AI Designs the Bridge. Who Do We Blame?

Michael explains why an engineer can be jailed for negligence even when the drawing came from AI, who really carries the risk when a machine designs a bridge, why "inefficiencies are what drive construction" and where the margins sit, why firms that automate too much are one error away from a legal battle that could collapse them, what happens to graduates who never learn by getting it wrong, why a degree today "is worth a job interview", why he has never seen an Excel spreadsheet without errors, and why he would be happy to see research at the AI frontier stop and the bubble pop.

Dr Michael Rustell is a chartered engineer with a Doctor of Engineering in design automation. He led data science as a maritime engineer at AECOM and spent six years at Brunel University London before founding Inframatic, which builds AI for infrastructure work where failure is not an option: railways, bridges, ports and nuclear.

A note on HS2: the figure of £107 billion mentioned in the conversation is not the official estimate. In May 2026 the government put the cost of HS2 at £87.7bn to £102.7bn (2025 prices).