Future of Engineering Jobs & Automation 9

[StrucPEng]

Hello All,

I wanted to start a discussion on the future of the engineering profession in light of continued improvements in AI and automation. There is a lot of talk about many jobs being "outsourced" to AI or that can be completed with much less expense than before. A few that come to mind are truck drivers, customer service, and even radiology. It is a topic I have been interested in lately and wanted to get everyone opinion on how they see the engineering profession evolving in light of this. A few initial questions would be:

- What kind of engineering processes can and can not be completed with AI or could be automated in the future?
- Which branches of engineering are most/least vulnerable to automation? (Structural/Mechanical/ etc.)
- What does automation mean for licensing and duty to the public?
- Will there be less of a demand licensed engineers used mostly for confirmation of computer created designs?
- Do you see the value of an engineer increasing or decreasing in light of automation? Less

I am interested to hear everyone's thoughts on this. Thanks for reading!

Best,

Matt Soda, P.Eng

 

[djs]

I think for one, any engineering/design which requires a seal (PE) will still require a real person. Current laws and regulations require that. What is getting automated is the drafting, drawings and the calculations. That has been going on for decades. That being said, in my field (Instrumentation and Control), there has been a steady decline in the quality and quantity of engineer on the PE level. More and more is being left to the contractor and systems integrator. This is combination with specifications which are very vague usually does not go smoothly.

 

[StrucPEng]

I agree the automation will definitely cannibalize the drafting, drawings etc. I wonder if we will reach a point where there are very few people at the PE level who are there to check and stamp and they will come at a premium or will we end up lowering the value to the lowest bidder to rubber stamp the computers calculations (assuming that computer get to the point where the process is near perfect).

One item of most engineering which is a positive is currently there still needs to be manufacturing or physical manifestations of most engineering work so that will for sure require human interaction for the foreseeable future.

 

[drawoh]

M_Soda,

I am at a site where we send out partially dimensioned fabrication drawings. Our fabricator receives a PDF of the drawing, and a STP of the CAD model. Anything not explicitly dimensioned is fabricated to the capabilities of the manufacturer's process. Anything explicitly dimensioned is inspected and reported on the First Article Inspection (FAI) report. All of this involves the precise sort of decision making that I don't think AI can do. What tolerances are critical on this part I have just designed?

There are resources in place now to automatically produce fabrication drawings from 3D[ ]models, which work fine if you don't mind your drawings being crap, and which probably work just as well as handing the thing to a CAD[ ]monkey. As designer, I strongly prefer to do my own fabrication drawings.

If you are performing simple, repetitive tasks under close supervision, you are in danger of being automated. If you have to know stuff, communicate, think and solve problems, you are safe for a while, yet.

--
JHG

 

[StrucPEng]

drawoh,

For sure a road block to AI will be critical thinking and decision making which will bode well for the engineering profession keeping automation at bay.

I spent some time earlier in my career working project management and connection design for a steel detailing firm and as you described there is software that will nearly draw the shop drawings for you. They do need some TLC most of the time to not be a total embarrassment but given the speed to which we have moved from the days of manual drafting to pre-drawn 90% complete fab drawings it is pretty amazing.

 

[drawoh]

M_Soda,

I realize we work in different fields, but are (good) drawings 90% pre-drawn? The dimensioning schemes and the tolerancing require just as much thought as they ever did.

--
JHG

 

[SandCounter]

No matter how smart, computers will only be able to design what's possible. It will still take human engineers to make the impossible possible.

I used to count sand. Now I don't count at all.

 

[canwesteng]

Good drawings on multidisciplinary project are mostly pre drawn - most of the work needs to be done modeling. Sure seems like we are some ways away form going model only though.

As far as I see it, doing brownfield industrial structural work, there's no way AI will replace me before I'm ready to retire.

 

[GregLocock]

I think tolerancing is a good example where an AI could take on the job. Not in every case, but in the simple case of 'will this bit fit into that bit 99.99% of the time?' we are already there.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[Sparweb]

Does anyone remember the days when every product vendor had to employ many product engineers to receive and process all the technical questions that came in on the phone?
Starting in the 1990's, these vendors have divided into 2 camps: those that still force you to phone them to learn anything about the product, and those that put the info requested 90% of the time on their website.
I bet a lot of product support engineers have lost their jobs due to the latter.


STF

 

[drawoh]

SparWeb,

When I worked on a drafting board, I had a large cubicle with a big bookshelf. When we switched to CAD and moved to new, smaller cubicles, I had to throw out a huge pile of literature. I call the vendor when the literature or website is confusing.

--
JHG

 

[JohnRBaker]

Automation may have some other impacts as well, as seen in this story:

‘No human could do anything’: The man who was sacked by a machine ‘out for blood’

IBRAHIM Diallo was sacked by a machine “out for blood” — and his bosses could only stand by helplessly as he was marched out.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/wor...d/news-story/1852bfd331a671a5ac153721bf91eb1f

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[IRstuff]

Almost everything is electronic nowadays, so piles of catalogs and articles simply reside in my TARDIS-like external hard drive. While there may indeed be downsides to automation and the current state of technology, the benefits are pretty enormous as well. I started with 60 boxes of papers, magazines, etc., 20 years ago in a move, and the last move involved only 4 boxes, mostly junk, anyway. But, all the magazines and papers were scrunched into a 2 TB drive.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[JohnRBaker]

While this is not directly related to the workplace per se, it does provide an example as highlighted by IRstuff above.

