AI-Assisted Design Comprehensive Verification Obligation Violated By Engineer A In Design Documents
Engineer A conducted only a high-level review of AI-generated design documents for groundwater infrastructure, resulting in misaligned dimensions and omission of key safety features required by local regulations, which Client W identified upon review.
AI-Assisted Design Comprehensive Verification Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to conduct a comprehensive, technically substantive verification of the AI-generated engineering design documents — including verification of all dimensions, safety features, and regulatory compliance requirements — before sealing and delivering those documents to Client W.
Engineer A elected to only conduct a high-level review and adjusted certain elements to align with site-specific conditions. When Client W reviewed the design documents, they found misaligned dimensions and key safety features (including those necessary for compliance with local regulations) were omitted.
Prior to sealing and delivering AI-generated design documents to Client W
AI-generated technical work requires at least the same level of scrutiny as human-created work.
The errors in the AI-generated design documents could have led to regulatory noncompliance and safety hazards, conflicting with the Fundamental Canon I.1, 'hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public'.
AI-Generated Design Documents Non-Compliant State
From Client W's identification of deficiencies through required revision and verification
Client W noticed several issues with the AI-generated design documents, including misaligned dimensions and an omission of key safety features required by local regulations
Engineering design documents generated by AI-assisted tools containing dimensional errors and safety feature omissions
Successful revision and verification of design documents to meet professional and regulatory standards
Client W raised concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the engineering design and instructed Engineer A to revise the plans, ensuring that all elements satisfied the necessary professional and regulatory standards
Client W identified misaligned dimensions and omission of key safety features required by local regulations in the AI-generated design documents
AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification Obligation Breached By Engineer A In Design Document Review
Engineer A conducted only a cursory review of AI-generated design documents produced by a tool with which Engineer A had no prior experience, resulting in submission of documents containing misaligned dimensions and omissions of required safety features.
AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to conduct a substantive and technically adequate review of the AI-generated design documents sufficient to identify misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations before submitting those documents to Client W.
The AI drafting software was new to the market and Engineer A had no previous experience with the tool.
Prior to submission of engineering design documents to Client W
Client W, however, noticed several issues with the AI-generated design documents, including misaligned dimensions and an omission of key safety features required by local regulations.
Engineer A completed a cursory review of the AI-generated plans and adjusted certain elements to align with site-specific conditions.
AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification Obligation Partially Met By Engineer A In Report Review
Engineer A conducted a thorough factual cross-check of the AI-generated report against professional journal articles and verified phrasing via search engine queries, but lacked full understanding of the AI tool's capabilities and limitations, and the report's stylistic inconsistency was noted by Client W.
Engineer A was obligated to conduct a substantive and technically adequate review of the AI-generated report draft sufficient to verify factual accuracy, originality, and professional adequacy before submitting it under a professional seal.
Not being familiar with the full functionality of the AI software, including the accuracy and originality of AI-generated text, Engineer A conducted a thorough review of the report, cross-checking key facts against professional journal articles and verifying the phrasing by running search engine queries to ensure the content did not match any existing language.
Prior to submission of the draft report to Client W
Client W noted that the section analyzing the groundwater monitoring data would benefit from minor edits for grammar and clarity, but found the introduction discussing the contaminant's manufacture, use, and characteristics to be exceptionally polished. The Client commented that the report read as if written by two different authors but was otherwise satisfactory.
AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification Obligation Violated By Engineer A In Design Phase
Engineer A used an AI-assisted drafting tool that was new to the market and with which Engineer A had no prior experience, without first establishing adequate competence in the tool, resulting in failure to detect misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features.
Engineer A was obligated to possess sufficient understanding of the AI-assisted drafting tool's capabilities, limitations, and failure modes to critically evaluate and verify the accuracy, completeness, and regulatory compliance of all AI-generated design documents before delivering them to Client W under a professional seal.
Engineer A also prepared draft design documents with a AI-assisted drafting tool that was new to the market.
Prior to and during use of the AI-assisted drafting tool for groundwater infrastructure design documents
By relying on AI-assisted tools without a comprehensive verification process of its output, Engineer A risked violating this requirement.
The change to CADD provides the BER with concerns that require assurance that the professional engineer has the requisite background, education and training to be proficient with the dynamics of CADD including the limitations of current technology.
failure to detect misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features further indicates that Engineer A did not exercise sufficient diligence.
AI-Generated Work Product Disclosure Constraint Engineer A Design Document Submission
Engineer A submitted AI-generated design documents without disclosure; Client W identified misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features, raising concerns about accuracy and reliability.
AI-Generated Work Product Disclosure Constraint
Engineer A was constrained from submitting AI-assisted engineering design documents to Client W without disclosing that AI-assisted drafting tools were used to generate the preliminary plans and specifications.
NSPE Code of Ethics — Honesty and non-deception provisions; AI Software Usage Disclosure Norms
Again, Engineer A did not cite the AI-assisted drafting tools they used to generate the engineering design documents.
At the time of design document submission to Client W
Client W noticed several issues with the AI-generated design documents, including misaligned dimensions and an omission of key safety features required by local regulations.
AI-Generated Work Product Disclosure Constraint Engineer A Report Submission
Engineer A submitted an AI-drafted environmental report without disclosing AI tool use; Client W noticed the report 'read as if written by two different authors,' suggesting the AI-generated introduction was stylistically distinct from Engineer A's own writing.
Engineer A was constrained from submitting the AI-generated environmental report to Client W without disclosing that AI software was used to generate the substantive draft, as non-disclosure created a misleading impression of independent professional authorship.
Engineer A did not cite their use of AI-software or its large language models, and submitted the draft report to Client W for review
At the time of report submission to Client W
The Client commented that the report read as if written by two different authors but was otherwise satisfactory.
AI Attribution Citation Constraint Engineer A Design Documents
AI-assisted drafting tools fundamentally shaped the engineering design documents submitted to Client W, but Engineer A provided no attribution or disclosure of the AI tool's contribution, raising concerns about transparency and credit obligations.
AI Attribution and Credit Disclosure Constraint
Engineer A was constrained to acknowledge the AI-assisted drafting tool's substantial contribution to the engineering design documents, warranting disclosure under Code section III.9, a constraint violated by submitting design documents without attribution of the AI tool's role.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.9; BER Case 98-3
AI, while not a human contributor, fundamentally shaped the report and design documents, warranting disclosure under Code section III.9, '[e]ngineers shall give credit for engineering work to those to whom credit is due, and will recognize the proprietary interests of others.'
At time of submission of AI-generated engineering design documents to Client W
BER Case 98-3 emphasized that engineers must acknowledge significant contributions by others.
AI Attribution Citation Constraint Engineer A Report
Engineer A submitted an AI-generated report without including citations of pertinent documents of technical authority, violating the professional obligation to give credit for engineering work to those to whom credit is due under Code section III.9.
Engineer A was constrained to include appropriate citations to pertinent documents of technical authority and attribution for AI-generated content in the environmental groundwater monitoring report, a constraint violated by submitting the report without such citations.
Per Code section III.9, engineers are required to 'give credit for engineering work to those to whom credit is due,' so Engineer A's ethical use of the AI software would need to include appropriate citations.
At time of submission of AI-generated environmental report to Client W
Absent this professional level of care, diligence, and documentation, Engineer A's use of the AI language processing software would be less than ethical.
Similarly, the facts do not indicate the AI-generated report included citations of pertinent documents of technical authority.
AI Direction Control Constraint Engineer A Design Documents
Engineer A used a newly marketed AI-assisted drafting tool and conducted only a high-level review, resulting in misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations, constituting a failure of responsible charge.
Responsible Charge Verification Constraint
Engineer A was constrained to maintain active direction and control over the AI-assisted design documents by conducting comprehensive verification of all outputs — including dimensional accuracy and safety feature completeness — before affixing their professional seal, a constraint violated by conducting only a high-level review.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.b; NSPE Code Section III.8.a; NSPE Position Statement No. 10-1778 on Responsible Charge
Engineer A did not maintain responsible charge in violation of licensure law which violates Code section III.8.a.
During preparation and submission of AI-generated engineering design documents to Client W
Engineer A elected to only conduct a high-level review and adjusted certain elements to align with site-specific conditions.
AI Direction Control Constraint Engineer A Report
Engineer A used AI language processing software to draft the environmental report and conducted a thorough review with cross-checking, satisfying the direction and control requirement for the report but failing on citation attribution obligations.
Engineer A was constrained to maintain active direction and control over the AI-generated environmental report by outlining guidelines, challenging outputs, and verifying content against professional sources — a constraint partially satisfied through cross-checking against professional journal articles and making textual adjustments, but not fully satisfied due to absence of citation attribution.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.b; NSPE Position Statement No. 10-1778 on Responsible Charge
Because Engineer A performed a thorough review, cross-checked key facts against professional sources, and made adjustments to the text, the final document remained under Engineer A's direction and control, as required by Code section II.2.b
During preparation and submission of the AI-generated environmental groundwater monitoring report
Much like directing an engineering intern to solve a problem, responsible use of AI requires an engineer to outline solution guidelines and constraints.
Professional engineering societies and emerging regulatory guidance
Emerging Professional Standards for Disclosure of AI Tool Use in Engineering Work Products
Again, Engineer A did not cite the AI-assisted drafting tools they used to generate the engineering design documents
Engineer A (obligation to disclose); Client W (expectation of transparency)
Implicitly invoked by the case as the absent standard that Engineer A failed to follow by not disclosing AI tool use in either the report or the engineering design documents
AI Tool Attribution Citation Obligation Violated By Engineer A In Environmental Report
Engineer A used AI language processing software to draft an environmental report for Client W. The AI-generated report lacked citations to pertinent documents of technical authority, and Engineer A did not attribute the AI's material contribution to the report.
AI Tool Attribution and Citation Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to ensure that the AI-generated environmental groundwater monitoring report included citations to pertinent documents of technical authority and appropriate attribution of AI contributions, in accordance with NSPE III.9.
the facts do not indicate the AI-generated report included citations of pertinent documents of technical authority. Per Code section III.9, engineers are required to 'give credit for engineering work to those to whom credit is due,' so Engineer A's ethical use of the AI software would need to include appropriate citations.
At the time of preparing and submitting the AI-drafted environmental report to Client W
AI Tool Competence Boundary Constraint Engineer A Novel Drafting Software
Engineer A used a newly released open-source AI drafting tool with no prior experience, conducting only a cursory review of AI-generated design documents that contained misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features.
Engineer A's lack of prior experience with the newly marketed open-source AI drafting software constrained the degree to which its outputs could be professionally relied upon without independent substantive verification; a cursory review was insufficient to satisfy this constraint.
NSPE Code of Ethics — Competence provisions; BER-Case-98-3 (technology must not replace engineering judgment)
Throughout the preparation and submission of both the environmental report and engineering design documents
Not being familiar with the full functionality of the AI software, including the accuracy and originality of AI-generated text
AI Tool Competence Boundary Constraint Engineer A Novel Drafting Tool
Engineer A used a newly marketed AI-assisted drafting tool with no prior experience, conducting only a high-level review of outputs, resulting in misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features — demonstrating that the competence boundary constraint was violated by insufficient verification of an unfamiliar tool's outputs.
Engineer A was constrained from relying on the newly marketed AI-assisted drafting tool's outputs without independent substantive verification, given Engineer A's lack of prior experience with the tool and unverified understanding of its capabilities, limitations, and failure modes — a constraint violated by conducting only a high-level review of AI-generated design documents.
NSPE Code of Ethics Fundamental Canon I.2; Code Section II.2.a; BER Case 98-3
During selection and use of the newly marketed AI-assisted drafting tool for engineering design document preparation
The BER considers the change to CADD provides the BER with concerns that require assurance that the professional engineer has the requisite background, education and training to be proficient with the dynamics of CADD including the limitations of current technology.
AI Tool Disclosure Obligation Breached By Engineer A In Design Document Submission To Client W
Engineer A used AI-assisted drafting tools to generate preliminary design documents for groundwater infrastructure modifications and submitted them to Client W without any disclosure of AI tool use.
Engineer A was obligated to disclose to Client W that AI-assisted drafting tools were used to generate the preliminary engineering design documents, including identification of the tools and the nature of their contribution, prior to or upon submission of those documents.
At the time of submission of the engineering design documents to Client W
AI Tool Disclosure Obligation Breached By Engineer A In Report Submission To Client W
Engineer A used open-source AI language processing software to generate the initial draft of the environmental contaminant report and submitted it to Client W without any disclosure of AI tool use, applying a professional seal.
Engineer A was obligated to disclose to Client W that AI software was used to generate the initial draft of the environmental report, including identification of the AI tool and the nature of its contribution, prior to or upon submission of the report.
Engineer A did not cite their use of AI-software or its large language models, and submitted the draft report to Client W for review, including language to clearly identify that the supplied report was a draft, but applied their seal consistent with state law.
At the time of submission of the draft report to Client W
AI Tool Transparency Obligation Breached By Engineer A In Design Document Submission
Engineering design documents for groundwater infrastructure
Engineer A submitted AI-assisted design documents to Client W without disclosing the use of AI-assisted drafting tools, despite those tools having generated the preliminary plans and specifications
Disclosure of AI tool use in design documents was material because it would have alerted Client W to the need for heightened scrutiny and would have enabled Client W to assess the reliability of the design outputs
Engineer A Groundwater Infrastructure Design Engineer
Non-disclosure was not justified; the subsequent discovery of errors by Client W demonstrates the materiality of the AI involvement to the reliability of the deliverable
AI Tool Transparency Obligation Breached By Engineer A In Report Submission
Client W Environmental Engineering Client
Comprehensive environmental report on organic contaminant
Engineer A submitted an AI-drafted environmental report to Client W without disclosing that AI software had generated the initial draft, despite the AI's substantial contribution to the report's content and structure
The transparency principle required Engineer A to disclose AI involvement so that Client W could assess the provenance and reliability of the report; the non-disclosure left Client W unable to make an informed judgment about the report's intellectual origins
Engineer A Environmental Engineering Consultant
The principle of transparency was not satisfied; the obligation to disclose AI involvement was not outweighed by any competing consideration identified in the case
AI Tool Transparency and Disclosure Applied to Client W Relationship
AI-assisted design documents delivered to Client W
AI-generated environmental groundwater monitoring report
Attribution and Citation Integrity in AI-Assisted Work
Engineer A failed to proactively disclose to Client W that AI tools substantially contributed to the environmental report and design documents, which contributed to Client W's confusion about quality inconsistencies and undermined trust in the professional relationship
When AI substantially shapes a professional work product, disclosure to the client is warranted as best practice even absent universal mandates, particularly when the client identifies quality issues that disclosure could have contextualized
Engineer A AI-Assisted Engineering Practitioner
Given that Client W identified issues in the engineering design and questioned inconsistencies in the report, proactive disclosure could have prevented misunderstandings and strengthened trust.
Transparency obligation favors disclosure; proactive disclosure could have prevented misunderstandings and strengthened trust with Client W
There are currently no universal guidelines mandating AI disclosure in engineering work, but best practices suggest informing clients when AI substantially contributes to a work product.
While Engineer A reviewed the content, the lack of disclosure raises concerns about transparency.
AI generation of preliminary design documents before Engineer A's cursory review of design documents
AI generation of report draft before Engineer A's thorough review and cross-checking of report
Attribution and Citation Integrity in AI-Assisted Work Applied to Environmental Report
Technical authority sources underlying the report's conclusions
Engineer A's AI-generated environmental groundwater monitoring report lacked citations to pertinent documents of technical authority, and Engineer A did not acknowledge AI's material contribution to the report, falling short of the professional standard requiring credit to be given to those to whom credit is due
Professional ethical use of AI requires not only accurate content but also transparent attribution of sources and acknowledgment of AI's role, enabling clients and reviewers to assess the provenance and reliability of the work product
Attribution obligation required Engineer A to include citations and disclose AI contribution; absence of both rendered the use of AI less than ethical per the BER's analysis
AI, while not a human contributor, fundamentally shaped the report and design documents, warranting disclosure under Code section III.9.
