Bringing Artificial Intelligence to Manufacturing ENGINEERING.com

The robotics market is growing at an unprecedented pace and vague worries about job loss due to automation--however misguided--often take shape in visions of robots replacing individual workers on production lines. However, there's a much less tangible form of automation that's poised to make an even bigger impact on manufacturing in the near future: artificial intelligence (AI). The concept is notoriously difficult to pin down. "I would say it's as difficult to define as intelligence itself," noted Philippe Beaudoin, SVP research at Element AI. But for manufacturers, what matters most is what AI can do.