At AIA25, Allie K. Miller inspires architects to lead in the AI age
AI expert Allie K. Miller shared how architects can amplify creativity, boost productivity, and shape a more agile, human-centered future with AI.
Allie K. Miller, an artificial intelligence (AI) innovator and entrepreneur, greeted a packed crowd Thursday morning at the AIA 2025 Conference on Architecture & Design in Boston. Her address was the first of three mainstage events taking place this week.
Miller, who previously served as the Global Head of Machine Learning Business Development for Startups and Venture Capital at Amazon Web Service, shared with the audience that she’s been in the field of AI for 20 years.
“We are not at the beginning of the AI age,” she said. “We are actually in Act Two, and it feels like most companies are still improvising Act One.”
Here are a few key takeaways from Miller’s speech on how architects can “supercharge” their staff and their outputs with AI.
The #1 thing to pay attention to in AI is the pace of change.
“[AI] is not one tool, it is not one app, it is not one use case,” she said before sharing four examples of how quickly AI tools are evolving and changing—and what that means for their users.
“Most people believe that ChatGPT was this massive exception to the rule, but actually, it was a harbinger,” she said. “It was an indicator of the new pace of change. And we’re just using AI as that signal.”
Miller explained that while it may have initially taken some time for AI to outperform humans on tasks like handwriting recognition, image recognition and reading comprehension, many similar benchmarks today are being beat in less than one year, as with an AI benchmark called the Google-Proof Question Answer.
Another key aspect to AI’s rapid adoption is that it is available to everyone. Prior to ChatGPT, Miller acknowledged, “most people in this room would not be available to take advantage of these systems. None of this matters if it’s only for the precious few.”
Before 2019, she explained, AI was only accessible to about a million people in the world and was primarily used by developers. In 2022, ChatGPT launched, giving anyone with internet access the ability to use AI.
“I can tell you that the capabilities of AI are changing, but the most important thing is how you respond,” she said. “We are on the precipice of one of the most significant shifts in the history of business.”
Applying AI through people, process, and product
“The way that I talk to my clients about AI-first business, and I wanted to distill that and add that clarity for you in this room, is the ‘Three-P” outline,” she told the audience. “The ‘Three-P’ is what I saw in these early conversations with these top AI startups that have now raised over a billion dollars.” The three P’s she encourages everyone to think about in relation to business results are people, process, and product.
“Apply AI to the places that make sense, is what you need to be taking away from this,” she said. “Always using AI for that action piece and action inspiration is how you’re going to become an AI superuser.”
“2024 was really the year of multimodality,” Miller said. “This idea that we were starting to get images, starting to get video … go home and grab the coolest stat from your website. Grab a couple. Ask ChatGPT to turn that into a Hawaiian-themed infographic. See what happens.” Multimodality, she said, is opening up brand-new interfaces.
“The last [item] is not a tool, it’s not tech, it’s not some model that’s going to be really flashy,” she said. “It’s a business model shift. It’s the idea that these SaaS tools were normal, hourly services. They are no longer charging by the hour, by the seat, by compute time. What is happening—what we’re already seeing in a small way, you don’t have to change your entire business model yet—is that folks are charging by output.”
In closing, Miller said, “None of this matters if you do not prioritize culture, and your specific company culture. Culture and impact and trust have to happen, and I want you to keep prioritizing all humans right here.”
AI tools Miller recommends
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