BUILDING w h il e
BLACK daniel k amau
when the term artificial intelligence (ai) is mentioned,
neled to the development of software. To understand the
my mind quickly spirals to images of robots and compli- foundation of his work, we would need to understand the cated home appliances waging a post-apocalyptic war basics of AI. Kamau explains that AI is fundamentally against humanity. Daniel Kamau of Sketch Deck AI, has “Computers trying to mimic human intelligence, and that however eased my irrational fears by providing better can look very different. It can be learning much like you context around the value of these innovations, specifically would teach a baby to read and understand the world. in his world of construction.
At some point, self-learning kicks in and the computer is
The Kenyan native migrated to Atlanta, Georgia able to teach itself”. He focuses on a subset of AI called (USA) at the age of eight. He made his way to Ottawa, machine learning which builds on the breakthroughs in Canada to complete his university studies after excelling computer vision. By labeling ‘data sets’ of either the physin high school. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engi- ical world or within documentation, the computer can be neering, Kamau was drawn to Alberta soon after grad- trained to understand and interpret the information to uating, hoping to take advantage of the opportunities in support simple decision making. This innovation provides the field of construction. Speaking to what attracted him the foundation for Sketch Deck AI. to structural engineering, he shares, “I wanted to see and
The documentation that provides the learning in
feel the things that I built; another big part of my decision this case are construction blueprint drawings. The softis that I wanted to contribute to development of the infra- ware that his team designs, trains a computer to carefully structure in my home country”.
scan data sets from each blueprint and produce a detailed
Kamau describes that his entrepreneurship path took materials inventory list. As with any business, construca slight detour when he discovered that he could build tion companies are focused on the bottom line.The potenthings beyond physical infrastructure. Instead of building tial man hours saved in having software execute the calcustructures with metal and mortar, his skills are now chan- lations for material orders vs spending hours and hours 32 .
issue ii