Almost 35 years ago, in BER Case 90-6, the BER looked at a hypothetical involving an engineer's use of computer assisted drafting and design tools.
In BER Case 90-6, the BER determined that it was ethical for an engineer to sign and seal documents that were created using a CADD system whether prepared by the engineer themselves or by other engineers working under their direction and control.
BER in establishing analogical foundation for AI tool use analysis
Cited as precedent establishing that it is ethical for an engineer to sign and seal documents created using CADD systems, and as historical foreshadowing of AI tool use in engineering practice
BER Case 98-3 discussed a solicitation by mail for engineers to use new technology to help gain more work.
In its discussion in BER Case 98-3, the BER reviewed several cases involving engineering competency, and concluded it would be unethical for an engineer to offer facilities design and construction services using a tool like this CD-ROM based on the facts presented in the case.
The BER notes that in BER Case 98-3, the BER stated that technology must not replace or be used as a substitute for engineering judgement.
BER in analyzing Engineer A's review adequacy and disclosure obligations
Cited as precedent on engineering competency and technology use, establishing that technology must not replace engineering judgment, and that engineers must acknowledge significant contributions by others; used analogically to evaluate Engineer A's use of AI-assisted drafting tools
BER Case 98-3 (~1998) before current case analysis (present)
CausalLink_Conducted Cursory Design Docum
CausalLink_Conducted Thorough Report Revi
CausalLink_Input Confidential Data into P
CausalLink_Used AI for Design Document Ge
Chose AI for Report Drafting → AI Report Draft Generated
Client Consent for Third-Party Data Sharing Obligation Violated By Engineer A
Engineer A uploaded Client W's confidential project information into an open-source AI interface without obtaining Client W's prior consent, in violation of NSPE II.1.c.
Client Consent for Third-Party Data Sharing Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to obtain prior informed consent from Client W before uploading Client W's private project information into the open-source AI interface, as doing so was tantamount to placing the client's private information in the public domain.
Per Code section II.1.c, confidential information can only be shared with prior consent of the Client.
Prior to uploading Client W's project information into the AI open-source interface
When Engineer A uploaded Client W's information into the AI open-source interface, this was tantamount to placing the Client's private information in the public domain. The facts here do not indicate Engineer A obtained permission from Client W to use the private information in the public domain.
Client Data Confidentiality in AI Tool Use Violated by Engineer A
Client W's confidential project information
Open-source AI language processing interface
Professional Competence (use of best available tools)
Engineer A uploaded Client W's private project information into an open-source AI interface without obtaining Client W's prior consent, effectively placing confidential client data in the public domain
Uploading client data to an open-source AI platform is functionally equivalent to placing that data in the public domain, violating the confidentiality obligation regardless of the engineer's intent to use the tool for legitimate professional purposes
Client Data Confidentiality in AI Tool Use
When Engineer A uploaded Client W's information into the AI open-source interface, this was tantamount to placing the Client's private information in the public domain.
Confidentiality obligation was not satisfied; Engineer A was required to obtain Client W's consent before using client data in any public-domain interface
The facts here do not indicate Engineer A obtained permission from Client W to use the private information in the public domain.
{'type': 'Private client', 'confidentiality_interest': 'Private information uploaded to public AI interface without consent', 'review_findings': ['Misaligned dimensions', 'Omitted safety features', 'Regulatory compliance gaps', 'Report inconsistencies']}
Retained Engineer A for environmental consulting and design services; reviewed AI-assisted design documents and identified misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features; questioned inconsistencies in the report; held confidentiality interests in information uploaded to public AI systems without consent.
{'type': 'confidentiality_holder', 'target': 'Client W private information'}
{'type': 'service_recipient', 'target': 'Engineer A AI-Assisted Engineering Practitioner'}
When Client W reviewed the design documents, they found misaligned dimensions and key safety features (including those necessary for compliance with local regulations) were omitted
Given that Client W identified issues in the engineering design and questioned inconsistencies in the report
The facts here do not indicate Engineer A obtained permission from Client W to use the private information in the public domain
proactive disclosure could have prevented misunderstandings and strengthened trust
{'type': 'Client organization', 'authority': 'Review and revision instruction authority', 'regulatory_awareness': 'Identified omission of safety features required by local regulations'}
Retained Engineer A for environmental contaminant reporting and groundwater infrastructure design; reviewed deliverables, identified quality inconsistencies in the report and critical deficiencies in the design documents, and instructed Engineer A to revise plans to meet professional and regulatory standards
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'Engineer A'}
{'type': 'recipient', 'target': 'Environmental report and design documents'}
Client W noticed several issues with the AI-generated design documents
Client W raised concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the engineering design and instructed Engineer A to revise the plans
When Client W reviewed the draft report, Client W noted that the section analyzing the groundwater monitoring data would benefit from minor edits
Client W's review of both deliverables before Client W's demand for revisions to design documents
Competence Assurance Under Novel Tool Adoption Applied to AI Drafting Tool
AI-assisted drafting tool new to the market
Groundwater infrastructure design documents
Engineer A adopted an AI-assisted drafting tool that was new to the market without ensuring sufficient understanding of its limitations, resulting in failure to detect misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features in the generated design documents
Using a tool that is 'new to the market' without adequate verification of its accuracy and failure modes constitutes insufficient competence assurance, particularly when the outputs affect public safety
Competence Assurance Under Novel Tool Adoption
The principle was violated; Engineer A should have conducted comprehensive verification of the new tool's outputs before relying on them in professional deliverables
In addition to using AI to prepare the report, Engineer A also prepared draft design documents with a AI-assisted drafting tool that was new to the market.
The BER considers the change to CAD to merely represent a drafting enhancement. The change to CADD provides the BER with concerns that require assurance that the professional engineer has the requisite background, education and training to be proficient with the dynamics of CADD including the limitations of current technology.
Competence Assurance Under Novel Tool Adoption Invoked By Engineer A
AI language processing software for environmental report
AI-assisted drafting tools for engineering design documents
Engineer A used an AI drafting tool that was new to the market and with which Engineer A had no prior experience, without first establishing adequate familiarity with the tool's accuracy, limitations, or failure modes, resulting in design documents with dimensional errors and missing safety features
The principle required Engineer A to either acquire sufficient competence with the AI tools before professional reliance, or to apply verification procedures commensurate with the tool's novelty and opacity; the cursory review of design documents fell below this standard
The obligation to ensure competence with the novel tool was not satisfied by the cursory review; the principle required either deeper validation of AI outputs or deferral of reliance until competence was established
Not being familiar with the full functionality of the AI software, including the accuracy and originality of AI-generated text, Engineer A conducted a thorough review of the report
Competence Constraint Engineer A Technical Writing Self-Assessment
Engineer A is personally less confident in technical writing and had previously relied on Engineer B's mentorship to compensate; this competence boundary motivated the undisclosed use of AI drafting tools.
Engineer A's self-assessed limitation in technical writing constrained the quality and reliability of independently authored professional reports, creating a recognized competence boundary that required compensating measures such as peer review or disclosed AI assistance rather than undisclosed AI substitution.
NSPE Code of Ethics — Competence provisions; BER-Case-98-3
Engineer A is known for their strong technical expertise but is, personally, less confident in their technical writing.
Throughout Engineer A's professional practice, specifically during preparation of the environmental report
Previously, Engineer A had relied on guidance and quality assurance reviews by their mentor and supervisor, Engineer B, to refine report drafts.
Competence Obligation Breached By Engineer A In Selection And Use Of Novel AI Drafting Tool
Engineer A used an AI drafting tool that was new to the market and with which Engineer A had no prior experience to generate engineering design documents, without first establishing adequate competence in the tool.
Engineer A was obligated to ensure competence in the AI-assisted drafting tool before relying on it to generate professional engineering design documents, including understanding the tool's capabilities, limitations, and failure modes.
Prior to and during use of AI-assisted drafting tools for Client W design documents
Engineer A's use of AI in report writing was partly ethical, and partly unethical.
Beyond the Board's finding that Engineer A's use of AI in report writing was partly ethical and partly unethical, a critical and independent ethical breach exists that the Board did not explicitly address: Engineer A violated the client confidentiality obligation by uploading Client W's proprietary site data and groundwater monitoring information into an open-source AI platform without obtaining Client W's prior consent. Open-source AI platforms typically process and may retain user-submitted data in ways that expose it to third parties or incorporate it into training datasets, creating a foreseeable risk of disclosure beyond Engineer A's control. This breach of Code provision II.1.c stands entirely apart from questions about report quality, AI disclosure, or design document accuracy. A competent engineer deploying any third-party software tool — particularly a newly released, open-source platform with unknown data handling practices — bears an independent obligation to evaluate whether inputting confidential client data is permissible under the client relationship before acting. Engineer A's failure to seek Client W's consent before uploading that data constitutes a separate and self-standing ethical violation that the Board's analysis of report quality and AI transparency does not cure or subsume.
The Board's conclusion that AI-assisted drafting tools are not unethical per se must be qualified by a competence threshold that Engineer A did not meet with respect to the design documents. Code provisions I.2 and II.2.a require that engineers perform services only within areas of their competence, and this obligation extends to the tools they deploy. When an engineer uses a novel, unfamiliar AI drafting tool — one newly released to market with no prior experience on the engineer's part — and then conducts only a cursory, high-level review of its outputs before sealing and submitting engineering design documents, the engineer has not satisfied the competence standard that makes AI tool use ethically permissible in the first place. The Board's permissive conclusion about AI drafting tools implicitly assumes that the engineer possesses sufficient understanding of the tool's capabilities, limitations, and failure modes to exercise meaningful professional judgment over its outputs. Engineer A lacked that understanding entirely. The resulting design documents contained misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations — defects that a competent, engaged review would have identified. Accordingly, the ethical permissibility of AI-assisted drafting tools is conditional, not categorical: it depends on whether the engineer has sufficient competence with the tool and applies sufficient verification rigor to maintain genuine responsible charge over the work product.
The Board's conclusion that Engineer A has no universal ethical obligation to disclose AI use to Client W — analogizing AI tools to other engineering software — requires significant qualification in light of the specific facts of this case and must not be read as a blanket rule. The analogy to conventional engineering software breaks down in at least three respects. First, conventional design software such as CAD or finite element analysis tools operates deterministically on engineer-supplied inputs and produces outputs the engineer can fully audit; large language model AI generates probabilistic, non-deterministic text and design content whose provenance and accuracy the engineer cannot fully trace or verify. Second, the observable stylistic discontinuity in the report — which Client W independently detected, noting it read as if written by two different authors — created an implicit misrepresentation about the nature of the work product and its authorship. At the moment Client W raised that observation, Engineer A's silence became an act of omission that a reasonable client would regard as misleading, implicating Code provisions I.5 and III.3. Third, the design document defects — misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features — demonstrate that undisclosed AI-generated outputs in this case did reach a client and could have proceeded to construction without correction absent Client W's independent review. The Board's no-disclosure-obligation conclusion is therefore defensible only in circumstances where the engineer has exercised thorough, competent review of AI outputs and where no client inquiry or observable anomaly has created an affirmative duty to speak. In this case, neither condition was fully satisfied for the design documents, and the stylistic anomaly in the report created a specific moment at which silence was ethically problematic.
The Board's analysis does not address a systemic professional vulnerability exposed by this case: Engineer A's over-reliance on AI tools was directly precipitated by the absence of the peer review and mentorship previously provided by Engineer B. When Engineer B retired, Engineer A lost not merely editorial guidance on technical writing but a substantive quality assurance mechanism that had been integral to Engineer A's professional practice. Rather than arranging an alternative peer review process — such as engaging a qualified colleague, a professional review service, or a subconsultant — Engineer A substituted an unfamiliar AI tool for that oversight function. This substitution was ethically inadequate for two independent reasons. First, AI tools are not peer reviewers: they do not apply independent professional judgment, cannot identify regulatory non-compliance from contextual knowledge, and cannot assume professional responsibility for the work. Second, the substitution required uploading confidential client data to an open-source platform, compounding the ethical problem. Code provision II.2.a's competence obligation and the broader duty of diligence implicit in responsible charge together suggest that when an engineer's established quality assurance mechanism becomes unavailable, the engineer bears an affirmative obligation to arrange a functionally equivalent alternative before undertaking complex, high-stakes engagements — not to proceed with an untested technological substitute. The NSPE Code of Ethics does not currently provide explicit guidance on peer review succession planning, and this case illustrates that such guidance would meaningfully serve the profession.
The Board's finding that Engineer A's use of AI was partly unethical with respect to the design documents is further supported by the public safety dimension that the Board did not fully develop. Code provision I.1 places the safety, health, and welfare of the public as the paramount obligation of a licensed engineer, and this obligation is not merely aspirational — it is the foundational constraint against which all other professional judgments must be measured. The AI-generated design documents submitted by Engineer A contained omitted safety features required by local regulations. These omissions were not caught by Engineer A's cursory review and were only identified by Client W. Had Client W not conducted an independent technical review, those deficient documents could have proceeded to construction, creating a direct risk to public safety. The fact that the error was caught before construction does not retroactively satisfy the responsible charge standard; the standard requires that the engineer's own review be sufficient to ensure compliance, not that a client's independent review serve as the final safety check. Engineer A's sealing of documents containing regulatory safety omissions — after only a cursory review — therefore implicates not only Code provisions II.2.b and III.8.a regarding sealing and registration law compliance, but also the paramount public safety obligation of Code provision I.1. The ethical violation in the design phase is accordingly more serious than a mere procedural lapse in review thoroughness: it represents a failure of the core public protection function that professional licensure exists to serve.
Engineer A's failure to cite the professional journal articles used to cross-check AI-generated content, and the absence of any attribution for the AI-generated text itself, raises an underexamined concern about the evidentiary integrity of a technical report that may inform regulatory decisions or remediation actions. Code provision III.9 requires engineers to give credit for engineering work to those to whom credit is due. While this provision is most commonly applied to prevent engineers from claiming credit for others' work, it also carries an affirmative dimension: a technical report submitted in a professional capacity implicitly represents that its intellectual content reflects the engineer's own analysis and judgment. Where substantial portions of the report's prose and synthesis were generated by an AI system, and where the factual cross-checking relied on professional journal articles that are not cited, the report's evidentiary foundation is obscured. Regulators, future engineers, or legal proceedings relying on the report cannot assess the quality of the underlying analysis, trace its sources, or evaluate the reliability of the AI-generated synthesis. This is particularly consequential for a report addressing an emerging contaminant of concern, where the scientific basis for conclusions may be contested and where the report may serve as a foundational document for remediation planning or regulatory compliance. The absence of attribution and citation therefore undermines not only intellectual honesty in authorship but also the professional reliability and traceability of the work product itself.
The use of AI-assisted drafting tools by Engineer A was not unethical per se.
In response to Q101: Engineer A's upload of Client W's confidential site data and groundwater monitoring information into an open-source AI platform constitutes an independent and discrete ethical violation of Code provision II.1.c, entirely separate from any question about report quality or AI disclosure. The confidentiality obligation is not contingent on whether the resulting work product is accurate, polished, or ultimately beneficial to the client. By inputting proprietary client data into a publicly accessible AI system without obtaining Client W's prior consent, Engineer A exposed that information to potential third-party access, retention, or reuse by the AI platform — consequences Engineer A could not control or fully anticipate, particularly given their admitted unfamiliarity with the software. This breach stands on its own ethical foundation: the harm is the unauthorized exposure itself, not merely any downstream misuse. A competent engineer deploying a novel open-source tool with client data bears an affirmative obligation to investigate the data handling, storage, and privacy policies of that tool before use, and to obtain explicit client consent if any confidential information will be transmitted to a third-party system. Engineer A did neither. This violation is not remediated by the thoroughness of the subsequent report review, by the accuracy of the final work product, or by any disclosure or non-disclosure decision regarding AI authorship.