I've been taking photos since the early 60's, when I was in high school, and I attempted to keep all of the negatives/slides. To date, I'm just short of having 44,000 images in my collection. Now it is true that since 2000, when I got my first digital camera, a Canon PowerShot S10 (2 MP), most of those images only exist as data on some hard-drive or archived DVD-ROM's, but I was still shooting film as recently as 2006. Of those nearly 44,000 images, over 17,000 of them were originally film-based, either negatives or transparencies. In 2001 I acquired a high-resolution (4000 dpi) film scanner, a CanoScan FS4000US device ($995 in 2001 dollars), which BTW still works with my MacBook Pro laptop (Canon stopped supporting it years ago, but there are a couple of 3rd party companies who have developed and still support drivers for this device).

Anyway, after I finally scanned the last of my slides and negatives, I was still keeping the 'hard-copies', but eventually they filled some 20+ thick three-ring binders that took-up the entire shelf in a storage closet. So about 10 years ago, after realizing that I had not needed to access a single physical slide or negative since those 4000 dpi images, along with my eight-color Epson photo-printer, was more than adequate when I needed an actual print, I decided to dump those binders and free-up some critically needed storage space. And in those 10 years I've never regretted doing that.

So the moral is that I agree with IRstuff, that there are some very appreciated benefits when new technologies are properly applied.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[IRstuff]

Sounds more like someone not liking Mr. Diallo and hacking the machinery to oust him. I seriously doubt that the machinery is either self-aware or even sufficiently malevolent to do that.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[zdas04]

The question before "will AI take over the engineering function" you really have to ask "what is 'engineering' and what portion of your work activities are involved in those functions?"

Engineering is not and has never been "drafting and toleranceing". We all either know how to do that or we once knew how to do that, but it is not "engineering" and the robots are welcome to it. Engineering is not "budgeting and estimating" although we all spend a huge portion of our time on those tasks. It isn't differential equations. It isn't your discipline's version of Marks or Perry.

"Engineering" is the knowledgeable application of the concept of "good enough". I managed projects to build computer software in the 1980's, and I delivered over 30 "completed" applications for every one that my peers delivered. Why? None of them were able to internalize the concept of "good enough" and strove for perfect, generally that goal caused the projects to take so long that people had developed other ways to address the problem by the time the project was starting beta testing. Same with most of the jobs I've had in my career. I always became indispensable (for the very short term) because my projects moved forward when my peers were bogged down in some detail.

The concept that I call "good enough" has many facets and goes by many names. "Creativity" is one. "Thinking outside of the box" is another and usually happens when an individual looks at a problem and says "wait a minute, the regulatory or company bias against [insert concept here, I would put "pneumatic strength testing" or "vacuum operation of Natural Gas wells"] is not based on physical reality and we need to change it". Programming an AI to traverse the boxes edges is pretty easy (I've done it, many of us have), but to get the AI to cross those edges is seen as "dangerous" and "chaotic". The part of our jobs that is actually engineering seems to me to be quite safe from robots. In my estimation, the robots are welcome to the part of our jobs that eat up a day unproductively (I'd be happy to never again do a task that can be done in its entirety in Excel or MathCad or AutoCad).

I expose students to these concepts in my book and in my classes, most of the people exposed to them don't get it. The few (a mix of graduate engineers and the best and brightest of field hands) that do get it always go on to be superstars in their areas of influence--and they all would have been superstars without my classes, it just would have taken longer. Once we get rid of the paradigm that just because someone has a degree in engineering they are doing engineering work, this discussion of AI Engineers falls into the "no bloody way" category quickly.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[HamburgerHelper]

When AI can wade through the bullshit and bureaucracy, it can have my job.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

 

[SandCounter]

zdas04, fantastic insight. This principle I've been calling the 85% rule, but have been hesitant to share the concept for fear of coming across as lazy. The fact of the matter is that sewing up the last 15% is the majority of the time and effort burden. It's that same last 15% where the peanut gallery suddenly become experts and that final bit will, undoubtedly, be altered beyond recognition or control of the progenitor. It is therefore exchanging effort for effectiveness. There are plenty of ambitious ladder-climbers more than willing to take on the last 15% of a design and take all credit. I see the role of the engineer as breaking the seal on what's possible, roughing it out, proving the physics and then throwing it into the middle of the circular firing squad while moving on to the next project. I'll frame it up and let them pick the colors.

I used to count sand. Now I don't count at all.

 

[zdas04]

"Frame it up and let them pick the colors". Really a nice turn of phrase. Too many schools strive to turn out graduates who are only able to pick the colors. In the exercises and tests in my course I am careful to include a bunch of information that is generally available to someone working on that kind of problem, but irrelevant to the answer; while I am just as careful to out information that is necessary to the solution, but not on the SCADA (heat transfer coefficients, local atmospheric pressure, etc.). It amazes me how many people with engineering degrees get angry at me for this, more than a few have walked out of the class because the exercises were "unfair". Color pickers.

[bold]David Simpson, PE[/bold]
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[drawoh]

JohnRBaker,

I have no plans to toss my collection of negatives and slides, which I started shooting in 1987. I also have my dad's collection of film, much of it in 120[ ]format, and some it 3[×]4" Speedgraphic. I have a scanner that does 120[ ]film, and is fairly capable with the 3[×]4".

I logged much of my own film stuff as I was shooting it, but I do not have a searchable database. Computer cataloging will be an awful lot of work. My digital photos are stored in folders named by date, organization, activity and subject. When I archive my photos to DVD, I list the contents to a text file in a photo directory. I can use [tt]grep[/tt] to search through my digital photos, and identify the CD or DVD it is stored on.

Technology has made cataloging a lot less work.

--
JHG