Two brilliant conversations this week on Project Flux. We hit a huge milestone, our 100th episode and sat down with an engineering innovator who is using AI to rethink how we design the buildings we live and work in.
James and Yoshi mark 100 episodes of Project Flux by reflecting on how far AI has come, where it is heading, and what it means for the world. Then Diego Padilla-Philipps of WSP joins us to share how a 70-storey building changed his entire approach to AI in engineering design.
🎉 Project Flux Hits 100 Episodes: AI, Agents, and the Uncertain Future Ahead
One hundred episodes in, and the conversation is more urgent than ever. James and Yoshi take stock of a landscape that has shifted dramatically since Project Flux launched, from early curiosity about large language models to a world now grappling with agentic AI, humanoid robots, and the geopolitics of the AI arms race.
The episode opens with a look back at the evolution of AI benchmarks and how quickly the goalposts have moved. What was considered cutting-edge 18 months ago is now baseline. The hosts dig into the rise of agentic tools, AI systems that do not just respond but act and what that means for high-value professional work. If AI can now orchestrate workflows, delegate tasks, and learn from outcomes, the question is no longer whether it will change your job, but how fast.
There is a candid discussion about trust, specifically, the growing tension between the speed at which AI is being deployed and the pace at which humans are building confidence in it. James and Yoshi explore the human versus machine dilemma with honesty: when do you hand over the wheel, and what do you lose when you do?
The conversation also ventures into territory that is harder to map, prediction markets, the dark side of deepfakes, the political implications of AI development, and the very real possibility of a global AI power struggle. And then, as only Project Flux can, it lands on humanoid robots and what their integration into daily life and construction sites might actually look like.
One hundred episodes of asking hard questions. This one does not disappoint.
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This 70-Story Building Changed How We Use AI in Engineering
Diego Padilla-Philipps is a Technical Director at WSP, one of the world's leading professional services and engineering firms. He has spent his career at the intersection of structural engineering and computational design, and it was a 70-storey building project that became his inflection point, the moment he realised that AI-driven multi-objective optimisation was not a future concept but a present necessity.
Diego opens the conversation by challenging the construction industry's tendency toward gradual improvement. Innovation in the built environment, he argues, too often means doing the same thing slightly better rather than rethinking the process entirely. AI, when applied properly, offers something different: the ability to explore thousands of design permutations simultaneously, balancing structural performance, cost, sustainability, and buildability in ways no human team could manage manually.
He speaks with real clarity about the siloed, linear nature of current construction workflows — where architects, engineers, and contractors work in sequence rather than in concert — and why this is one of the biggest barriers to AI adoption. The technology is ready. The processes are not. Diego is frank about the misconceptions too: AI is not a magic wand, and the professionals who treat it as one are setting themselves up for disappointment.
The episode takes a thoughtful turn when Diego addresses job displacement. His view is measured and worth hearing in full — AI as a tool for professionals, not a replacement for them, but only if those professionals are willing to evolve. The conversation also explores what sustainable, long-lived building design looks like in an AI-enabled future, and how the next generation of engineers will need to be trained differently to thrive in it.
There is a moment toward the end of the episode — on creativity and human-centred design — that we are deliberately leaving for you to discover. It is one of the more quietly powerful exchanges we have had on the show.
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