In response to Q102: Engineer B's retirement did not merely create an inconvenience for Engineer A — it removed the primary quality assurance mechanism upon which Engineer A had structurally depended for professional-grade output, particularly in technical writing. When that mechanism was removed, Engineer A faced a dual-scope engagement of meaningful complexity: a comprehensive contaminant characterization report requiring synthesis of groundwater monitoring data, and engineering design documents for infrastructure modifications. Rather than arranging an alternative peer review process — such as engaging a qualified colleague, contracting a third-party reviewer, or consulting with a professional organization — Engineer A substituted an unfamiliar, newly released open-source AI tool for that professional oversight. This substitution was not ethically neutral. The NSPE Code's competence provisions (I.2 and II.2.a) require engineers to undertake assignments only when qualified, and qualification encompasses not only technical domain knowledge but also the professional infrastructure necessary to deliver work of adequate quality. An engineer who knows they have a recognized weakness in a critical deliverable component, who has lost their primary quality assurance resource, and who then deploys an untested tool as a replacement — without any independent verification of that tool's reliability — has not satisfied the competence standard. Engineer A had an independent ethical obligation to arrange alternative peer review before proceeding, and the failure to do so compounded every subsequent deficiency in both the report and the design documents.
In response to Q103: When Client W directly observed that the report appeared to have been written by two different authors — a stylistically inconsistent observation that was, in fact, an accurate description of the report's dual-origin nature — Engineer A's silence in that moment was not ethically neutral. Code provisions I.5 and III.3 prohibit deceptive acts and conduct that deceives the public or clients. Deception does not require an affirmative false statement; it can arise from deliberate silence in circumstances where a reasonable client would expect disclosure and where the omission creates or sustains a materially false impression. Client W's comment was a direct, specific observation that implicitly invited clarification about the report's authorship. A client who is told their report reads as if written by two people is, in practical terms, asking why. Engineer A's failure to respond honestly — by acknowledging that AI software had generated the more polished sections — allowed Client W to proceed under the false impression that the entire report was the product of Engineer A's own professional authorship. This silence, in context, constitutes a deceptive act under I.5 and conduct that deceives under III.3, independent of whether disclosure was required before submission. The moment of Client W's observation created a discrete, time-specific obligation to clarify, and Engineer A's failure to do so transformed a prior omission into an active, ongoing misrepresentation.
In response to Q104: Engineer A's failure to cite the professional journal articles used to cross-check AI-generated content raises a concern under Code provision III.9, which requires engineers to give credit for engineering work to those to whom credit is due. While III.9 is most commonly applied to crediting the work of other engineers, its underlying principle — that the intellectual and evidentiary foundations of professional work must be honestly attributed — extends to the sources that substantiate technical conclusions. In a report that may inform regulatory decisions or remediation actions affecting public health and environmental safety, the absence of citations to the scientific literature used to verify AI-generated claims is not merely a stylistic deficiency. It deprives Client W, regulators, and any subsequent reviewers of the ability to independently assess the evidentiary basis for the report's conclusions, to identify the scope and currency of the literature consulted, and to evaluate whether the cross-checking process was adequate. This omission undermines the epistemic integrity of the report as a professional document. Furthermore, in the context of an emerging contaminant of concern — a category of substance where scientific understanding is actively evolving — the failure to ground conclusions in cited, verifiable sources creates a foreseeable risk that outdated, incomplete, or AI-hallucinated information could go undetected by downstream users who rely on the report's apparent professional authority.
In response to Q201: A genuine tension exists between the principle that professional competence in report writing can be satisfied through thorough post-generation verification and the principle of intellectual honesty in authorship. The Board concluded that Engineer A's thorough review of the AI-generated report text was sufficient to render that use of AI ethical. However, this conclusion does not fully resolve the authorship integrity question. When an engineer applies their professional seal to a document, they represent to the client and to the public that the work reflects their professional judgment, expertise, and authorship. The seal is not merely a quality certification — it is an assertion of intellectual ownership and responsible charge. A report whose prose was substantially composed by a non-human language model, and whose authorship was personalized only through minor wording adjustments, does not straightforwardly satisfy that representation, even if every factual claim has been verified. The verification process confirms accuracy; it does not transform AI-generated prose into the engineer's own professional expression. These two principles can be reconciled only if the engineering profession explicitly adopts a framework — which it has not yet done — that defines AI-assisted authorship as a recognized and disclosed mode of professional work product creation. Absent such a framework, the tension remains unresolved, and the Board's conclusion on report ethics should be understood as provisional rather than definitive.
In response to Q202: The tension between Responsible Charge Engagement and Competence Assurance Under Novel Tool Adoption is not merely theoretical — it is demonstrated concretely by the outcome in this case. Engineer A applied their professional seal to AI-generated design documents after only a cursory, high-level review. The professional seal carries a legal and ethical certification that the engineer has exercised responsible charge over the work: that they understand its content, have directed its preparation, and can stand behind its technical adequacy. A cursory review of output generated by a novel AI drafting tool — one with which Engineer A had no prior experience and whose generative logic Engineer A did not fully understand — cannot satisfy that standard. The subsequent discovery of misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations confirms that the cursory review was substantively inadequate. Code provision II.2.b prohibits engineers from affixing their signatures to plans dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence. Competence here encompasses not only domain knowledge in groundwater infrastructure design, but also sufficient understanding of the AI tool's outputs to certify their reliability. Engineer A possessed the former but demonstrably lacked the latter. The seal, in this context, was affixed in violation of II.2.b, and the tension between these two principles is resolved against Engineer A: responsible charge cannot be satisfied by reviewing outputs from a tool whose behavior the reviewing engineer does not adequately understand.
In response to Q204: The Board's conclusion that there is no universal ethical obligation to disclose AI use is placed under significant strain by the facts of this case. The principle that public welfare is paramount — Code provision I.1 — is not merely aspirational; it functions as a constraint on every other professional decision an engineer makes. In this case, AI-generated design documents containing omitted safety features required by local regulations were submitted to Client W under Engineer A's professional seal. Had Client W not independently identified these deficiencies, the documents could have proceeded toward construction in a non-compliant and potentially dangerous state. The Board's general conclusion about disclosure is grounded in an analogy to other software tools used in engineering practice — an analogy that may hold when the tool is well-understood, widely validated, and used within established professional norms. It does not hold with equal force when the tool is newly released, unfamiliar to the practitioner, and demonstrably capable of generating safety-critical omissions that a cursory review failed to catch. In such circumstances, the public welfare principle does not merely permit disclosure — it may affirmatively require it, because disclosure enables the client and downstream reviewers to apply appropriate scrutiny to outputs whose reliability has not been professionally validated. The Board's conclusion on disclosure should therefore be understood as conditional: it applies when AI tools are used competently and their outputs are rigorously verified, not when they are deployed as substitutes for professional judgment with only superficial review.
In response to Q301: From a deontological perspective, Engineer A did not fulfill their duty of candor toward Client W. Kantian deontological ethics evaluates the moral worth of an action by reference to the maxim underlying it and whether that maxim could be universalized without contradiction. The maxim implicit in Engineer A's conduct — that an engineer may submit AI-generated work products under their professional seal without disclosing the AI's role, provided the outputs are verified for accuracy — cannot be universalized without undermining the foundational trust relationship between licensed professionals and their clients. If all engineers adopted this maxim, the professional seal would cease to function as a reliable signal of personal authorship and responsible charge, and clients would be systematically deprived of information material to their assessment of the work product's provenance and reliability. Furthermore, the duty of candor is not contingent on outcome: it is not satisfied by the fact that the report was accurate or that the design errors were caught. Deontological ethics holds that the duty to be honest with those who rely on one's professional representations exists independently of whether the deception caused harm. Engineer A's silence about AI's role — particularly in the face of Client W's direct observation about the report's stylistic inconsistency — constitutes a breach of the duty of candor that is not remediated by the quality of the final work product.
In response to Q302: From a deontological perspective, Engineer A breached their categorical duty to maintain Responsible Charge by sealing engineering design documents that contained safety omissions and dimensional errors they had only cursorily reviewed. Responsible Charge is not a procedural formality — it is a substantive professional and ethical duty that requires the engineer to have directed the work, to understand its content, and to be able to certify its technical adequacy. The professional seal is the outward expression of that duty, and affixing it to documents that have not been adequately reviewed is a categorical violation regardless of intent or outcome. From a deontological standpoint, the duty is breached at the moment of sealing, not at the moment of harm. The fact that Client W identified the errors before construction does not retroactively satisfy the Responsible Charge obligation; it merely prevented the consequences from being worse. Code provision II.2.b makes this categorical character explicit: engineers shall not affix their signatures to plans dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence. Engineer A's unfamiliarity with the AI drafting tool's outputs, combined with a cursory review that failed to detect regulatory non-compliance, establishes that the competence threshold was not met at the time of sealing. The deontological analysis therefore yields a clear conclusion: the duty was breached, independently of any consequentialist assessment of harm.
In response to Q303: From a consequentialist perspective, the harm produced by Engineer A's cursory review of AI-generated design documents — resulting in misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations — does outweigh the efficiency benefits gained from using AI-assisted drafting tools in the design phase, and this outcome is ethically significant even though the errors were caught before construction. Consequentialist analysis evaluates actions by their expected outcomes, including foreseeable risks. A competent engineer deploying a novel, untested AI drafting tool for safety-critical infrastructure design, with no prior experience and only a cursory review process, creates a foreseeable probability of undetected errors reaching construction. The actual outcome — regulatory non-compliance and safety omissions — was not an improbable accident; it was a predictable consequence of an inadequate verification process applied to an unreliable generative tool. The efficiency gain from AI-assisted drafting is real but modest relative to the risk: the time saved in initial document generation was offset by the need for revision, the erosion of client trust, and the potential — had Client W not been diligent — for construction of non-compliant infrastructure. Consequentialist ethics does not require that harm actually occur to render a decision unethical; it requires that the expected value of the action, accounting for foreseeable risks, be negative. Here, the expected value of deploying an unfamiliar AI tool with cursory review for safety-critical design work was negative at the time of the decision, and the actual outcome confirms that assessment.
In response to Q304: From a virtue ethics perspective, Engineer A did not demonstrate the professional integrity and intellectual honesty expected of a licensed engineer in the report authorship process. Virtue ethics evaluates conduct by reference to the character traits and dispositions that a person of practical wisdom — a phronimos — would exhibit in the relevant professional role. A licensed engineer of good character, confronted with a recognized weakness in technical writing and the loss of their primary quality assurance resource, would seek transparent solutions: engaging a peer reviewer, disclosing limitations to the client, or explicitly attributing AI assistance in the work product. Engineer A instead chose a path that preserved the appearance of unassisted professional authorship while relying substantially on AI-generated prose. The minor wording adjustments made to personalize the content do not constitute the kind of intellectual engagement that transforms another's expression into one's own. A person of practical wisdom would recognize that submitting AI-generated text under a professional seal — without attribution, and in the face of a client's direct observation about stylistic inconsistency — is not merely a procedural omission but a failure of intellectual honesty. The virtue of integrity requires consistency between one's professional representations and the actual nature of one's work. Engineer A's conduct fell short of that standard, regardless of the report's factual accuracy.
In response to Q305: From a virtue ethics perspective, Engineer A did not exhibit the prudence and professional humility expected of a competent engineer in choosing to deploy a novel, unfamiliar AI drafting tool as a substitute for the mentorship and peer review previously provided by Engineer B. Prudence — the virtue of practical wisdom applied to professional decision-making — requires an engineer to accurately assess their own capabilities and limitations, to recognize the boundaries of their competence, and to seek appropriate resources when those boundaries are approached. Engineer A's self-acknowledged weakness in technical writing, combined with the loss of Engineer B's quality assurance function, created a situation that called for heightened caution and deliberate compensatory measures. Instead, Engineer A responded by introducing a second source of uncertainty: an AI tool that was new to the market, open-source, and entirely unfamiliar to Engineer A. Professional humility would have led Engineer A to recognize that substituting one unknown — AI-generated output — for a known quality assurance resource — Engineer B's expert review — does not reduce professional risk; it compounds it. A prudent engineer in Engineer A's position would have sought an alternative qualified peer reviewer, disclosed the limitation to Client W, or scoped the engagement to match their verified capabilities. The choice to proceed without these safeguards reflects not merely a procedural lapse but a deficit in the practical wisdom that the engineering profession requires of its licensed practitioners.
In response to Q306: From a consequentialist perspective, Engineer A's decision to input Client W's confidential site data into open-source AI software without prior consent created a foreseeable risk of harm to Client W's proprietary interests that outweighs the drafting efficiency gained, and that risk calculus should have been apparent to a competent engineer before acting. Open-source AI platforms are, by their nature, systems whose data handling, retention, training data incorporation, and third-party access policies are not under the control of the user. A competent engineer — particularly one engaged in environmental consulting involving site-specific groundwater data that may have regulatory, litigation, or competitive sensitivity — bears a professional obligation to investigate how any third-party system will handle client data before transmitting it. The efficiency benefit of AI-assisted drafting is real but bounded: it accelerates initial document generation. The risk created by uploading confidential client data to an unvetted public platform is potentially unbounded: it includes regulatory exposure, competitive harm, litigation risk, and reputational damage to Client W. A consequentialist analysis that assigns even a modest probability to these harms — and a competent engineer should have assigned a non-trivial probability — yields a negative expected value for the decision to use open-source AI without consent. The fact that Engineer A was unfamiliar with the AI software's full functionality, including its data handling practices, does not mitigate this conclusion; it reinforces it, because proceeding under conditions of ignorance about foreseeable risks is itself a consequentialist failure.
In response to Q401: If Engineer A had disclosed their intended use of open-source AI software to Client W before beginning work, and Client W had withheld consent to upload confidential site data to a public AI platform, Engineer A would have faced a clear ethical fork: either decline the use of open-source AI tools entirely, or identify a privacy-compliant alternative — such as an enterprise AI system with contractual data protection guarantees, or a locally deployed model with no external data transmission. The obligation to decline would not have been absolute; it would have been an obligation to find a compliant solution or to proceed without AI assistance. This counterfactual illuminates a structural point: the ethical failure was not the decision to use AI per se, but the decision to use a specific category of AI tool — open-source, publicly accessible — without first obtaining client consent for the data exposure that use necessarily entailed. Had Engineer A followed the disclosure-and-consent pathway, the subsequent work product might have been produced differently — perhaps with a privacy-compliant AI tool, perhaps without AI assistance at all — but the client relationship and the engineer's ethical standing would have been preserved. The counterfactual also suggests that the Board's conclusion that AI use is not unethical per se should be understood as conditional on the use of appropriate tools under appropriate consent frameworks, not as a blanket endorsement of any AI tool for any purpose.
