Garbage In, Garbage Out – The Role of Engineering Judgement in Utilising Artificial Intelligence

January 7, 2026

The legality of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in engineering presents a grey area in terms of the risks involved in an ethical sense let alone a technological sense, that need to be accounted for at an organisational and at a personal level before a wide scale adoption can be progressed. Despite the ease of availability of such tools, engineers will always need to retain engineering judgement to best utilise the tools successfully. For the case of an operational mine site with an ongoing instrumentation monitoring program, a detailed iterative prompt and response process was conducted as the inputs require engineering judgement to determine if the outputs/coding and the subsequent data outputs are deemed to be appropriate and accurate. Thus, with working professionals under increasing pressure as technology advances, care must be undertaken to ensure the use of AI not only follows confidentially requirements, but professionals must be aware of the exact outputs of such tools and assume responsibility especially when utilised in technical deliverables.

Yau, J. 2025 “Garbage In, Garbage Out – The Role of Engineering Judgement in Utilising Artificial Intelligence,” in Proceedings of the NZSOLD/ANCOLD Conference 2025, 19 – 21 November 2025, Ōtautahi Christchurch, New Zealand: NZSOLD/ANCOLD