The role of large language models (AI chatbots) in fire engineering: An examination of technical questions against domain knowledge

This communication presents a short review of chatbot technology and preliminary findings from comparing two recent chatbots, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard, in the context of fire engineering by evaluating their responses in handling fire safety-related queries. A diverse range of fire engineering questions and scenarios were created and examined, including structural fire design, fire prevention strategies, evacuation, building code compliance, and fire suppression systems. The results reveal some key differences in the performance of the chatbots, with ChatGPT demonstrating a relatively superior performance of 88% (vs. 80% for Bard). Then, this communication highlights the potential for chatbot technology to revolutionize fire engineering practices by providing instant access to critical information while outlining areas for further improvement and research. Evidently, and when it matures, this technology will likely be elemental to our engineers’ practice and education.