A Faculty’s Perspective on Infusing Artificial Intelligence into Civil Engineering Education

Abstract

Introduction 6 The past few years have witnessed the rise of an era that establishes Artificial Intelligence (AI) as 7 a new frontier within the civil engineering domain. A closer look into tremors arising from our 8 academia and industry infer a general interest in AI; however, this interest is faced with a series of 9 serious questions: Is academia or the civil engineering industry interested in graduates and 10 engineers fluent with AI? If so, then when can we start to adopt AI formally? And, how can we 11 infuse AI into existing dense curricula? While this forum paper does not claim to have all the 12 complete answers to these questions, I hope that this forum paper sheds some light on the above, 13 as seen from the lens of a junior faculty member at an R1 university in the USA. Perhaps some of 14 the outlined experiences, proposed solutions, and thoughts accumulated while developing an AI15 based course for civil engineers can come in handy for those who can relate to the theme of this 16 work. 17