Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer: Extinction of the Designer or Rise of an Augmented Designer

Abstract Systematic design process is used in engineering systems design to develop solutions to problems of varying complexity. There have been efforts within the community to develop tools to perform automated generative design at varying stages of the systematic design process. However, a Large Language Model (LLM) has never been used. To this end, this paper presents an initial investigation into the use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT to automatically generate solutions to an engineering problem. It is demonstrated that for the most part ChatGPT is quite capable of generating conceptual design for an engineering problem. In light of this technology, this paper floats questions on the future direction of research and education for the engineering systems design community.