Here, the basic level of digital literacy is access and awareness – if you do not have the tools, or do not know that you have the tools, you cannot even get started. The second layer is skills – knowing how to use the tools. The third is practices – integrating the tools into the work you do. The fourth gets particularly interesting, where your practices reshape your idea of what sort of person you are.

For example, let’s say you want to make use of large languages models (LLMs) and get access to one. They are fairly straightforward to use and you spend a bit of time learning what makes a good ‘prompt’ (skills). Then you realise you can use LLMs to summarise and analyse large documents you need to refer to in your work (practices). This changes your identity slightly, towards being someone who ‘can use technology’ or maybe even ‘tecchie’ (a term with lots of associations in our culture). Reflecting on this change may well encourage you to use the tools further and think about other areas where you may be able to use technology tools to support the work you do.

So, navigating changes in technology means not just learning new skills but rethinking what your profession means, both for the profession as a whole and individual professionals. Architects, perhaps, move from being people who create drawings and develop their intuition through repeated drafting, towards people who can manage digital workflows. The computer may generate the options, but the architect provides the critical empathy that chooses the right one. This shifts the professional identity from ‘I draw’ to ‘I discern’. Some may find this threatening, if they feel that spending years learning drafting skills is central to the idea of a professional architect. Others may embrace it, using new tools to be even more creative in their work, whether to speed up compliance checks or explore design alternatives. 

Of course, some skills don’t change much – aesthetic decisions, client relationships and navigating regulations remain central to what the professional architect can offer. The physical nature of architectural work – understanding how people move through space, how light affects mood, how a building responds to its site and climate – requires embodied knowledge that remains distinctly human.

This is important. Even if we accept Amodei’s prediction to some degree, this does not mean that a ‘jobs apocalypse’ is imminent. Jobs which involve producing variations on established patterns may be under threat, but the most valuable professional work involves judgement. In a recent newsletter the fiction writer Naomi Alderman argued that “the skills of discernment” have always had value and always will. [3] Human beings are needed:

“to tell whether something is beautiful or ugly, whether its message is meaningful or just a cliche, whether a building will have the right or the wrong effect on the people inside it”

For architects, this discernment is not just a matter of taste; it is a matter of professional responsibility. An AI model can generate a visually stunning idea, but it cannot take legal liability for the building’s safety. In a world of infinite, cheap digital generation, the architect’s signature, and the assurance of safety and compliance it represents, becomes a premium asset.

Alderman further argues that developing these skills of discernment involves not letting AI do work for you before you have learned how to do it yourself. This touches on the critical debate about how we train future professionals. While we cannot solve that challenge in this article, it is worth noting that the ‘Practice’ level of the pyramid offers a clue.

If the new practice is reviewing AI output rather than drawing from scratch, the junior architect’s apprenticeship shifts from production to critique. They must still learn the first principles, not to draw the detail by hand, but to have the knowledge required to catch the AI’s inevitable mistakes.

To navigate the risks and make the most of the opportunities brought by new technology, it is necessary to rethink one’s identity and become a modern, technology-enabled professional. This is bound up with, and central to, learning new skills and implementing new practices. There is lots of guidance out there on how to make transitions but for me the authority on this topic is Professor Herminia Ibarra of London Business School. Her book Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader sums up her thesis in the title.[4] Reflection and learning are important but true change comes from doing things differently. Specifically, she recommends redefining your job, broadening your network and seeking out situations that make you uncomfortable:

“The situations in which we most stand to learn are also those that challenge our sense of self.”

So for people who think they “aren’t good with technology” (I meet many of them), the challenge is to try out some technology tools. Whether it goes well or badly, it will enable you to rethink who you are.

If you are looking for ways to get started, some ideas to consider are:
·       We are going through a major transformation and you will need time to get to grips with it. Ensure your time management practice allows some slack to investigate and experiment.
·       AI technologies are not going away and are having impact everywhere, so you need to understand something about them. Countless books, podcasts, videos and other resources are available. You can always ask an LLM for help with this.
·       AI tools are generally not ‘plug and play’ so you will need to spend some time using them to work out how they can best serve you. Be prepared to do this and develop your own sense of what they can do, as well as when not to use them.
·       Identify a specific “drudge work” bottleneck where AI tools could help. Don’t start with complex design problems. Start with the mundane tasks that take up time: summarising site meeting minutes, cross-checking door schedules against floor plans or drafting the initial scope for a fee proposal.
·       Double down on being human.[5] Over time, work that can be done by machines increasingly will be. So focus on the things that can’t be done by machines – judgement, empathy, relationships, creativity. AI tools can produce a photorealistic rendering in seconds, but they cannot explain why that design solves the client’s specific problem. Focus on the client relationship, the storytelling, and the empathy, the “embodied knowledge” that machines cannot replicate.

AI will undoubtedly transform architectural practice in the coming years. But if history teaches us anything, it’s that professions which ground themselves in human judgment, creativity, and relationships don’t disappear – they evolve and often grow stronger. Your challenge is to shape how it unfolds in your practice and in your profession.

(Full disclosure: I used AI tools to research and critique this article, treating the technology as a ‘critical friend’ to test my arguments. While the writing is mine, this process reflects the collaboration I advocate. AI provides options where requested, but the human professional provides the discernment.)

[1] Interview with CNN, 29 May 2025, https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/29/tech/ai-anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-unemployment 
[2] The model was created for JISC, who support higher education in the UK. It was first published in chapter 6 of Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age (2010), edited by Rhona Sharpe, Helen Beetham and Sara de Freitas. It has been reproduced numerous times since. More information about this model and related work is available at https://digitalcapability.jisc.ac.uk/what-is-digital-capability/individual-digital-capabilities/our-digital-capabilities-framework/.   
[3] “preparing for the working world in the age of AI”, 3 November 2025, https://naomialderman.substack.com/p/preparing-for-the-working-world-in. 
[4] 2nd edition published in 2023. For more information about Prof Ibarra’s work and other resources visit https://herminiaibarra.com/.  
[5] This is the title of an excellent talk by fiction writer Joanne Penn, available at https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2023/10/18/how-to-double-down-on-being-human-5-ways-to-stand-out-in-an-age-of-ai/. I have borrowed the phrase because I love it.