In response to Q402: If Engineer A had conducted a rigorous, line-by-line technical review of the AI-generated design documents — equivalent in thoroughness to the review applied to the report — the safety omissions and dimensional errors would very likely have been identified before submission to Client W, and such a review would have been substantially more likely to satisfy the Responsible Charge standard. The case establishes a clear asymmetry: Engineer A's thorough review of the report was sufficient to catch factual inaccuracies and verify content quality, while the cursory review of the design documents was not sufficient to detect regulatory non-compliance and dimensional errors. This asymmetry suggests that the review process, not the use of AI per se, was the determinative variable in the design document failure. A rigorous review — one that checked each dimension against site survey data, verified each specification against local regulatory requirements, and confirmed the presence of all required safety features — would have functioned as an adequate Responsible Charge mechanism even for AI-generated outputs, provided the reviewing engineer possessed the domain competence to evaluate what they were reviewing. Engineer A possessed that domain competence in groundwater infrastructure design. The ethical failure was therefore not the use of AI drafting tools, but the decision to apply a cursory rather than rigorous review standard to safety-critical outputs from an untested tool. This counterfactual reinforces the Board's conclusion that AI-assisted drafting is not unethical per se, while clarifying that the adequacy of the review process is the critical ethical variable.
In response to Q404: If Engineer A had explicitly cited the use of AI software in the report — identifying which sections were AI-generated and which were independently authored — Client W's observation that the report read as if written by two different authors would have been resolved rather than raised as a concern. The stylistic inconsistency that Client W detected was, in fact, an accurate artifact of the report's dual-origin nature: AI-generated prose tends to exhibit a characteristic uniformity and polish that differs from the more variable style of human technical writing, particularly from an engineer who self-identifies as less confident in technical writing. Explicit attribution would have provided Client W with a framework for understanding and contextualizing that observation, transforming a source of unease into a transparent feature of the work product. However, explicit attribution would also have raised a different set of questions: it would have invited Client W to scrutinize the AI-generated sections more carefully, to inquire about the AI tool's data handling practices, and potentially to raise concerns about the confidential data exposure that had already occurred. In this sense, disclosure would have been simultaneously clarifying and consequential — it would have resolved the authorship ambiguity while potentially surfacing the deeper confidentiality violation. This counterfactual suggests that the ethical case for disclosure is stronger than the Board's agnostic conclusion implies: transparency about AI use not only serves intellectual honesty but also enables clients to exercise informed oversight of work products that may have been generated under conditions they would not have approved.
Similar to other software used in the design or detailing process, Engineer A has no professional or ethical obligation to disclose AI use to Client W (unless such disclosure is required under Engineer A’s contract with Client W).
The tension between Professional Competence Satisfied for Report Writing and Intellectual Honesty in Authorship was left substantively unresolved by the Board. The Board accepted that Engineer A's thorough factual verification of AI-generated text satisfied the competence dimension of responsible charge for the report, but it did not squarely confront the authorship dimension: when an engineer personalizes AI-generated prose with only minor wording adjustments and submits it under a professional seal without attribution, the seal implicitly represents that the engineer is the intellectual author of the work product. These two principles pull in opposite directions — competence review can be satisfied by rigorous fact-checking, but intellectual honesty in authorship requires that the origin of the substantive prose be accurately represented. The case teaches that competence and authorship are distinct professional obligations, and that satisfying one does not discharge the other. A fully ethical resolution would have required Engineer A to either disclose the AI's generative role or to rewrite the report in their own voice after verification, rather than treating minor wording edits as sufficient to claim authorship.
The tension between Responsible Charge Engagement and Competence Assurance Under Novel Tool Adoption was resolved against Engineer A in the design document context, but the resolution reveals a deeper principle hierarchy: when an engineer applies a professional seal, the seal does not merely certify that the engineer reviewed the output — it certifies that the engineer exercised personal, informed judgment over the generative process itself. Because Engineer A had no prior experience with the AI drafting tool and did not understand its full functionality, a cursory high-level review was structurally incapable of satisfying responsible charge, regardless of how much time was spent. The case teaches that the standard of review required to satisfy responsible charge scales inversely with the engineer's familiarity with the generative tool: the less the engineer understands how the tool produces its output, the more rigorous the independent verification must be. Deploying an unfamiliar AI tool is not ethically equivalent to deploying familiar software; it introduces an epistemic gap that only deeper review — not a high-level scan — can close. Public Welfare Paramount ultimately overrides both efficiency and tool novelty as a justification for reduced oversight, particularly where safety-critical omissions in design documents could reach construction.
The tension between Client Data Confidentiality in AI Tool Use and Mentorship Continuity and Succession Planning exposes a systemic vulnerability that the Board's conclusions do not address: Engineer A's loss of Engineer B's peer review created professional pressure to substitute AI assistance for human oversight, but the only available AI tool was open-source, meaning that satisfying the need for quality assurance necessarily required exposing Client W's confidential site data and groundwater monitoring information to a public platform without prior consent. This creates a structural conflict in which the engineer cannot simultaneously honor the confidentiality obligation and use the available compensating mechanism. The case teaches that this conflict is not resolvable by choosing one principle over the other after the fact — it is resolvable only by proactive planning before the engagement begins. The principle of Mentorship Continuity and Succession Planning, read alongside the confidentiality obligation under Code provision II.1.c, implies that when a primary quality assurance mechanism is lost, the engineer's first obligation is to identify a compliant replacement — whether a qualified peer reviewer, a privacy-compliant AI platform, or a scope limitation — before accepting work that cannot be competently and confidentially performed alone. Engineer A's failure to engage in that prior planning rendered the confidentiality breach not merely a procedural lapse but a foreseeable consequence of an inadequately structured professional practice.
Conducted Cursory Design Document Review
Conducted Cursory Design Document Review → Design Document Defects Discovered
Confidential Client Data Input Constraint Engineer A Open-Source AI Upload
Engineer A input confidential information gathered from Client W into open-source AI software to generate both the environmental report draft and the engineering design documents, without apparent assessment of data exposure risks inherent in open-source AI platforms.
Confidential Client Data Input Constraint
Engineer A was constrained from inputting Client W's confidential project information into the open-source AI software without Client W's informed consent and without assessing the data retention and public exposure risks of the open-source platform.
NSPE Code of Ethics — Confidentiality provisions; professional duty to protect client information
Engineer A gathered the relevant information provided by Client W and relied on the AI software to synthesize the information
At the time of inputting Client W's information into the AI software for both the report and design documents
Engineer A entered the information gathered from Client W into the AI software and relied on the AI-assisted drafting tools to generate a preliminary design
Engineer A input the information gathered from Client W into the AI software
The AI drafting software was also open-sourced.
Confidential Client Data Input Constraint Engineer A Open Source AI
Engineer A uploaded Client W's confidential project information into an open-source AI interface to generate the environmental report draft, without obtaining Client W's prior consent, effectively placing private client information in the public domain.
Engineer A was constrained from uploading Client W's private project information into the open-source AI interface without prior consent, as doing so was tantamount to placing the client's private information in the public domain, violating confidentiality obligations under Code section II.1.c.
At time of uploading Client W's information into the open-source AI interface for report generation
Did Engineer A have an ethical obligation to disclose the AI's generative role in drafting the environmental report to Client W — both at submission and upon Client W's direct observation of stylistic inconsistency — and does submitting AI-generated prose with only minor wording edits under a professional seal without attribution constitute a breach of intellectual authorship integrity and candor?
Engineer A's obligation to disclose AI-generated authorship and maintain intellectual honesty when submitting the environmental report to Client W under a professional seal, particularly after Client W directly observed stylistic inconsistency suggesting dual authorship.
Disclose AI tool's generative role in the report to Client W at submission and clarify AI authorship when Client W raises the stylistic inconsistency observation
Submit the AI-generated report under professional seal without disclosing AI involvement and remain silent when Client W observes the stylistic inconsistency
Should Engineer B (as the mentor/quality assurance figure whose retirement precipitated Engineer A's AI over-reliance) have fulfilled the Responsible Charge Active Review Obligation and AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification Obligation by ensuring continuity of oversight before retiring, and does Engineer A's subsequent cursory review of AI-generated design documents constitute a categorical breach of responsible charge?
Engineer B Mentor Engineer: Responsible Charge Active Review and AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification Obligations in Design Document Phase
Conduct rigorous line-by-line technical review of all AI-generated design documents, verifying each dimension against site survey data and each specification against local regulatory requirements, before affixing professional seal
Apply cursory high-level review of AI-generated design documents and affix professional seal without verifying regulatory compliance or dimensional accuracy against site-specific requirements
Should Engineer B (as the departing mentor) have fulfilled the Mentorship Succession and Peer Review Continuity Obligation by arranging or facilitating alternative peer review mechanisms for Engineer A before retiring, and does Engineer A bear an independent obligation to arrange such alternatives rather than substituting an unfamiliar AI tool for professional oversight?
Engineer B Mentor Engineer: Mentorship Succession and Peer Review Continuity Obligation — Arranging Alternative Oversight Before Retirement
Arrange alternative qualified peer review mechanism (qualified colleague, professional review service, or subconsultant) before accepting the dual-scope engagement following Engineer B's retirement
Proceed with the engagement by substituting a newly released open-source AI tool for Engineer B's expert review without arranging any alternative human oversight mechanism
Should Engineer B (as the quality assurance anchor for Engineer A's practice) have fulfilled the AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification Obligation and Regulatory Compliance Verification Obligation by ensuring Engineer A possessed sufficient competence with the AI tool and applied adequate verification rigor before sealing outputs, and does Engineer A's failure to do so — combined with silence when Client W identified stylistic inconsistency — constitute independent ethical violations of candor and competence?
Engineer B Mentor Engineer: AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification and Regulatory Compliance Verification Obligations — Conditional Permissibility of AI Tool Use and Disclosure
Disclose AI tool's generative role to Client W when Client W raises the stylistic inconsistency observation, cite journal articles used to cross-check AI content, and verify all AI-generated design outputs against local regulatory requirements before sealing
Remain silent about AI's generative role when Client W raises the stylistic inconsistency, omit citations to verification sources, and seal design documents after cursory review without verifying regulatory compliance
Should Engineer A conduct a rigorous, line-by-line technical review of AI-generated design documents sufficient to detect safety omissions and dimensional errors before affixing a professional seal, rather than relying on a cursory high-level check?
Engineer A: Responsible Charge Active Review Obligation and Safety Obligation Violated By Engineer A Over AI-Generated Design Documents
Conduct rigorous line-by-line technical review of AI-generated design documents verifying each dimension, specification, and safety feature against site data and local regulatory requirements before sealing
Perform cursory high-level review of AI-generated design documents and affix professional seal without verifying individual dimensions, specifications, or regulatory safety feature compliance
Should Engineer A verify sufficient competence with a novel AI drafting tool and disclose its use to Client W — particularly when client-observable anomalies arise and when confidential client data is necessarily transmitted to a public platform — as preconditions for ethically permissible AI-assisted work product submission?
Engineer A: AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification Obligation Violated By Engineer A — Conditional Ethical Permissibility of AI Tool Adoption and Disclosure Obligations
Verify competence with the AI tool before deployment, disclose AI use to Client W when client-observable anomalies arise or safety-critical outputs are involved, and cite sources used to cross-check AI-generated content
Deploy novel AI tool without prior competence verification, remain silent about AI authorship when client raises stylistic concerns, and submit work products without attribution or citation of cross-checking sources
Should Engineer A arrange a functionally equivalent alternative peer review mechanism — and select a confidentiality-compliant AI tool — before undertaking a complex dual-scope engagement after losing the primary quality assurance resource provided by Engineer B, rather than substituting an unfamiliar open-source AI tool for that professional oversight?
Engineer A: Mentorship Succession and Peer Review Continuity Obligation Breached — Obligation to Arrange Alternative Quality Assurance Before Proceeding With Complex AI-Assisted Engagement, Including Confidentiality-Compliant Tool Selection
Arrange alternative qualified peer review before accepting the engagement, select a privacy-compliant AI tool with contractual data protection guarantees or obtain Client W's explicit consent before uploading confidential data, and scope the engagement to match verified professional infrastructure
Proceed with the engagement by substituting an unfamiliar open-source AI tool for Engineer B's peer review function and upload confidential client data to the public platform without obtaining prior consent or investigating its data handling practices
Should Engineer A apply a rigorous, line-by-line technical review to AI-generated work products before affixing a professional seal, or is a high-level cursory review sufficient to satisfy the Responsible Charge standard when AI-assisted drafting tools are used?
Engineer A: Responsible Charge and AI-Generated Work Product Competence Verification — Differential Review Standards Applied to Report vs. Design Documents
Apply rigorous, line-by-line technical review of all AI-generated work products before sealing, verifying each dimension, specification, and safety feature against regulatory requirements and site data
Conduct a high-level cursory review of AI-generated design documents before sealing, relying on the AI tool's output quality without independently verifying each technical element
Should Engineer A have assessed their own competence with a novel AI drafting tool — including its capabilities, limitations, and failure modes — before deploying it for safety-critical engineering design documents, or was domain expertise in the subject matter sufficient to satisfy the competence standard for AI-assisted work?
Engineer A: Competence Obligation and Regulatory Compliance Verification — Deploying a Novel, Unfamiliar AI Drafting Tool Without Sufficient Understanding of Its Capabilities and Failure Modes for Safety-Critical Design Work
Assess competence with the novel AI tool before deployment, investigate its capabilities and failure modes, and arrange alternative qualified peer review to compensate for the loss of Engineer B's oversight before undertaking the engagement
Deploy the novel AI drafting tool relying on existing domain expertise in groundwater infrastructure design as sufficient competence, without separately investigating the tool's limitations or arranging alternative peer review
Should Engineer A have obtained Client W's prior informed consent before uploading confidential site data and groundwater monitoring information to an open-source AI platform, and independently arranged alternative peer review after Engineer B's retirement, rather than proceeding without either safeguard?
Engineer A: Client Data Confidentiality, AI Tool Disclosure, and Mentorship Succession — Uploading Confidential Client Data to Open-Source AI Without Consent and Failing to Arrange Alternative Peer Review After Engineer B's Retirement
Obtain Client W's prior informed consent before uploading any confidential site data to the AI platform, investigate the platform's data handling and privacy policies, and arrange alternative qualified peer review to replace Engineer B's oversight function before accepting the engagement
Upload confidential client data to the open-source AI platform without prior consent and proceed without arranging alternative peer review, relying on the AI tool as a substitute for Engineer B's quality assurance function
Did Engineer A satisfy the Responsible Charge and competence standards by conducting only a cursory, high-level review of AI-generated design documents produced by a novel, unfamiliar drafting tool before affixing a professional seal, given that the review failed to detect misaligned dimensions and safety features required by local regulations?
Engineer A's obligation to conduct a substantive, comprehensive review of AI-generated engineering design documents before sealing and submitting them to Client W, given Engineer A's unfamiliarity with the novel AI drafting tool, the safety-critical nature of the groundwater infrastructure design, and the resulting omission of required safety features and misaligned dimensions.
Conduct a rigorous, line-by-line technical review of all AI-generated design documents — verifying each dimension, safety feature, and regulatory compliance requirement — before affixing a professional seal, and arrange alternative qualified peer review to compensate for Engineer B's absence
Seal and submit AI-generated design documents after only a cursory high-level review, relying on the AI tool's output without independent verification of dimensions, safety features, or regulatory compliance
Did Engineer A independently violate the client confidentiality obligation under Code provision II.1.c by uploading Client W's proprietary site data and groundwater monitoring information into an open-source AI platform without obtaining prior consent, and does this breach stand as a self-contained ethical violation regardless of the accuracy or quality of the resulting work products?
Engineer A's obligation to obtain Client W's prior informed consent before uploading confidential site data and groundwater monitoring information into an open-source AI platform, constituting an independent ethical breach of client confidentiality separate from questions of report quality, AI disclosure, or design document accuracy.
