Nine months ago we released Synthesis AI Search for AEC Firms to our client community. Since then, we’ve seen some remarkable things.
Firms are surfacing knowledge that was previously buried across intranets and databases. They’re connecting employees with internal experts more easily, helping marketing teams find project precedents and draft communication, and using AI Search to support digital design practices, scale expert knowledge, upskill emerging professionals, and make onboarding more effective.
Our clients are making significant improvements to how their firms work and learn.
And yet, alongside all this momentum, I’ve also heard a growing concern:
“I’m worried that our employees are going to accept whatever AI tells them at face value and run with it.”
This concern isn’t new. We’ve long tried to teach people to question what they read online, to check sources, to verify claims. But something about this moment—maybe it’s the polish, maybe it’s the speed, maybe it’s the aura of intelligence that clings to anything branded AI—feels different.
Which brings me to a word I didn’t learn until later in my career, but which now feels central to this moment: epistemology, and its practical counterpart, epistemic humility.
What is Epistemology?
If you’ve never heard the word epistemology, you’re not alone. I didn’t encounter it until around 2017, when I met Larry Prusak, a mentor and pioneer in the knowledge management field.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge: how we know what we know, how knowledge is formed and validated, how it evolves or gets distorted over time. It’s a field that touches everything from philosophy to science to journalism, and increasingly, AI.
Larry introduced me to a related concept that’s stuck with me ever since: epistemic humility. The idea that we should be humble about what we know, cautious about what we claim, and curious enough to keep questioning even our most cherished assumptions as well as the assertions of others.
It’s one of those phrases that’s quietly shaped how I lead, how we build products at KA, and how I think about the future of knowledge work.
Life Lessons in Epistemic Humility (By Other Names)
Though I didn’t know the term at the time, I can now see that epistemic humility was deeply embedded in my training as a history major. In college, I took a senior honors seminar on objectivity, a dense but fascinating exploration of how historical “facts” are shaped by power, perspective, and the biases of those who record them. It was, at its core, a course in skepticism as much as storytelling.
The cliché that “history is written by the winners” turns out to be not just a provocative line, but a methodological truth. One of the most valuable lessons I took from that class was how to interrogate knowledge itself. Who is telling the story? What are they leaving out? What kind of evidence are they citing, and what evidence might be missing entirely? How else might this narrative have gone if someone else had written it?
That impulse to question what I thought I knew didn’t only come from academia. My grandfather, who was a physicist and engineer, had a way of instilling it in me from a young age. Whenever I made a claim—something I’d heard, something I believed—he would pause, look me in the eye, and ask, “Christopher, how do you know that?”
It used to drive me crazy. I’d say, “I just do!” But over time, I realized what he was doing. He wasn’t dismissing what I said, he was inviting me to think more deeply about where my knowledge came from. He was nudging me toward greater clarity, and toward a habit of substantiating my thoughts before presenting them as facts.
My favorite English teacher in high school did something similar. In the margins of every essay, he would write “nail it down”, his way of saying, “prove it.” Don’t just assert an idea; go back to the source, find the passage, make your case. He was teaching us to read closely, to cite carefully, and to build arguments with integrity.
These habits—questioning assumptions, checking sources, qualifying what we think we know—have served me well over time. In the early years of my career, I sometimes jumped to conclusions based on intuition or assumptions that later turned out to be wrong. I can remember a few particularly confident, maybe even self-righteous, emails that I ended up needing to retract. Eventually, I adopted a quiet mantra to help prevent those missteps: First, get the facts.
Over time, that principle became second nature. Now, whether I’m reading a document, designing a product, or engaging in a debate, I find myself instinctively asking: Do I really know this is true? What’s the evidence? What’s my source? Am I overstating it?
These are simple questions, but they’re deceptively powerful. In an era of AI, where the answers are fast and the language is fluent, they might be more important than ever.
Building Epistemic Humility into AI Search
That mindset—questioning claims, requiring proof, acknowledging uncertainty—is exactly what we’ve tried to build into Synthesis AI Search.
From the beginning, we designed the system with epistemic humility in mind. We wanted it to reflect not just what’s known, but how it’s known, and how confident the system can reasonably be.
That’s why Synthesis AI Search is designed to:
Cite its sources.
Reveal conflicting answers when they exist.
Say “I don’t know” when it’s unsure.
We made those choices deliberately. We believe overconfidence is a liability. Especially when people are using AI to make decisions that affect projects, clients, and careers.
Epistemic Humility Is Just Curiosity with Discipline
I believe epistemic humility is quietly connected to something we value deeply in AEC firms: curiosity.
The best architects and engineers I know are insatiably curious. They’re constantly asking questions, not because they doubt everything, but because they care about getting it right. They want to see the drawing, double-check the measurements, run the scenario one more time—not out of perfectionism, but out of respect for the complexity of their work.
Epistemic humility is just curiosity with discipline. It’s the mental habit of pausing before accepting something as true—whether it’s a spreadsheet, a project schedule, or an AI-generated answer.
It’s not about hesitation or paralysis. It’s about knowing when to qualify, when to cite, and when to say, “I’m not sure—but here’s what I do know.”
And in a time of accelerating complexity, I think it’s a skill worth cultivating.
Perhaps the Most Important Skill for the AI Era
AI is not just changing how we retrieve information—it’s reshaping how we learn, how we make decisions, and how we collaborate. With every release, the tools become more fluent, more confident, and more seamlessly integrated into our daily work. They’re getting better at sounding human, and synthesizing our knowledge.
And that’s a good thing. Across AEC firms, we’re already seeing real benefits. AI is helping surface buried knowledge, connect people across silos, accelerate research, and strengthen onboarding. It’s scaling expertise in ways that were previously unimaginable. And the possibilities ahead, especially for learning and development, are even more exciting.
But to fully realize those benefits, we need a parallel discipline. Not a technical one, but a cognitive one. We need to become more discerning consumers of AI-generated content. We need to read with more care, question with more rigor, and get more comfortable saying, “I don’t know.”
That’s where epistemic humility comes in.
It invites us to pause before accepting something as true. To ask, “Where did this information come from?” “Is there conflicting evidence?” “What don’t I have access to which might contain relevant facts?”
We’ve built Synthesis AI Search to support this mindset—to cite its sources, surface disagreements, and say “I don’t know” when it needs to. But the skill of thinking critically and holding space for nuance is something we all have to cultivate, because AI is only as accurate as the information it is provided.
In a world where the answers will only get faster, smoother, and more convincing, epistemic humility may turn out to be more than a virtue, it may be the most important skill for the AI era.
Or to put it in my grandfather’s words, “AI, how do you know that?”
Go Deeper
📝 Larry Prusak Tribute: What I Learned About Generosity, Playfulness, and Epistemic Humility from Larry Prusak
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Smarter by Design is a biweekly newsletter about how AEC firms are rethinking knowledge, learning, and leadership in an era of rapid change.
Drawing on 25 years in the industry, Christopher Parsons shares stories, insights, and practical strategies from firm leaders and knowledge champions who are scaling learning, growing expertise, and designing more resilient organizations.
This isn’t just about AI (though that’s part of the story). It’s about how firms become learning organizations—places where knowledge flows, people grow, and insights compound over time.
If you care about the future of knowledge and leadership in the AEC industry, this newsletter is for you.