We make more homes, but I would say the construction of the average home is worse after the invention of the power saw than before it.
That's like saying 'cars were better made in the 1950's because they used tons of steel'. Like they were 'heavier and more robust' - but that doesn't mean better.
Foundations are way better, more robust, especially weatherized. Windows today are like magic compared to windows 100 years ago.
What we do more poorly now is we don't use wood everywhere, aka doors, and certain kinds of workmanship are not there - like winding staircases, mouldings - but you can easily have that if you want to pay for it. That's a choice.
AI is power and leverage, it will make better things as long as it's directed by skilled operators.
The precision of how the wood or material meets is worse (when cut at the site). There is a huge amount of sloppy work in modern construction.
It seems to me that in the past there probably was lots of shoddy workmanship and just no-one paid attention to it.
But I have no proof of that.
And we can accommodate for 'selection bias'.
We have all of the historical evidence we could ever want for 'how things were built', basically 'infinity examples'.
I think some things were more robust, particularly some of the old framing, like in Europe, with non load-bearing walls etc. Those will stand for 1K years, but arguably unnecessary.
You have to get a representative sample, that's the tricky part.
So there's that!