Obtain Client W's prior informed consent before uploading confidential site data to the open-source AI platform, and investigate the platform's data handling and privacy policies before any client data transmission
Upload Client W's confidential site data and groundwater monitoring information into the open-source AI platform without obtaining prior consent or investigating the platform's data handling practices
Did Engineer A have an ethical obligation to proactively disclose the use of AI tools to Client W when submitting AI-generated work products, and did silence in the face of Client W's direct observation about stylistic inconsistency constitute a deceptive act?
Engineer A: Proactive AI Disclosure and Candor Obligation Toward Client W
Proactively disclose AI tool usage and AI-generated sections to Client W before or upon submission, and clarify AI's role when Client W raises the stylistic inconsistency observation
Submit AI-generated work products without disclosure and remain silent when Client W observes the stylistic inconsistency, treating AI as an internal drafting tool equivalent to other engineering software
Did Engineer A independently violate the client confidentiality obligation under Code provision II.1.c by uploading Client W's confidential site data and groundwater monitoring information to an open-source AI platform without obtaining prior consent, and does this constitute a discrete ethical breach separate from any question about AI disclosure or work product quality?
Engineer A: Client Consent for Third-Party Data Sharing Obligation — Uploading Confidential Site Data to Open-Source AI Platform
Investigate the open-source AI platform's data handling and privacy policies before use, obtain Client W's explicit prior consent for uploading confidential site data, and identify a privacy-compliant alternative if consent is withheld
Upload Client W's confidential site data and groundwater monitoring information to the open-source AI platform without prior investigation of data handling practices and without obtaining Client W's consent
Did Engineer A satisfy the Responsible Charge standard and competence obligation under Code provisions II.2.a and II.2.b by applying only a cursory, high-level review to AI-generated engineering design documents before affixing their professional seal, given that the documents contained safety omissions and dimensional errors that the review failed to detect?
Engineer A: Responsible Charge and Competence Verification Obligation for AI-Generated Design Documents — Depth of Review and Professional Seal
Conduct a rigorous, line-by-line technical review of all AI-generated design documents — verifying each dimension against site survey data, each specification against local regulatory requirements, and confirming the presence of all required safety features — before affixing the professional seal
Apply a cursory, high-level review to AI-generated design documents and affix the professional seal without verifying dimensional accuracy, regulatory compliance, or the presence of required safety features
Should Engineer A fulfill the Intellectual Authorship Integrity Obligation and the AI-Assisted Design Comprehensive Verification Obligation by conducting thorough, proportionate review of AI-generated work products before sealing and submitting them to Client W, given that the report received a thorough review while the design documents received only a cursory high-level check?
Engineer A: Intellectual Authorship Integrity and AI-Assisted Design Comprehensive Verification Obligations in Report and Design Document Submission
Conduct rigorous, line-by-line technical verification of all AI-generated work products — proportionate to tool novelty and safety-criticality — before affixing professional seal, and attribute AI generative contributions in the work product
Apply a high-level cursory review to AI-generated design documents and seal them without attribution, treating AI output as equivalent to conventional engineering software output
Should Engineer A fulfill the Proactive AI Disclosure to Client Obligation by disclosing the use of AI tools to Client W — particularly at the moment Client W directly observed that the report appeared to have been written by two different authors — or does silence in that moment constitute a deceptive act under Code provisions I.5 and III.3?
Engineer A: Proactive AI Disclosure to Client Obligation and Duty of Candor When Client W Identifies Stylistic Anomaly in AI-Generated Report
Proactively disclose AI tool usage and identify AI-generated sections to Client W — particularly upon Client W's direct observation of stylistic inconsistency — and attribute AI generative contributions in both the report and design documents
Remain silent about AI tool usage when Client W raises the stylistic inconsistency observation, treating AI as an undisclosed internal drafting mechanism equivalent to conventional engineering software
Should Engineer A fulfill the Client Data Confidentiality Obligation and the Peer Review Succession Obligation by obtaining Client W's prior consent before uploading confidential site data to an open-source AI platform, and by arranging an alternative qualified peer review mechanism to replace Engineer B's oversight before undertaking a complex dual-scope engagement — rather than substituting an unfamiliar open-source AI tool for both functions?
Engineer A: Client Data Confidentiality and Peer Review Succession Obligations — Uploading Confidential Client Data to Open-Source AI Platform Without Consent and Substituting AI for Lost Mentorship Oversight
Obtain Client W's prior informed consent before uploading confidential site data to any third-party AI platform, investigate the platform's data handling and privacy policies before use, and arrange an alternative qualified peer reviewer or privacy-compliant AI tool to replace Engineer B's oversight before accepting the dual-scope engagement
Upload confidential client data to the open-source AI platform without prior consent and proceed with the engagement using the AI tool as a substitute for Engineer B's peer review oversight, treating the efficiency benefit as sufficient justification
Diligent Verification of AI-Generated Technical Outputs Violated in Design Phase
AI-assisted groundwater infrastructure design documents
Safety features required for local regulatory compliance
Mentorship Continuity and Succession Planning
Engineer A conducted only a high-level review of AI-generated design documents rather than comprehensive technical verification, resulting in failure to detect misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required for regulatory compliance
AI-generated engineering designs require at least the same level of technical scrutiny as human-generated work; a high-level review that fails to catch dimensional errors and safety omissions does not satisfy the professional verification standard
Engineer A Engineer in Responsible Charge
Diligent Verification of AI-Generated Technical Outputs
Verification obligation was not met; Engineer A's reliance on AI outputs without comprehensive review violated both the diligent verification principle and the responsible charge requirement
Only after the engineer in Responsible Charge has satisfied themselves that the proposed solution is in accordance with their own and professional standards should the design/report be accepted. These are steps that, in this case, Engineer A chose not to follow.
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'specialty': 'Environmental engineering', 'experience': 'Several years of experience with strong technical expertise', 'ai_tools_used': ['AI language processing software', 'AI-assisted drafting tool']}
Used AI language processing software to draft an environmental groundwater monitoring report and AI-assisted drafting tools to prepare design documents; performed insufficient review of AI-generated design outputs resulting in misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features; uploaded client confidential information to a public AI interface without client consent; failed to include appropriate citations for AI-generated content.
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'Client W'}
{'type': 'peer_mentor', 'target': 'Engineer B'}
{'type': 'public_responsibility', 'target': 'General Public'}
Engineer A used AI language processing software to assist in drafting the report
Engineer A also prepared draft design documents with a AI-assisted drafting tool that was new to the market
Engineer A did not maintain responsible charge in violation of licensure law
Engineer A elected to only conduct a high-level review and adjusted certain elements to align with site-specific conditions
When Engineer A uploaded Client W's information into the AI open-source interface, this was tantamount to placing the Client's private information in the public domain
Engineer A AI Attribution Citation Capability Deficient
Engineer A failed to include appropriate citations to pertinent documents of technical authority in the AI-generated environmental report and did not provide attribution for AI's substantial contribution to both the report and design documents, in violation of Code section III.9.
Engineer A used AI language processing software to draft the environmental report but did not include required citations or attribution for AI contributions, raising concerns under Code section III.9 regarding credit for engineering work
Submission of AI-generated environmental report without citations to technical authority documents and without disclosure of AI's substantial contribution to report and design document content
The facts do not indicate the AI-generated report included citations of pertinent documents of technical authority.
Engineer A AI Disclosure Transparency Capability Deficient
AI Disclosure and Transparency Capability
Engineer A failed to proactively disclose to Client W that AI tools substantially contributed to both the environmental report and the engineering design documents, missing the opportunity to prevent misunderstandings and maintain client trust through transparent communication.
Engineer A used AI language processing software and AI-assisted drafting tools to generate professional deliverables but did not disclose this to Client W, contrary to best practices and professional transparency obligations
Submission of AI-generated environmental report and design documents to Client W without disclosure of AI's substantial contribution, leading Client W to identify quality inconsistencies and question the work product
Engineer A AI Disclosure and Transparency Capability Instance
Engineer A demonstrated absent or deficient AI disclosure and transparency capability, failing to disclose the use of AI software in generating both the environmental report and the engineering design documents to Client W
Applied (or failed to be applied) at the point of submission of both the environmental report and the engineering design documents to Client W, resulting in breaches of disclosure and intellectual authorship integrity obligations
Engineer A submitted both the AI-drafted environmental report and AI-generated design documents without citing the AI tools used, despite professional obligations to accurately represent the intellectual provenance of work product
Engineer A AI Drafting Tool Unfamiliarity
From Engineer A's adoption of the new AI-assisted drafting tool through Client W's identification of errors in the design documents
Engineer A also prepared draft design documents with an AI-assisted drafting tool that was new to the market.
Engineer A's use of a newly marketed AI-assisted drafting tool with only high-level review of its outputs
Client W's identification of misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features prompting required revision
When Client W reviewed the design documents, they found misaligned dimensions and key safety features (including those necessary for compliance with local regulations) were omitted.
Engineer A electing to use an AI-assisted drafting tool new to the market and conducting only a high-level review of its outputs before sealing design documents
Engineer A AI Output Verification Capability Deficient Design Documents
Engineer A failed to conduct substantive, domain-informed verification of AI-generated design documents sufficient to detect misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations, conducting only a high-level review that fell below the standard required for professional deliverables.
Engineer A reviewed AI-generated engineering design documents at only a high level, failing to identify dimensional errors and regulatory compliance omissions that Client W subsequently identified upon review
Failure to detect misaligned dimensions and omitted key safety features in AI-generated groundwater infrastructure design documents before submission to Client W
Failure to detect misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features further indicates that Engineer A did not exercise sufficient diligence.
Engineer A AI Output Verification Capability Design Documents Instance
Engineer A demonstrated deficient AI output verification capability with respect to the engineering design documents, conducting only a cursory review that failed to detect misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features
Applied during review of AI-generated engineering design documents for groundwater infrastructure modifications, resulting in submission of deficient plans that required revision
Engineer A's cursory review of AI-generated design documents failed to identify misaligned dimensions and omission of key safety features required by local regulations, which were subsequently identified by Client W upon review
Engineer A AI Output Verification Capability Partial Report
Engineer A demonstrated partial AI output verification capability with respect to the environmental report, conducting a thorough review and cross-checking key facts against professional sources, though failing to address citation and attribution requirements.
Engineer A's review of the AI-generated environmental report was substantively adequate for factual accuracy but incomplete with respect to citation and attribution obligations under Code section III.9
Thorough review and cross-checking of AI-generated environmental report content against professional sources, with adjustments to text, resulting in a factually accurate final document — though without required citations to technical authority
Because Engineer A performed a thorough review, cross-checked key facts against professional sources, and made adjustments to the text, the final document remained under Engineer A's direction and control.
Engineer A performed a thorough review and cross-checked the work on the report, much like Engineer A would have likely done if the report had been initially drafted by an engineer intern or other support staff.
Engineer A AI Output Verification Capability Report Instance
Engineer A demonstrated intermediate AI output verification capability with respect to the environmental report, conducting a substantive cross-check of factual content against professional journal articles and verifying originality of phrasing
Applied during review of the AI-generated environmental report on the organic contaminant, resulting in a partially adequate verification that caught factual issues but did not address authorship disclosure obligations
Engineer A cross-checked key facts against professional journal articles and ran search engine queries to verify phrasing originality, resulting in a report that Client W found substantively satisfactory with only minor grammar and clarity edits needed
Engineer A conducted a thorough review of the report, cross-checking key facts against professional journal articles and verifying the phrasing by running search engine queries to ensure the content did not match any existing language.
Client W noted that the section analyzing the groundwater monitoring data would benefit from minor edits for grammar and clarity, but found the introduction discussing the contaminant's manufacture, use, and characteristics to be exceptionally polished.
Engineer A AI Tool Competence Assessment Capability Deficient Design Tool
AI Tool Competence Assessment Capability
Engineer A failed to adequately assess their own competence with the novel AI-assisted drafting tool before relying on it to generate professional engineering design documents, proceeding without sufficient understanding of the tool's limitations and failure modes.
Engineer A adopted a novel AI-assisted drafting tool for groundwater infrastructure design without the competence assessment required by Code section II.2.a, which requires engineers to undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved
Use of a novel AI-assisted drafting tool that was new to the market without establishing sufficient competence in its capabilities and limitations, resulting in undetected errors in professional design deliverables
Fundamental Canon I.2 states that engineers 'perform services only in areas of their competence' and Code section II.2.a states that engineers must 'undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved.'
Engineer A AI Tool Competence Assessment Capability Instance
Engineer A demonstrated limited AI tool competence assessment capability, failing to adequately evaluate personal readiness to rely on a novel, unfamiliar AI drafting tool for professional engineering deliverables
Engineer A selected and used open-sourced AI software for both report drafting and engineering design document generation despite having no previous experience with the tool and limited familiarity with its functionality and accuracy characteristics
Engineer A used an AI drafting tool that was new to the market with no prior experience, without first assessing whether sufficient competence existed to rely on it for professional work product; this gap was evidenced by the cursory review of design documents and the resulting errors identified by Client W
Engineer A AI Tool Scope Calibration Capability Deficient
Engineer A failed to correctly calibrate the depth of review required for AI-generated design documents, electing a high-level review that was insufficient to detect dimensional misalignments and omitted safety features that a substantive review would have identified.
Engineer A used a novel AI-assisted drafting tool and conducted only a high-level review, failing to recognize that AI-generated technical work requires at least the same level of scrutiny as human-created work
Selection of high-level review approach for AI-generated design documents resulting in undetected misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations
Engineer A Client Data Confidentiality Management Capability Deficient
Client Data Confidentiality Management Capability
Engineer A failed to recognize that uploading Client W's private project information into an open-source AI interface was equivalent to placing that information in the public domain, and did not obtain prior informed consent from Client W before doing so.
Engineer A used an open-source AI language processing tool to draft the environmental report, uploading client-specific project data without recognizing the public domain exposure implications or obtaining required client consent
Uploading Client W's confidential project information into an open-source AI language processing interface without obtaining prior client consent, in violation of Code section II.1.c
Engineer A Client Relationship with Client W
From retention by Client W through completion of deliverables
Engineer A, an environmental engineer with several years of experience and holding a professional engineering license, was retained by Client W to prepare a comprehensive report
Engineer A's professional engagement with Client W for report and design document preparation
Client W retained Engineer A to prepare a comprehensive report and engineering design documents
Engineer A Client W Data Public Domain Exposure
From the moment Engineer A uploaded Client W's data to the AI open-source interface onward, absent remediation or retroactive consent
Client Data Exposed to Public Domain State
Engineer A's upload of Client W's confidential information to open-source AI interface
Not terminated in the facts presented; no consent obtained and no disclosure made
Engineer A uploading Client W's private information into an open-source AI language processing interface without prior client consent
Engineer A Domain Expertise Environmental Engineering Instance
Engineer A possessed strong domain expertise in environmental engineering, including groundwater monitoring data analysis and knowledge of organic contaminants, enabling substantive technical review of AI-generated report content
Applied throughout the project, including in the analysis of groundwater monitoring data and the review of AI-generated report content on the organic contaminant
Engineer A's ability to cross-check AI-generated report content against professional journal articles and to perform groundwater monitoring data analysis over more than a year of site observation, resulting in a technically satisfactory report
Engineer A is known for their strong technical expertise
Engineer A conducted a thorough review of the report, cross-checking key facts against professional journal articles
This work required Engineer A to perform an analysis of groundwater monitoring data from a site Engineer A had been observing for over a year.
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'statutory_obligation': 'NSPE Position Statement No. 10-1778 Responsible Charge', 'violation': 'Code section III.8.a - failure to maintain responsible charge'}
Bore statutory responsible charge obligations over the groundwater monitoring report and design documents; failed to maintain active engagement in the design and development process by relying on AI-generated plans without comprehensive verification; did not satisfy responsible charge requirements by conducting only a high-level post-preparation review.
