Sam Altman (the CEO of OpenAI which makes ChatGPT) published a report this week called “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age”. It’s a blueprint laying out how governments should be preparing for super intelligence, which is the point where AI systems will out perform the smartest humans.
In the report he proposes different solutions to the rise of AI including robot taxes, a public wealth fund where citizens get stakes in AI growth, four day work weeks and a fundamental restructure of how capitalism will work. He also proposed a timeline showing that he thinks AI systems will be capable of novel insights this year (2026) and that systems could outperform humans at nearly everything by 2030.
The thing that I took from this report is that AI is going to completely reshape the world in the next couple of years and the window for getting comfortable with AI is closing very quickly.
At the moment in the interior design/architecture industry I’m seeing people fall into one of three camps when it comes to AI.
Camp one have their head in the sand. They're convinced AI is overhyped and not relevant to what they do. These are the people who are going to wake up in 12-18 months and find themselves irrelevant because everyone else has moved on without them.
Camp two is playing with the shiny irrelevant toys. They're using AI rendering engines or creating videos out of mood boards (all the pretty stuff you see lots of “AI experts” teaching). The issue with some of the workflows you're falling for here is they don’t have a lot of practical application to real design work. Turning an AI generated mood board into an AI generated floor plan might make you think you're ahead of the curve because you're "using AI" but you're not actually using it for anything that will make you more productive, profitable or better at your job.
Camp three are the designers who are using AI to fundamentally change how they work. These designers are taking time to learn tools like Claude Cowork, Poppy AI, NotebookLM, Base 44 and Replit. They are learning how to use AI to automate repetitive tasks, manage projects better, generate documentation, vibe code tools to help them in their business, do research and free up their time. All of this means they can focus on the high value work that only they can do (i.e. the human to human stuff, creativity, having taste, being on site).
Guess which camp is going to be the most protected in two years and which camps are going to be struggling??!!
So what should you be doing?
There's a lot of content out there right now about AI for designers and most of it is pretty useless. I think the main reason for this is that the educators who have suddenly become “AI experts for designers” have never actually run a profitable interior design business themselves so they don’t understand the real work that we do day to day.
The stuff these "experts" are sharing look pretty and fun, which is why lots of designers fall for it, but none of it actually helps you run a better business or deliver better outcomes for clients.
The real opportunity with AI is using it to handle th parts of your job that are boring, time consuming and repetitive e.g. things like administrative work, client communication, project management tasks, scheduled repetitive work and research.
That's where AI can actually save you hours every week and let you focus on the work only you can do like design thinking, client relationships, strategic decisions and being on site. If you use AI to reduce your admin workload you will need less staff and you'll make more money and that's where AI gets interesting!
But most designers aren't exploring this because they're either intimidated by the technology or they're distracted by the flashy fun tools that don't solve real problems.
I've spent the last few months paying really close attention to AI and I can see a split happening in the design industry right now.
On one side are designers who are treating AI like it's something they can ignore until it becomes more "mature" or more "relevant" to what they do. They're the same designers who said social media wasn't necessary and who resisted moving to digital tools to assist their workflow.
On the other side are designers who have realised this isn't optional anymore and have decided they'd rather figure it out now while they have time, rather than later when they're forced to catch up in a panic.
The gap between these two groups is getting wider every month and in 12-18 months it's going to be impossible to close. So my suggestion is to start exploring how AI can make your business more efficient, more profitable and less dependent on you personally doing every single task. Learning this is going to give you a massive competitive advantage over the ones who wait.
To help you with this I'm going to be spending more time on AI education in the coming months because I think it's one of the most important things happening in our industry right now.
