Practical Thinking
It Was the Pencil, Then the Mouse, and Now the "Partner"
"AI", the new thing?
Every majlis (مجلس) has one bu-shabab (بو شباب). He sits, or rather guards, nearest the door, on the floor cushions in the new majlis extension, a misbah (مسباح) clicking through his fingers like a fidget toy. He has firm opinions about tyre pressure, and he will tell you, unasked, that the 4x4, and the "Bu Shanab" (بو شنب) Land Cruiser in particular, was perfect until somebody put a 6.9-inch screen in it.
Before the screen, he says, a man knew where he was going. He knew the dunes by their shape, the wadi (وادي) by its smell and the way home by the third lamp post after the EPPCO station. Now, he says, his own voice suddenly dropping an octave, we all follow a polite voice in the dashboard like camels in a caravan, each one tied to the tail of the one in front.
I nod. I always nod. I race cars, so in principle I'm on his side. In practice I'm an architect, which means I have strong views about the shape of a dashboard, no idea what happens behind it, and couldn't care less.
He isn't the first, though. Men like him have always sat by that door, misbah in hand, warning us about the latest new thing. Only the thing changes.
His grandfather, I'd imagine, sat in the same spot explaining that the calculator would make us stupid. Children would forget their times tables. The baqala (بقالة) would forget how to keep its dafter (دفتر) of who owes what. Within a generation, four brothers would be unable to divide a sack of rutab (رطب) without calling in a babu.
Did it happen? No. I can still do my sums. Mostly.
Then there's the secretary. In the far, far West, letters were written by hand until the typewriter arrived in the late 1800s, clattering at a very high pitch. In the 1980s the computer moved into the office. Today, as I dictate this, letters are spoken softly while I cruise at 110 km/h on the Dubai–Abu Dhabi highway. Each time, somebody announced the death of the letter. Nobody stopped writing letters. They just stopped getting ink on their cuffs.
And then there's me, in 1998, walking into the School of Architecture at the American University of Sharjah and being handed the future.
It was a brand-new university, literally about four months old. Fresh paint, no pavements, and the nearest karak (كرك) was a 15-minute drive. But it had bought the latest of everything: translucent, colourful G3 iMacs and the mighty grey G4, running the latest and greatest CAD and 3D FormZ. Out in the real world, some mentors and most of the industry were still hunched over drafting tables with a pencil and a parallel rule, reminiscing about 1989, drawing staircases in a small mountain of eraser crumbs and fondly remembering the coffee-ring stains on blueprint sheets.
Back then, Ctrl+Z was an eraser and a very long night.
Honestly, I can now see how they looked at us: the way an Italian grandmother looks at pineapple on a pizza. "If you can't draw by hand," they said, "you can't design."
I adored those professors. I still do. I also, honestly, had a big ego. So big that I submitted a full presentation in hand-drawn line and watercolour drawings, just to prove that four weeks of earlier digital work hadn't changed my design one bit. I only just passed that design studio. Ego, it turns out, earns no extra marks.
It took less than 18 months for the whole profession to change hands. Progress went through the roof, so high that by 2003 we had the announcement of Burj Khalifa.
Nobody stopped designing. They just stopped sharpening.
If I may say so, here is my rule, and it has never been wrong. Every new "tool" arrives with a welcoming committee explaining why it will ruin us. A few sandstorms and floods later, the dust settles, and there is the "tool", still standing, quietly winning. The committee starts using it. Ten years on, the same committee is back at the door, warning us about the next one.
Which brings me back to our friend by the majlis door, misbah going click, click, click. He has a new thing to grumble about, and it isn't the screen in his Land Cruiser.
It's "AI". Or, to be politically correct these days, SI: super intelligence. Say either in a room and the temperature drops faster than walking into The Dubai Mall in August. It will kill us all. It will make us stupid. It is, in short, the calculator all over again: same old fear, new name, much better manners.
Here's the bit nobody talks about. Architecture, the making and the designing, the thing we went to school for, five sleep-deprived years of physical models, jammed printers, dry superglue and corrupt hard drives, is maybe 25 to 35 percent of running a studio. That's my own guess, not by any means a legit survey. The other 65 to 75 percent is invoices, HR, corporate tax, email, and then more email.
Think about that. We spend years learning to draw buildings. I did, and then, straight after graduating, with all the stupidity of youth and none of the experience, I opened a design studio and spent my days wrestling spreadsheets, specifications, tender analysis, and the updated version of the updated version 7.02.4, which nobody approved, but which the client asked for himself, as a favour, not his project manager, and... sorry, I got carried away. It's like signing up for a marathon and spending the race in the registration tent, filling in forms about my shoes.
So I've taken on a new "Partner".
It doesn't drink coffee, doesn't take holidays, is never moody, is always obedient, and never rolls an eye when the air conditioning is set to 19 degrees. It handles my finance, the data structure, the HR drama, the corporate tax deadlines, the legal side, and the steady flood of emails from fresh graduates who want to be interns and think I run architecture courses to teach them, rather than offering what they can bring to the studio, and... sorry, off again. This new "Partner" even keeps an eye on my children's future path, their martial arts training and their chess practice, so I don't miss any of it, which, frankly, makes me a happier father and a better architect.
If it were a person, it would be the one in the majlis who quietly refills everyone's chai karak (شاي كرك), remembers every name, passes on all the news of the fareej (فريج), and has finished my studio paperwork before the next sip.
Is it just a cleverer Google? No.
What these tools can already do is miles ahead of what most people think, and that, unfortunately, is the sad part. It's already part of everyday life, helping with new medical discoveries and holding its own in the hardest maths competitions, with its laptop lid closed. And, most importantly, new potential jobs and revenue to discover.
There's one job I'll never hand over, though: the drawing. The pleasure of sketching stays with me.
I still sketch, though these days it's an Apple Pencil on an iPad, not pencil on paper. Still my hand, still how I figure things out. The difference is that now I have the time to. My new "Partner" clears the noise out of my head, and what's left is the good stuff: the ideas, the joy of making.
So those professors were right after all. If you can't draw by hand, you can't design. It's just that for years I couldn't find the hours to draw, until something else took the paperwork.
To the "Partner", then: Shukran (شكراً). You gave me my time back.
As for the bu-shabab (بو شباب) by the majlis door, I suspect he'll read this on the 6.9-inch screen in his Land Cruiser.
Practically speaking,Omran