{'type': 'responsible_charge_over', 'target': 'AI-generated design documents'}
{'type': 'responsible_charge_over', 'target': 'AI-generated environmental report'}
{'type': 'supervisory', 'target': 'Engineer B (absent)'}
Engineer A did not maintain responsible charge in violation of licensure law which violates Code section III.8.a
Engineer A appears to be operating in a compromised manner – namely, without the help of Engineer B – such that Engineer A relied on the AI-generated plans and specifications without proper oversight
Engineer A, as the engineer in Responsible Charge of the project, is required to provide an experienced-based quality assurance review, engaging in critical discussions, mentorship, and professional development—elements that AI cannot replicate
{'license': 'Professional Engineering License', 'specialty': 'Environmental engineering, groundwater analysis, contaminant characterization', 'experience': 'Several years', 'self_assessed_weakness': 'Technical writing confidence', 'ai_tool_experience': 'None prior to this engagement'}
Retained by Client W to prepare a comprehensive environmental report on an organic contaminant and to develop engineering design documents for groundwater infrastructure modifications; used AI software to generate initial drafts without disclosing AI use; applied professional seal to submitted work
{'type': 'mentee', 'target': 'Engineer B'}
{'type': 'service_provider', 'target': 'Client W'}
Engineer A, an environmental engineer with several years of experience and holding a professional engineering license, was retained by Client W
Engineer A did not cite their use of AI-software or its large language models
Engineer A opted to use open-sourced artificial intelligence (AI) software
applied their seal consistent with state law
{'license': 'Professional Engineering License', 'specialty': 'Groundwater infrastructure design', 'design_method': 'AI-assisted drafting tools', 'review_quality': 'Cursory'}
Developed engineering design documents including plans and specifications for groundwater infrastructure modifications using AI-assisted drafting tools; conducted only cursory review resulting in misaligned dimensions and omission of required safety features
{'type': 'designer', 'target': 'Groundwater infrastructure'}
Groundwater Infrastructure Design Engineer
Engineer A was tasked to develop engineering design documents (plans and specifications) for modifications to groundwater infrastructure
Engineer A completed a cursory review of the AI-generated plans and adjusted certain elements to align with site-specific conditions
Engineer A Insufficient Responsible Charge
From Engineer A's adoption of AI-assisted drafting with only high-level review through identification of errors by Client W
Engineer A's failure to maintain responsible charge over AI-generated design documents by conducting only post-preparation high-level review without active engagement in design development
Not terminated in the facts presented; violation identified through Client W's review
Engineer A appears to be operating in a compromised manner – namely, without the help of Engineer B – such that Engineer A relied on the AI-generated plans and specifications without proper oversight.
Engineer A, as the engineer in Responsible Charge of the project, is required to provide an experienced-based quality assurance review, engaging in critical discussions, mentorship, and professional development—elements that AI cannot replicate.
Reviewing drawings or documents after preparation without involvement in the design and development process does not satisfy the definition of Responsible Charge.
Engineer A sealing and submitting design documents generated by AI-assisted tools after only a high-level review, without active engagement in the design process from conception to completion and without the mentorship support of Engineer B
From Engineer B's retirement through the delivery of the report and design documents; ongoing
Engineer B recently retired and was no longer available to Engineer A in a work capacity
Engineer A's professional practice following Engineer B's retirement
Faced with the need to deliver both the report and the engineering design documents without the review by and mentorship from Engineer B, Engineer A opted to use open-sourced artificial intelligence (AI) software
Engineer B retired and was no longer available to Engineer A in a work capacity
Engineer A Non-Compliant AI Design Documents
From submission of the AI-generated design documents through Client W's identification of errors and direction to revise
AI-assisted design documents prepared by Engineer A containing misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations
Directed revision to meet professional and regulatory standards; not yet completed in the facts presented
The errors in the AI-generated design documents could have led to regulatory noncompliance and safety hazards, conflicting with the Fundamental Canon I.1.
Client W's review identifying misaligned dimensions and omission of key safety features including those required for regulatory compliance
Engineer A Peer Review Continuity Planning Capability Deficient
Peer Review Continuity Planning Capability
Engineer A failed to establish alternative peer review or mentorship arrangements following Engineer B's retirement, continuing to practice without the quality assurance oversight that had previously supported professional work product quality.
Following Engineer B's retirement, Engineer A continued to deliver professional work product without establishing replacement quality assurance mechanisms, contributing to the inadequate review of AI-generated deliverables
Operating without alternative peer review or supervisory arrangements after Engineer B's retirement, resulting in Engineer A relying on AI-generated plans and specifications without proper oversight
Engineer A Peer Review Continuity Planning Capability Instance
Engineer A demonstrated deficient peer review continuity planning capability, failing to establish alternative quality assurance arrangements following Engineer B's retirement and instead substituting AI tools without adequate oversight
Arose following Engineer B's retirement, when Engineer A faced the need to deliver professional work product without the mentorship and quality assurance review that had previously been available
Following Engineer B's retirement, Engineer A did not seek alternative peer review or supervisory arrangements but instead opted to use AI software as a substitute, without recognizing that this did not fulfill the quality assurance function previously provided by Engineer B
But Engineer B recently retired and was no longer available to Engineer A in a work capacity.
Engineer A Public Safety Risk from Design Errors
From submission of defective design documents through identification and directed revision by Client W
Risk to public safety arising from omitted safety features and misaligned dimensions in AI-generated design documents submitted by Engineer A
Successful revision of design documents to include required safety features and correct dimensions
Engineer A's oversight of engineering plans was inadequate, raising ethical concerns.
Omission of key safety features and misaligned dimensions in AI-generated design documents that could lead to regulatory noncompliance and safety hazards
Engineer A Regulatory Compliance Obligation
Throughout the engagement; ongoing professional obligation
Engineer A's obligation to comply with state law regarding professional sealing and applicable local regulations for engineering design
ensuring that all elements satisfied the necessary professional and regulatory standards
omission of key safety features required by local regulations
Engineer A applied their professional seal to work product and submitted design documents subject to local regulatory requirements
Engineer A Regulatory Compliance Verification Capability Deficient
Regulatory Compliance Verification Capability
Engineer A failed to verify that AI-generated engineering design documents complied with applicable local regulations, resulting in omission of key safety features required for regulatory compliance.
Engineer A's high-level review of AI-generated design documents failed to identify omitted safety features required by local regulations, raising concerns under Fundamental Canon I.1 regarding public safety
Submission of AI-generated design documents that omitted key safety features necessary for compliance with local regulations, identified by Client W upon review
Engineer A Regulatory Compliance Verification Capability Instance
Engineer A demonstrated deficient regulatory compliance verification capability with respect to the AI-generated engineering design documents, failing to verify that the plans incorporated all safety features required by local regulations
Applied during review of AI-generated engineering design documents for groundwater infrastructure modifications prior to submission to Client W
Engineer A's cursory review of AI-generated design documents failed to detect the omission of key safety features required by local regulations, which were identified by Client W and required revision of the plans
Client W raised concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the engineering design and instructed Engineer A to revise the plans, ensuring that all elements satisfied the necessary professional and regulatory standards.
Engineer A Responsible Charge Active Engagement Capability Deficient
Responsible Charge Active Engagement Capability
Engineer A possessed the underlying technical competence for responsible charge but failed to exercise the active engagement dimension of responsible charge over AI-generated design documents, conducting only a high-level review rather than substantive direction and control from conception to completion.
Engineer A bore statutory responsible charge over AI-generated groundwater infrastructure design documents but did not maintain active engagement in the design process, violating Code section III.8.a and NSPE Position Statement No. 10-1778
Failure to detect misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features in AI-generated design documents; reliance on post-hoc high-level review rather than active engagement in design development process
Engineer A Responsible Charge Active Review Capability Instance
Engineer A demonstrated inconsistent responsible charge review competence: adequate for the environmental report but deficient for the engineering design documents, where only a cursory review was conducted despite bearing statutory responsible charge
Applied during review of both the environmental report and the engineering design documents prior to submission to Client W under Engineer A's professional seal
Engineer A conducted a thorough review of the AI-generated report but only a cursory review of the AI-generated design documents, resulting in undetected errors in the design documents that were identified by Client W
Engineer A Self-Assessed Technical Writing Limitation
Persistent throughout the engagement; predates the current project
Engineer A is known for their strong technical expertise but is, personally, less confident in their technical writing
Engineer A's personal confidence and capability in technical writing
Previously, Engineer A had relied on guidance and quality assurance reviews by their mentor and supervisor, Engineer B, to refine report drafts
Engineer A's personal recognition of lower confidence in technical writing, previously addressed through Engineer B's mentorship
Engineer A Technical Writing and Report Authorship Capability Instance
Technical Writing and Report Authorship Capability
Engineer A demonstrated limited independent technical writing and report authorship capability, self-identifying as less confident in technical writing and relying on AI software to generate initial report drafts rather than producing independent written work product
Arose in the context of preparing the environmental report on the organic contaminant without the mentorship support of Engineer B, leading to AI-assisted drafting as a substitute for independent technical writing
Engineer A's self-identified weakness in technical writing led to reliance on AI software for report drafting; the resulting report exhibited inconsistent authorial voice noted by Client W, suggesting the AI-generated sections were distinguishable from Engineer A's own writing
Engineer A Technology As Tool Boundary Judgment Capability Deficient
Technology-as-Tool Boundary Judgment Capability
Engineer A failed to maintain the boundary between using AI as a supplementary tool and allowing AI to substitute for independent professional engineering judgment, particularly in the design document context where AI output was accepted without comprehensive critical evaluation.
Engineer A used AI-assisted drafting tools for groundwater infrastructure design but did not maintain sufficient critical engagement with AI output to prevent the tool from functioning as a substitute for professional judgment, contrary to BER precedent in Cases 90-6 and 98-3
Reliance on AI-generated design documents with only high-level review, allowing AI output to substitute for independent engineering judgment in design development, resulting in undetected errors that compromised public safety
Technology has an important place in the practice of engineering, but it must never be a replacement of a substitute for engineering judgment.
Engineer A Undisclosed AI Attribution Gap
From submission of the report without citations through the period of Client W's review and questioning
The facts also do not indicate the AI-generated report included citations of pertinent documents of technical authority.
Engineer A's failure to include citations of technical authority and attribution for AI-generated content in the report
Submission of AI-generated report lacking citations of pertinent documents of technical authority and attribution for AI's substantial contribution
Engineer A Undisclosed AI Design Document Use
From submission of AI-generated design documents through identification of deficiencies by Client W; disclosure of AI use has not been made
Engineer A's submission of AI-generated engineering design documents to Client W
Engineer A submitted AI-assisted design documents to Client W without citing AI-assisted drafting tools
Engineer A Undisclosed AI Report Contribution
From submission of the AI-assisted report through the period when Client W questioned inconsistencies, with no disclosure made
Engineer A's use of AI language processing software to draft the groundwater monitoring report without disclosure to Client W
Not terminated in the facts presented; no disclosure was made
Engineer A using AI language processing software to draft the report and submitting it without disclosing AI's role or including citations
From submission of draft report to Client W through the period of the case analysis; no disclosure has been made
Engineer A's submission of AI-generated draft report to Client W
Client commented that the report read as if written by two different authors
Engineer A submitted the AI-generated draft report to Client W without citing AI software or large language model use
Engineer A Unfamiliar AI Tool Deployment
From Engineer A's initial use of the AI software through submission of both the report and design documents
The AI drafting software was new to the market and Engineer A had no previous experience with the tool
Engineer A's use of newly released open-source AI software with no prior experience
Engineer A selected and deployed AI drafting software that was new to the market and with which Engineer A had no previous experience
Engineer A's cursory review and adjustment of design documents before Client W's review of design documents
Engineer A's prior reliance on Engineer B for QA before Engineer A's use of AI software for drafting
Engineer A's review and minor edits to report before submission of draft report to Client W
Engineer A's use of open-source AI (uploading Client W's data) during Engineer A's engagement with Client W
{'status': 'Retired', 'availability': 'No longer available in work capacity', 'function': 'Mentor, supervisor, quality assurance reviewer'}
Served as mentor and supervisor to Engineer A, providing guidance and quality assurance reviews of report drafts; recently retired and no longer available, creating a professional support gap that contributed to Engineer A's reliance on AI tools
{'type': 'mentor', 'target': 'Engineer A'}
{'type': 'supervisor', 'target': 'Engineer A'}
Engineer A had relied on guidance and quality assurance reviews by their mentor and supervisor, Engineer B, to refine report drafts
without the review by and mentorship from Engineer B
Engineer B Peer Review Continuity Planning Capability Instance
Engineer B, as mentor and supervisor, possessed advanced peer review continuity planning capability but did not exercise it to establish succession arrangements before retirement, leaving Engineer A without adequate quality assurance support
Engineer B served as mentor and supervisor providing quality assurance reviews; retirement without succession planning left Engineer A without adequate professional oversight
Engineer B's retirement without establishing alternative oversight or mentorship arrangements for Engineer A contributed to the quality assurance gap that led to Engineer A's reliance on AI tools without adequate review
{'role_type': 'Senior oversight engineer', 'status': 'Absent from project during AI tool use'}
Senior engineer whose absence from the project left Engineer A without proper oversight and mentorship support, contributing to Engineer A operating in a compromised manner and relying excessively on AI-generated outputs without adequate verification.
{'type': 'peer_mentor', 'target': 'Engineer A AI-Assisted Engineering Practitioner'}
Engineer B Responsible Charge Active Engagement Capability Expert
Engineer B possessed expert-level responsible charge active engagement capability, demonstrated through provision of experienced-based quality assurance review, critical discussions, and mentorship to Engineer A — capabilities that AI tools cannot replicate and whose absence contributed to Engineer A's ethical failures.
Engineer B's retirement removed the experienced-based quality assurance review that had supported Engineer A's professional practice, highlighting the irreplaceable nature of human responsible charge engagement
Provision of mentorship, supervisory review, and quality assurance oversight to Engineer A prior to retirement; absence of this capability following retirement contributed to Engineer A operating in a compromised manner
Engineer B Retirement Occurs → Design Document Defects Discovered
Engineer B's retirement before Engineer A's engagement with Client W (AI use)
Engineering Judgment Non-Substitution Obligation Violated By Engineer A In AI Design Reliance
Engineer A relied on AI-generated plans and specifications without proper oversight or comprehensive independent verification, effectively substituting AI output for engineering judgment, in violation of NSPE I.2 and II.2.b.
Engineering Judgment Non-Substitution Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to ensure that the AI-assisted drafting tool was used as a supplement to — and not a substitute for — independent professional engineering judgment, including outlining solution guidelines and constraints, critically challenging AI outputs, and independently satisfying themselves that the proposed design met professional and regulatory standards before acceptance.
the BER stated that technology must not replace or be used as a substitute for engineering judgement.
Throughout the preparation and review of AI-generated design documents
Much like directing an engineering intern to solve a problem, responsible use of AI requires an engineer to outline solution guidelines and constraints. Recommendations from the program or intern should not be blindly accepted, they should be considered and challenged and the resulting outputs should be understood.
These are steps that, in this case, Engineer A chose not to follow.
Fact-Grounded Technical Opinion Obligation Partially Met By Engineer A In Environmental Report
Engineer A cross-checked key facts in the AI-generated report against professional journal articles and verified phrasing, but relied substantially on AI synthesis of information rather than Engineer A's own independent professional analysis, and lacked full understanding of the AI tool's accuracy.
Fact-Grounded Technical Opinion Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to ensure that the environmental report submitted to Client W was founded upon established facts and completed professional analysis, and that all content was grounded in Engineer A's own professional judgment rather than unverified AI-generated synthesis.
