In this conversational interview, Christopher Parsons and Speaker A explore how artificial intelligence can dramatically simplify the creation of realistic, high‑fidelity simulated environments for professional training. They discuss the longstanding value of learning through low‑stakes trial‑and‑error and how AI removes the labor‑intensive bottleneck of writing detailed scenario scripts. Concrete examples include a simulator built for architects to practice user‑group meetings with surgeons and hospital administrators, and an air‑medical crew training setup where AI‑generated role‑players act as distraught family members or create chaotic conditions (wind, sudden interference) to stress‑test responders. The dialogue highlights challenges such as busy subject‑matter experts needing to author scenarios, and proposes AI‑assisted “thought‑partner” editing to turn writers into editors. They emphasize that AI‑driven simulations can be endlessly repeatable, adjustable in mood or behavior, and scalable far beyond traditional story‑based or pre‑recorded video training, offering multiple rehearsals and the ability to explore alternative actions in real time. The overall message is that AI‑powered simulations will supplement real‑world experience, providing a flexible, repeatable training tool across knowledge‑intensive fields like AEC and healthcare.
Chapters
I think one of the use cases of AI that I find most compelling is the ability to create simulated environments and experiences, right? I think we have long known the value of learning through simulation and getting to do trial and error in a low-stakes context, all those sorts of things. But one of the biggest barriers was always just the mechanics of creating the simulation. It's a lot of work to even just write a, a tabletop written scenario exercise, right? Let alone actually create realistic client specs for a building and then have somebody create a design and then evaluate it and do all that. AI is simplifying all of those pieces of it. And so I think yes, training will take advantage of AI almost undoubtedly. There will be opportunities to supplement real-world experience with simulated experience and it helps solve some of the challenges that we see. I mean, in all knowledge-intensive work, right?
I have a crossover story between our two worlds to share with you.
Yeah.
One of our clients, Todd Henderson from Boulder Associates, spoke at our conference this year and he built a simulator to help architects who had never worked in a healthcare setting before understand what it's like to go into a user group meeting full of a couple busy surgeons and hospital administrators. He actually built different roles and backstories for these people and would go in and you're trying to understand what they need or pitch a design and you're just getting grilled. How does this apply to me? And so it was like getting reps just even in these human-to-human, you know, kind of interactions.
Yeah, I like that. And as someone married to a surgeon, you do have to practice sometimes presenting to them if you want, if you want to get an idea actualized. But yeah, I mean, 'cause again, this is a longstanding problem, right? We saw it when I was doing this research with the air medical crews. They would practice on simulator mannequins, but one of the things they would try to do is they would have one of their colleagues run around the corner and be the distraught parent of the patient. 'Cause they're doing this out sometimes on a car accident scene, right? And it's like, yeah, the treating of the patient is one thing, but the thing you might not be prepared for coming from a role as a bedside nurse is that somebody's gonna run up and grab your arm while you're in the middle of trying to administer this medication, or it's gonna be super windy and do all these things. And yeah, you could wait till the first time it happens for real, or they could put you in a basement room with a mannequin, crank the fan on, and then have somebody run around the corner and try to grab your arm. That you could find ways to simulate these things in order to prepare folks better for the first time they encounter it in the real world. Now, until AI powers the robots, there'll still be some sort of human bit that we need to do. But I think a lot of these scenarios and things you can do in a, a fairly convincing manner with AI, and they're more realistic than some of the old school pre-recorded video cases and things like that. So I, I see a huge upside there.
No, I agree with you. I, and I think that one of the challenges also is that oftentimes the people that need to write these scenarios are the busiest people in your organization. And so if they can move to be more of an editor versus the writer and they can interact with a thought partner to help them just explore and get, you know, it's the blank page thing. They can even just talk and say like, look, I need to write a scenario. This is roughly what I want to have happen. Like, help me refine this thing. I've done a lot of that. And it is— I think it is quite helpful in that way.
Yeah, I think it also, you know, will allow these things again to be scalable and adjustable in ways that stories might have been too limited for, because the story is a recounting of one event, right? And the inevitable question anytime you tell a story is like, oh, well, what if you had done this instead? And if we can start building out some real high-fidelity simulations based on underlying characters with models and motives and things like that, you could get to the point where you could actually try something different and see how it would've gone. And again, none of this is new, right? You, I mean, Apprenticeship has included simulation from day one. They're not an either or, right? You do practice runs, you do mockups, all that sort of thing. But now we might be able to do it just at a scale that that we wouldn't have thought of before and go back and switch out actions and things that before you might have been able to reflect or debrief or talk about it afterwards, but you couldn't really go back and just get a second rep in because who's gonna sit there and have the exact same pretend client interaction with you 8 times to help you prepare for your first pitch meeting? An AI bot will, it'll have it 8 times and you can say, you know, be in a bad mood today, right?
