasons. And then you get. Because it wasn't very defensive. Yeah. Because it wasn't a thing back then when you stopped learning and changing and growing. And so I think experts have always had to keep doing that. It just feels like that's not. I don't know, I just feel like even more so. And encourage that in others. And I really love. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that Corman.

[Cormac]

Yeah.

[Evan]

All right. That seems like the spot right there.

[Chris Parsons]

Did we hit it? It's over.

[Evan]

It's over. No. That was a great conversation. I appreciate it and appreciate you kind of prompting this, Chris, with your article, because it's really making me. Like I said I think one thing and then it's like, oh, this new aspect has opened up about it. And I'm curious to see how this plays out, of course. But I'm also interested in how we actively address the design of the next version of our profession and all of the aspects of that. And it's not something that I think we need to be on the sidelines watching happen. It's something we need to be actively participating in. And it's through conversations like these that we can actually start to of understand what. Why we think what we think or start to form opinions about these kinds of things. And because there's a lot to be concerned about. Like, well, let's be honest. Right. There's sure this. This is all coming into question. And this is three years ago before ChatGPT came out. I don't think this was as much of a concern.

[Chris Parsons]

I think it's so concerning that it's actually a good thing because it's finally like, I think it's woken up, like this thing that's needed to happen for a long time in terms of, like, it's the stimulus.

[Cormac]

It is. Right.

[Chris Parsons]

Never waste a crisis. Right. Right. And I think, like, so I'm going to be reporting on this over the next year. Like, what I'm looking for in 2026 is firms that are modernizing learning experiences within their company, like of all types and shapes and sizes and looking for a variety of tactics. Because I think that. And then we'll all be sharing those. Like, that's what KA has always done. But that's the specific thing that we're looking for is like, like, how are people modernizing the way that their company learns and then literally owning it. Right.

[Evan]

Like, owning it. That's a big shift that we've seen over the last decade or less. Right. Is starting to own that process. But now you're. You're talking about another level.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah. And I'm optimistic because I do feel like more people have Cormac's attitude around being more of a generous, curious, sorry to put you on the spot, but like, that kind of like. And use you as a stand in. But like this kind of. I, I just feel there's a vibe shift in the industry towards more of that humility and curiosity and like less top down. This is the way we've done it. I work 65 hours. You're going to work 65 hours. Like, I just feel like something has shifted in the last few years that like, makes me very optimistic about the future of the profession. Like, it feels like that had to happen. Now we can look at this as like, okay, we need to, I'm not say, start over, but like, I think the way that we're doing things all need a pretty hard look.

[Cormac]

I think with everybody's misconception of what AI is going to do. The profession, it's sort of a scared straight program where it's just like, oh shit, we got to get our shit together. Right?

[Chris Parsons]

Yes. Yeah.

[Cormac]

And then hopefully it's taking stock in what we're doing. Right. Wrong. And how we can embrace the right steps forward. But, but I mean, we're also talking about a group of a profession. And not to sound pessimistic about it, but Evan always says that we're slow to change. We're also. We are slow to change. We are slow to embrace the different things that we think. So.

[Chris Parsons]

Oh, you.

[Cormac]

You've heard the contractor on site all the time. It's like, well, I've been doing this for 15 years or 25 years. This is, this is the way we always do it. It's like, well, maybe it's not always the right way to do it. It's the way you've been doing it, but maybe there's a better way to do it. And it's okay to actually talk about that new way or maybe consider or think about that new way of doing things so that maybe you don't have to work 60 hours a week or

[Evan]

80 hours a week, not just dismiss it.

[Cormac]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chris Parsons]

One of the things, one of the reasons I think we're so slow to change and having worked in other industries, it's like so stark. And like working in software is our feedback loop from our work is one of the longest of any of the professions. It's like you make a design decision, like you try a new process in schematic design in 2025 and you'll find out if it worked in 2029 when the project realized or whatever it is. And that like, takes a long. Such a long cycle. If you're writing software, you push a release out tonight.

[Evan]

People at the firm.

[Chris Parsons]

You don't even have the same people at the firm. Yeah. And so especially if it's a. If it's a healthcare project, maybe it's 10 years down the road. Like it's a long loops.

[Evan]

Yeah.

[Cormac]

When you, when you had mentioned Hopkins and of course Evan's probably looking at me like, is. Is Cormac going to start having that tick? It was because we are about to finish up a project, probably Q2, Q3 of next year. So 2026, that I started on the project and I wasn't part of a feasibility study, but of the actual building project was 2016.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah, exactly.

[Evan]

Yeah. We had a friend of mine from. From the old firm who worked on a project, a school project for 13 years. Crazy. But yeah. Talk about feedback loops being long.

[Chris Parsons]

So are there ways to like, back. And I'm not proposing a solution, but like, now that we've kind of said that that's a condition. Like, are there ways to shorten them? Are there other things we can do? Like back to the simulation things like, is there any way.

[Evan]

See to me that that's where the industry part of it comes in.

[Chris Parsons]

And less about the specific sharing between firms.

[Evan]

Shar profession.

[Chris Parsons]

Yeah.

[Evan]

There's so much more leverage that could be gained to benefit everybody because of. Yeah, because that's a real constraint. The time frames of these projects.

[Chris Parsons]

That's fun. Well, thanks. I've listened to the show multiple times in. In the past and it's fun. Fun to be here. Love what you guys are doing. This is like we're getting close to episode 400, right?

[Evan]

We're getting there. Yeah. Not too far.

[Cormac]

We'll get off his lazy butt and

[Evan]

edit if Cormac would just get the episodes.

[Cormac]

Yeah, it'd be great, truth be told. Well, truth be told, Evan, I started editing the last one using the built in AI of Descript, uh oh, underlord. And for some reason it ditched your video.

[Evan]

Yeah, exactly. What could go wrong?

[Cormac]

Exactly.

[Evan]

So I was like, I don't like what he's saying. Yeah.

[Cormac]

So. And I could not do it, so I had to start over. So there you go. Oh, well, I was using AI.

[Evan]

Well, I want to put a link to Chris's article Paradox article in the show notes so everybody can read it and then let us know what you think. We'd love to hear it. And so again, Chris, thank you so much for prompting this discussion and being up for having it on the podcast.

[Chris Parsons]

Thank you very much. All right, see you guys. Thank you.