Engineer A gathered the relevant information provided by Client W and relied on the AI software to synthesize the information and generate an initial draft of the necessary report.
During preparation and review of the environmental report for Client W
Input Confidential Data into Public AI → Confidential Data Exposed to AI
Intellectual Authorship Integrity Obligation Breached By Engineer A In Report Submission
Engineer A submitted an AI-generated report draft with only minor wording adjustments under a professional seal without disclosing AI authorship, leading Client W to observe that the report appeared to be written by two different authors.
Intellectual Authorship Integrity Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to accurately represent the authorship and intellectual provenance of the environmental report by disclosing that the substantive content was AI-generated, rather than presenting it as Engineer A's own original professional analysis.
Engineer A also made minor adjustments to some of the wording to personalize the content.
Client W noted that the section analyzing the groundwater monitoring data would benefit from minor edits for grammar and clarity, but found the introduction discussing the contaminant's manufacture, use, and characteristics to be exceptionally polished. The Client commented that the report read as if written by two different authors
Intellectual Authorship Integrity Obligation Violated By Engineer A In Report Submission
Engineer A submitted an AI-generated report draft with only minor wording adjustments as if it were Engineer A's own professional work product, without disclosing AI's material contribution to the authorship of the report.
Engineer A was obligated to accurately represent the authorship and intellectual provenance of the environmental report and to refrain from presenting AI-generated content as Engineer A's own original professional analysis without appropriate attribution, particularly when submitting the report under a professional seal.
the lack of disclosure raises concerns about transparency.
Intellectual Honesty In Authorship Invoked By Engineer A Report
Engineer A submitted an AI-generated report draft with only minor wording adjustments as if it were Engineer A's own professional work product, without disclosing the AI's substantial authorial contribution, implicitly misrepresenting the intellectual origins of the document
Intellectual honesty required Engineer A to accurately represent the authorship of the report; making minor adjustments to AI-generated text and submitting it under the engineer's seal without disclosure constitutes an implicit misrepresentation of authorship
The intellectual honesty obligation was not satisfied by minor personalization of AI content; the principle required disclosure of the AI's authorial role
Intellectual Integrity in Authorship Applied to AI Report Drafting
AI-generated environmental groundwater monitoring report delivered to Client W
Engineer A used AI language processing software to draft the environmental report without disclosing AI's material contribution, creating an implicit representation that the report was Engineer A's independent professional work product
Where AI fundamentally shaped the content and structure of a professional report, failing to disclose that contribution creates a misleading impression about the intellectual origins of the work, even if the factual content is accurate
The BER found that use of AI to assist with writing does not inherently constitute deception where the engineer conducted thorough review, but disclosure remains a best practice obligation when AI materially shapes the work product
Further, the use of AI to assist with writing does not inherently constitute deception. Engineer A did not misrepresent their qualifications or technical expertise, nor did the AI-generated text contain inaccuracies.
The use of AI in engineering practice raises ethical considerations, particularly concerning competency, direction and control, respect for client privacy, and accurate and appropriate attribution.
Local Regulatory Safety Requirements for Groundwater Infrastructure
Local Regulations Specifying Safety Features for Groundwater Infrastructure Design
Client W during review of engineering design documents; Engineer A obligated to comply
Defines mandatory safety features that the AI-generated engineering design documents failed to include, triggering Client W's concerns and revision instructions
Mentorship Continuity Obligation Invoked By Engineer A Following Engineer B Retirement
Quality assurance process for environmental report and design documents
When Engineer B retired and became unavailable, Engineer A did not seek an alternative mentor, peer reviewer, or supervisory arrangement, but instead adopted AI tools as a substitute for the quality assurance that mentorship had previously provided
The mentorship continuity principle required Engineer A to reconstitute equivalent oversight before proceeding with complex professional work; substituting an unfamiliar AI tool for an experienced human mentor did not satisfy this obligation
The obligation to maintain adequate oversight was not satisfied by AI tool adoption; the principle required Engineer A to seek human peer review or consultation as a substitute for Engineer B's mentorship
Mentorship Continuity and Succession Planning Implicated in AI Over-Reliance
Quality assurance process following Engineer B's retirement
Engineer A proceeded with complex AI-assisted engineering work without securing equivalent oversight to replace Engineer B's mentorship and quality assurance review after Engineer B's retirement, operating in a 'compromised manner' that contributed to inadequate verification of AI-generated outputs
The absence of mentorship support does not reduce the professional standard of care; Engineer A was required to identify and secure alternative oversight mechanisms before proceeding with work that previously depended on Engineer B's review
The principle was not satisfied; Engineer A proceeded without adequate substitute oversight, compounding the risks of AI tool reliance with the absence of experienced peer review
the facts also note Engineer A appears to be operating in a compromised manner – namely, without the help of Engineer B – such that Engineer A relied on the AI-generated plans and specifications without proper oversight.
Mentorship Succession and Peer Review Continuity Obligation Breached By Engineer A Following Engineer B Retirement
When Engineer B retired and became unavailable, Engineer A did not seek an alternative mentor or peer reviewer but instead opted to use open-source AI software with which Engineer A had no prior experience, resulting in deficient design documents.
Mentorship Succession and Peer Review Continuity Obligation
Following Engineer B's retirement, Engineer A was obligated to establish alternative peer review, supervisory, or mentorship arrangements to maintain adequate quality assurance for professional deliverables, rather than substituting an unfamiliar AI tool without established competence.
Previously, Engineer A had relied on guidance and quality assurance reviews by their mentor and supervisor, Engineer B, to refine report drafts. But Engineer B recently retired and was no longer available to Engineer A in a work capacity.
Upon Engineer B's retirement and prior to undertaking the Client W engagement deliverables
Faced with the need to deliver both the report and the engineering design documents without the review by and mentorship from Engineer B, Engineer A opted to use open-sourced artificial intelligence (AI) software to create an initial draft of the necessary report and to use AI-assisted drafting tools to generate preliminary design documents.
Mentorship Succession and Peer Review Continuity Obligation Violated By Engineer A Following Engineer B Retirement
Engineer B retired and was no longer available to provide mentorship and quality assurance review. Engineer A did not seek an alternative mentor or peer reviewer but instead proceeded with AI-assisted work without equivalent oversight, contributing to inadequate review of design documents.
When Engineer B retired and became unavailable as mentor and quality assurance reviewer, Engineer A was obligated to establish alternative peer review, supervisory, or mentorship arrangements before proceeding with complex AI-assisted engineering work, rather than substituting unvalidated AI tools without adequate oversight.
Upon Engineer B's retirement and before proceeding with AI-assisted engineering work for Client W
National Society of Professional Engineers
Fundamental Canon I.2 states that engineers 'perform services only in areas of their competence'
Code section II.2.a states that engineers must 'undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved'
Code section II.2.b, '[e]ngineers shall not affix their signatures to any plans or documents . . . not prepared under their direction and control'
Fundamental Canon I.1, 'hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public'
Fundamental Canon I.5 requires an Engineer to 'avoid deceptive acts'
Per Code section II.1.c, confidential information can only be shared with prior consent of the Client
Per Code section III.9, engineers are required to 'give credit for engineering work to those to whom credit is due'
BER in analyzing Engineer A's ethical obligations
Primary normative authority throughout the case, cited for Fundamental Canons and specific Code sections governing competency, direction and control, deception, confidentiality, credit attribution, and responsible charge
Engineer A, an environmental engineer with several years of experience and holding a professional engineering license
Engineer A (implicitly as license holder and professional engineer)
Primary normative authority governing Engineer A's obligations regarding competence, public safety, honesty, and professional seal use when employing AI-assisted tools to produce engineering deliverables
Non-Deception Constraint Engineer A Report Authorship Representation
Client W observed that the report 'read as if written by two different authors,' indicating that the AI-generated introduction was stylistically distinct; Engineer A's failure to disclose AI authorship created a deceptive impression of uniform professional authorship.
Engineer A was constrained by the non-deception principle from submitting an AI-generated report in a manner that created a false impression of independent professional authorship, particularly given that the stylistic discontinuity between AI-generated and human-authored sections was perceptible to Client W.
NSPE Code of Ethics — Honesty provisions; Non-Deception ethical constraint
Open-Source Artificial Intelligence Software for Report and Design Document Generation
Engineer A opted to use open-sourced artificial intelligence (AI) software to create an initial draft of the necessary report and to use AI-assisted drafting tools to generate preliminary design documents
The AI drafting software was also open-sourced
Engineer A for both report drafting and engineering design document generation
Used by Engineer A to generate initial draft of the contaminant report and preliminary engineering design documents, raising ethical questions about competence, disclosure, and professional responsibility
Peer Review Absence Compensation Constraint Engineer A Post-Engineer B Retirement
Engineer A had relied on Engineer B for quality assurance reviews of report drafts; following Engineer B's retirement, Engineer A opted to use AI tools as a substitute rather than establishing alternative peer review arrangements, contributing to the quality deficiencies in both deliverables.
Peer Review Absence Compensation Constraint
Following Engineer B's retirement, Engineer A was constrained from continuing professional practice at the same scope and complexity without establishing alternative peer review or quality assurance arrangements to compensate for the loss of Engineer B's mentorship and supervisory review.
NSPE Code of Ethics — Competence provisions; professional responsibility for work product quality
From the time of Engineer B's retirement through the preparation and submission of the report and design documents
Peer Review Absence Compensation Constraint Engineer A Post Engineer B Retirement
Engineer A was operating without the mentorship and quality assurance review previously provided by Engineer B, and proceeded to use unfamiliar AI-assisted drafting tools without establishing alternative oversight mechanisms, resulting in non-compliant design documents.
Following Engineer B's retirement, Engineer A was constrained to establish alternative peer review or supervisory arrangements before undertaking AI-assisted design work of equivalent complexity and risk, prohibiting continuation of professional practice at the same scope without compensating quality controls — a constraint violated by proceeding with AI-assisted design without such arrangements.
NSPE Code of Ethics Fundamental Canon I.1; NSPE Position Statement No. 10-1778 on Responsible Charge
Following Engineer B's retirement and throughout Engineer A's subsequent professional practice
Proactive AI Disclosure to Client Obligation Violated By Engineer A Toward Client W Design Documents
Engineer A submitted AI-assisted design documents to Client W without disclosing the use of AI-assisted drafting tools, despite those tools having materially shaped the design documents.
Proactive AI Disclosure to Client Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to proactively disclose to Client W that AI-assisted drafting tools substantially contributed to the engineering design documents, prior to or upon delivery of those documents.
At the time of delivering the AI-assisted design documents to Client W
AI, while not a human contributor, fundamentally shaped the report and design documents, warranting disclosure under Code section III.9
Proactive AI Disclosure to Client Obligation Violated By Engineer A Toward Client W Report
Engineer A submitted an AI-drafted environmental report to Client W without disclosing that AI software had generated the initial draft, despite the AI having materially shaped the report's content.
Engineer A was obligated to proactively disclose to Client W that AI language processing software substantially contributed to the environmental groundwater monitoring report, prior to or upon delivery of that report.
At the time of delivering the AI-assisted environmental report to Client W
Proactive Client Trust Transparency Constraint Engineer A Design Documents
Client W discovered misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features in the AI-generated design documents; proactive disclosure of AI tool use and its limitations could have prompted more rigorous joint review and prevented the submission of non-compliant documents.
Proactive Client Trust Transparency Constraint
Engineer A was constrained by best practices and emerging professional norms to proactively disclose to Client W that AI-assisted drafting tools substantially contributed to the engineering design documents, to enable informed client evaluation and prevent misunderstandings about the provenance and reliability of the design work.
NSPE Code of Ethics Fundamental Canon I.5; Emerging AI disclosure best practices
Prior to or upon delivery of AI-generated engineering design documents to Client W
best practices suggest informing clients when AI substantially contributes to a work product.
Proactive Client Trust Transparency Constraint Engineer A Report
Client W identified inconsistencies in the report and questioned its provenance; proactive disclosure of AI use could have prevented these misunderstandings and strengthened the professional relationship.
Engineer A was constrained by best practices and emerging professional norms to proactively disclose to Client W that AI language processing software substantially contributed to the environmental report, even absent universal mandatory guidelines, to prevent misunderstandings and maintain client trust.
Prior to or upon delivery of AI-generated environmental report to Client W
Professional Accountability Invoked By Engineer A Sealing AI-Generated Documents
AI-generated engineering design documents
Engineer A applied their professional seal to both the AI-drafted report and AI-generated design documents, accepting professional accountability for those products, but without having exercised the level of review and verification that such accountability requires
Applying the professional seal is an act of professional accountability — a representation that the engineer has exercised professional judgment over the work; this representation was undermined by the inadequate review of design documents and the non-disclosure of AI authorship
The accountability principle was formally invoked through sealing but substantively undermined by inadequate review; the principle requires that the seal represent genuine professional engagement
Professional Competence Invoked By Engineer A In AI Tool Selection
Engineer A's decision to use AI tools to compensate for the absence of mentor review, without adequate competence in those tools, reflects a failure to maintain the professional competence required for the work undertaken
Professional competence extends to the tools an engineer employs; using an unfamiliar AI tool as a substitute for established quality assurance processes without adequate validation does not satisfy the competence standard
The competence obligation required Engineer A to either develop adequate tool competence, seek alternative quality assurance, or decline the work; the chosen path of proceeding with an unfamiliar tool and cursory review did not satisfy the principle
Professional Competence Satisfied for Report Writing But Questioned for AI Tool Verification
Environmental groundwater monitoring report
Engineer A possessed substantive environmental engineering competence sufficient to analyze groundwater data and assess contaminant risks, but failed to demonstrate the tool-specific competence required to adequately verify AI-generated design outputs from a tool new to the market
Professional competence in the subject matter domain does not automatically confer competence in verifying AI tool outputs; engineers must demonstrate both domain competence and tool-specific verification competence
it is the BER's view that under the facts, unlike the situation of BER Case 98-3, Engineer A is not incompetent. The facts specifically note Engineer A has 'several years of experience' and 'strong technical expertise.'
BER distinguished Engineer A's case from BER Case 98-3 incompetence scenario, finding domain competence present but tool verification competence insufficient
Here, Engineer A, as an experienced environmental engineer, was competent to analyze groundwater monitoring data and assess contaminant risks.
Professional Journal Articles on Emerging Contaminants
Scientific and engineering research community
Peer-Reviewed Professional Journal Articles on Organic Compound Contaminants
Engineer A during quality review of AI-generated report
Used by Engineer A to cross-check key facts in the AI-generated report draft, serving as a verification resource for technical accuracy of the contaminant characterization content
Public Safety Risk from Design Omissions
From identification of safety feature omissions by Client W through successful correction and verification of design documents
an omission of key safety features required by local regulations
Omission of key safety features required by local regulations in AI-generated engineering design documents
Successful revision of design documents to include all required safety features
Client W raised concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the engineering design
AI-generated design documents were found to omit key safety features required by local regulations
Public Welfare Paramount Invoked By Omission Of Safety Features In Design Documents
Engineering design documents for groundwater infrastructure modifications
The omission of key safety features required by local regulations from the AI-generated design documents for groundwater infrastructure created a risk to public welfare that Engineer A's inadequate review failed to prevent
Public welfare paramount required Engineer A to ensure that design documents for groundwater infrastructure — a system with direct public health implications — complied with all applicable safety regulations; the cursory review that allowed safety feature omissions to pass undetected violated this principle
Public welfare obligations were not adequately served; the principle required Engineer A to ensure regulatory compliance before submission, not to rely on client review to catch safety omissions
Public Welfare Paramount Invoked Regarding AI Design Document Errors
AI-generated groundwater infrastructure design documents
Omitted safety features required for regulatory compliance
Engineer A's failure to conduct comprehensive review of AI-generated design documents resulted in misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features that could have caused regulatory noncompliance and safety hazards to the public
Public welfare paramount requires that engineers not allow AI tool convenience or efficiency to compromise the technical adequacy of safety-critical design documents affecting public health and infrastructure
Public welfare obligation was violated when Engineer A's high-level review failed to detect safety-critical omissions; the principle requires comprehensive verification regardless of tool used
Was Engineer A’s use of AI to create the report text ethical, given that Engineer A thoroughly checked the report?
By uploading Client W's confidential site data and groundwater monitoring information into an open-source AI platform without obtaining prior consent, did Engineer A independently violate the client confidentiality obligation under Code provision II.1.c, and does this violation stand as a separate ethical breach from any question about AI disclosure or report quality?
Given that Engineer B's retirement removed the primary quality assurance mechanism Engineer A had relied upon, did Engineer A have an independent ethical obligation to arrange an alternative peer review process before undertaking a complex, dual-scope engagement involving an unfamiliar AI tool, rather than substituting AI-generated output for that professional oversight?
When Client W observed that the report read as if written by two different authors, did Engineer A incur an immediate ethical obligation to proactively disclose the AI's role in drafting the more polished sections, or was silence in that moment itself a deceptive act under Code provisions I.5 and III.3?
Does Engineer A's failure to include citations to the professional journal articles used to cross-check AI-generated content constitute a violation of the obligation to give credit for engineering work under Code provision III.9, and does it additionally undermine the evidentiary foundation of a technical report that may inform regulatory or remediation decisions?
Was Engineer A’s use of AI-assisted drafting tools to create the engineering design documents ethical, given that Engineer A reviewed the design at a high level?
Does the principle of Professional Competence Satisfied for Report Writing conflict with the principle of Intellectual Honesty in Authorship when Engineer A's thorough factual verification of AI-generated text is used to justify sealing a report whose prose was substantially composed by a non-human system, potentially misrepresenting the nature and origin of the professional work product to Client W?
Does the principle of Responsible Charge Engagement conflict with the principle of Competence Assurance Under Novel Tool Adoption when an engineer applies their professional seal to AI-generated design documents after only a cursory review, given that the seal legally certifies personal responsible charge over work whose generative process the engineer does not fully understand?
Does the principle of Client Data Confidentiality in AI Tool Use conflict with the principle of Mentorship Continuity and Succession Planning when an engineer, deprived of a trusted peer reviewer, turns to an open-source AI platform as a substitute quality assurance mechanism, thereby necessarily exposing confidential client data to a third-party system in order to compensate for the loss of professional oversight?
Does the principle of Public Welfare Paramount conflict with the principle of AI Tool Transparency and Disclosure Applied to Client W Relationship when the Board concludes there is no universal ethical obligation to disclose AI use, yet the case demonstrates that undisclosed AI-generated design documents containing safety-critical omissions were submitted to a client and could have reached construction without correction had Client W not independently identified the defects?
If the use of AI was acceptable, did Engineer A have an ethical obligation to disclose the use of AI in any form to the Client?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer A fulfill their duty of candor toward Client W by submitting AI-generated work products without disclosure, regardless of whether the final outputs were accurate?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer A breach their categorical duty to maintain Responsible Charge by sealing engineering design documents that contained safety omissions and dimensional errors they had only cursorily reviewed?
From a consequentialist perspective, did the harm produced by Engineer A's cursory review of AI-generated design documents — resulting in misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features — outweigh any efficiency benefits gained from using AI-assisted drafting tools, and does this outcome retroactively render the decision to use those tools unethical?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer A demonstrate the professional integrity and intellectual honesty expected of a licensed engineer by personalizing AI-generated report text with only minor wording adjustments and presenting it under their professional seal without attribution, even if the content was factually verified?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer A exhibit the prudence and professional humility expected of a competent engineer by choosing to deploy a novel, unfamiliar AI drafting tool — with no prior experience — as a substitute for the mentorship and peer review previously provided by Engineer B, rather than seeking alternative qualified oversight?
From a consequentialist perspective, did Engineer A's decision to input Client W's confidential site data into open-source AI software — without obtaining prior consent — create a foreseeable risk of harm to Client W's proprietary interests that outweighs the drafting efficiency gained, and should that risk calculus have been apparent to a competent engineer before acting?
If Engineer A had disclosed their intended use of open-source AI software to Client W before beginning work, and Client W had withheld consent to upload confidential site data to a public AI platform, would Engineer A have been obligated to decline the use of AI tools entirely or to seek a privacy-compliant alternative, and how would that have affected the deliverables?
If Engineer A had conducted a rigorous, line-by-line technical review of the AI-generated design documents — equivalent to the thorough review applied to the report — rather than a cursory high-level check, would the safety omissions and dimensional errors have been caught before submission to Client W, and would that level of review have been sufficient to satisfy the Responsible Charge standard?
If Engineer B had not retired and had continued to provide quality assurance review of Engineer A's work products, would Engineer A have been less likely to over-rely on AI tools, and does the absence of mentorship create a systemic professional vulnerability that the NSPE Code of Ethics should address through explicit guidance on peer review succession planning?
If Engineer A had explicitly cited the use of AI software in the report — including identifying which sections were AI-generated and which were independently authored — would Client W's observation that the report 'read as if written by two different authors' have raised or resolved concerns about the reliability and professional accountability of the work product?
Regulatory Compliance Verification Obligation Breached By Engineer A In Design Document Submission
Engineer A submitted AI-generated design documents that omitted key safety features required by local regulations, which were identified by Client W rather than by Engineer A's review.
Regulatory Compliance Verification Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to verify that the AI-generated engineering design documents complied with all applicable local regulations, including required safety features, before submitting those documents to Client W.
Regulatory Compliance Verification Obligation Violated By Engineer A In Design Documents
Engineer A submitted AI-generated design documents to Client W that omitted key safety features required by local regulations, indicating failure to verify regulatory compliance before sealing and delivering the documents.
Engineer A was obligated to verify that the AI-generated engineering design documents complied with applicable local regulations — including safety feature requirements — before submitting those documents to Client W under a professional seal.
Regulatory Constraint Engineer A Local Safety Requirements Design Documents
AI-generated design documents failed to include key safety features required by local regulations; Client W identified the non-compliance and required Engineer A to revise the plans to meet professional and regulatory standards.
Engineer A was constrained by local regulatory requirements to ensure that engineering design documents for groundwater infrastructure modifications included all mandatory safety features specified by applicable local regulations, binding Engineer A regardless of the method used to generate the documents.
Local Regulatory Safety Requirements for Groundwater Infrastructure; applicable local regulations
Throughout the preparation and submission of engineering design documents
Responsible Charge Active Review Obligation Breached By Engineer A Over Design Documents
Engineer A conducted only a cursory review of AI-generated design documents and failed to identify misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features that were subsequently identified by Client W.
Responsible Charge Active Review Obligation
Engineer A, bearing statutory responsible charge over the AI-generated engineering design documents, was obligated to conduct an active and substantive review of those documents sufficient to identify misaligned dimensions and omitted regulatory safety features before submitting them to Client W.
Responsible Charge Active Review Obligation Partially Met By Engineer A Over Environmental Report
Engineer A conducted a thorough factual cross-check of the AI-generated report but the review did not fully address the stylistic inconsistency that was apparent to Client W, and Engineer A lacked full understanding of the AI tool's capabilities.
Engineer A, bearing statutory responsible charge over the AI-drafted environmental report, was obligated to conduct an active and substantive review of that report sufficient to ensure its professional adequacy and accuracy before applying a professional seal and submitting it to Client W.
Engineer A conducted a thorough review of the report, cross-checking key facts against professional journal articles and verifying the phrasing by running search engine queries
Responsible Charge Active Review Obligation Violated By Engineer A Over Design Documents
Engineer A bore statutory responsible charge over AI-generated design documents but conducted only a high-level review, failing to identify misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations, in violation of NSPE III.8.a and II.2.b.
Engineer A, as the engineer in responsible charge of the groundwater infrastructure design project, was obligated to conduct an active, substantive, and technically adequate review of the AI-generated design documents sufficient to identify misaligned dimensions, omitted safety features, and regulatory non-compliance before applying a professional seal.
NSPE defines 'Responsible Charge' in NSPE Position Statement No. 10-1778 as 'being actively engaged in the engineering process, from conception to completion.'
Responsible Charge Engagement Invoked By Engineer A Over Design Documents
AI-generated engineering design documents for groundwater infrastructure modifications
Engineer A bore statutory responsible charge over AI-generated design documents but conducted only a cursory review, failing to identify misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features that Client W subsequently discovered
Responsible charge in this context required Engineer A to review the AI-generated plans with sufficient depth to catch dimensional errors and regulatory non-compliances; a cursory review of outputs from an unfamiliar tool did not satisfy this obligation
The obligation of responsible charge was not satisfied by the cursory review; the principle required more thorough independent verification given the novelty of the AI tool and the safety significance of the omitted features
Responsible Charge Engagement Invoked By Engineer A Over Environmental Report
AI-drafted comprehensive environmental report on organic contaminant
Engineer A applied their professional seal to an AI-drafted environmental report after conducting a cross-checking review of facts and phrasing, but without fully understanding the AI tool's capabilities regarding accuracy and originality
The responsible charge obligation required Engineer A to ensure the report reflected genuine professional judgment; the review conducted was more thorough for the report than for the design documents, though the failure to disclose AI involvement remained problematic
Engineer A's review of the report was more substantive than for the design documents, but the seal representation remained potentially misleading given undisclosed AI authorship
Responsible Charge Engagement Violated Through AI Over-Reliance
Engineer A failed to maintain active, substantive engagement in the development of AI-generated design documents, conducting only a high-level review rather than the comprehensive verification required by responsible charge, resulting in undetected technical errors
Responsible charge requires that engineers treat AI-generated outputs with the same critical engagement as human-generated work — outlining solution guidelines, challenging recommendations, and verifying outputs against professional standards before acceptance
Responsible charge was not satisfied by high-level review; the principle requires active engagement equivalent to what would be applied to work by an engineering intern or support staff
Responsible Charge Verification Constraint Engineer A Design Documents
Engineer A conducted only a cursory review of AI-generated design documents before submission; the documents contained misaligned dimensions and omitted safety features required by local regulations, demonstrating that responsible charge was not adequately exercised.
Engineer A was constrained from sealing and submitting the AI-generated engineering design documents without having conducted a substantive, active review sufficient to establish genuine responsible charge; the cursory review performed did not satisfy this constraint.
State Professional Engineering Seal Law; NSPE Code of Ethics; BER-Case-90-6
Prior to and at the time of design document submission to Client W
Safety Constraint Engineer A AI-Generated Design Document Omissions
AI-generated design documents submitted by Engineer A omitted key safety features required by local regulations, creating public safety risk from groundwater infrastructure modifications; Client W identified the omissions and required revision.
Engineer A was constrained from submitting engineering design documents that omitted key safety features required by local regulations, regardless of whether those omissions originated from AI-generated drafts; the safety constraint required independent verification that all mandatory safety elements were present before submission.
Local Regulatory Safety Requirements for Groundwater Infrastructure; NSPE Code of Ethics — Public safety paramount canon
Safety Constraint Engineer A AI Design Omissions
AI-generated design documents submitted by Engineer A omitted key safety features required by local regulations and contained misaligned dimensions, creating potential safety hazards and regulatory noncompliance that conflicted with the paramount obligation to public safety.
Engineer A was constrained by the foundational engineering obligation to hold paramount public safety, health, and welfare, prohibiting submission of engineering design documents containing omitted safety features and misaligned dimensions that could create safety hazards and regulatory noncompliance.
NSPE Code of Ethics Fundamental Canon I.1
Safety Obligation Implicated By Engineer A Omission Of Safety Features In Design Documents
Engineer A's cursory review of AI-generated design documents failed to identify the omission of key safety features required by local regulations, creating a risk to public safety associated with groundwater infrastructure.
Engineer A was obligated to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in the preparation of engineering design documents for groundwater infrastructure, including ensuring that all required safety features were included and that the design complied with applicable safety regulations.
Throughout the preparation and review of engineering design documents for Client W
Scope of Practice Constraint Engineer A AI Tool Competence
Engineer A, while competent as an environmental engineer, lacked prior experience with the newly marketed AI-assisted drafting tool and deployed it without sufficient familiarization, resulting in non-compliant design documents that Engineer A failed to detect through only high-level review.
Engineer A was constrained to perform engineering services only within areas of demonstrated competence, requiring that use of a newly marketed AI-assisted drafting tool be preceded by sufficient familiarization with the tool's capabilities and limitations to ensure professional-grade outputs — a constraint partially violated by deploying an unfamiliar tool without adequate prior verification of its reliability.
NSPE Code of Ethics Fundamental Canon I.2; Code Section II.2.a
During selection and deployment of the newly marketed AI-assisted drafting tool
it is the BER's view that under the facts, unlike the situation of BER Case 98-3, Engineer A is not incompetent. The facts specifically note Engineer A has 'several years of experience' and 'strong technical expertise.' But the facts also note Engineer A appears to be operating in a compromised manner.
Scope of Practice Constraint Engineer A AI Tool Reliance Beyond Competence
Engineer A used a novel AI drafting tool without prior experience and conducted only a cursory review of AI-generated design documents, operating beyond the scope of practice defined by demonstrated competence to verify AI outputs in this domain.
Engineer A was constrained from relying on AI-generated outputs in areas where Engineer A lacked the competence to independently verify those outputs, as professional scope of practice requires that engineers practice only within areas of demonstrated competence, including competence to evaluate AI-generated work product.
NSPE Code of Ethics — Scope of practice and competence provisions; BER-Case-98-3
Throughout the preparation of both the environmental report and engineering design documents using AI tools
State Statute Governing Professional Engineering Seal Application
Engineer A when sealing the draft report and design documents
Governs the conditions under which Engineer A may apply their professional seal to reports and design documents, including those generated with AI assistance
Submitted Report Without AI Disclosure → Professional Seal Affixed to AI-Assisted Work Without Transparency
Submitted Report Without AI Disclosure → Report Stylistic Inconsistency Detected
Technology Non-Substitution Constraint Engineer A Design Phase
Engineer A relied on AI-assisted drafting tool outputs without establishing solution guidelines, challenging outputs, or conducting comprehensive verification, effectively substituting AI judgment for independent professional engineering judgment.
Technology Non-Substitution for Engineering Judgment Constraint
Engineer A was constrained from using the AI-assisted drafting tool as a substitute for independent engineering judgment in the design phase, requiring that all AI-generated design outputs be evaluated against Engineer A's own professional standards before acceptance — a constraint violated by passively accepting AI outputs with only high-level review.
NSPE Code of Ethics Fundamental Canon I.2; BER Case 98-3; BER Case 90-6
technology must not replace or be used as a substitute for engineering judgement
During preparation of AI-generated engineering design documents
Only after the engineer in Responsible Charge has satisfied themselves that the proposed solution is in accordance with their own and professional standards should the design/report be accepted.
Transparency Principle Invoked By Engineer A Toward Client W
Engineer A's failure to disclose AI tool use to Client W in both the report and design document submissions undermined the transparency that the professional-client relationship requires, preventing Client W from making informed judgments about the reliability and provenance of the deliverables
Transparency in the professional-client relationship required Engineer A to disclose material information about how the work products were generated, including the use of novel AI tools, so that Client W could exercise informed oversight
The transparency obligation was not satisfied; no competing principle justified non-disclosure of AI tool use to the client
input of Client W's data into AI software before receipt of AI-generated first draft of report
report drafting and submission before design document drafting and submission
site groundwater monitoring (over a year) before preparation of the report and design documents
submission of draft report before Client W's review of report