Get busy with AI or get busy going out of business
Modern-day artificial intelligence tools are for every manufacturer, regardless of size or budget, and ignoring these is perilous, writes ACM CRC CEO Luke Preston.
We are a nation of smaller manufacturers, contributing to slow technology adoption.
However, I believe this is no excuse for failing to ride the AI tiger. The better AI gets, and it’s getting better fast, the more ignoring it will erode your competitiveness.
“Starting small”, as manufacturers are often advised, is easy.
You’ve probably read about big businesses blowing budgets by “toxenmaxxing”, but you can create value with AI quickly and cheaply.
I estimate that you can get started with modern-day AI 1,000 times (not a typo) cheaper than adopting Industry 4.0. And while you can harvest much data with I4.0, you can easily monitor and act on it through AI using natural language.
For example, you can use simple cameras to ingest data from screens and paper documents and interpret it, lowering the barrier to digitalising old assets.
The generative AI era has surprised at every turn since it started in late-2022. A recent and wonderful surprise is “vibe coding”, allowing companies with low IT skills to automate processes, building inhouse workflow apps.
You can spend a lot of money on tools like Anthropic’s Fable 5.1, released at the beginning of September, but you can also do a lot with a little.
One possibility is integrating data across disparate programs using coding agents.
We at the ACM CRC are enabling that, with the help of our partner Deakin University, through our recently-launched ForgeX.ai platform. (Available for free to composite manufacturers.)
ForgeX.ai features apps allowing things including easy information migration across different ERP systems, running data science on a company “data lake” using natural language commands, and conducting experiments to optimise processes.
Recognising the special sensitivity of manufacturers when it comes to their data, ForgeX.ai is available in both on-premise and cloud versions.
I expect AI to continue to drive costs including labour, logistics and energy towards zero over time. It will also burrow deeper into every facet of manufacturing. And I welcome that.
It’s no accident that entrepreneurs including Uber founder Travis Kalanick, SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos are investing heavily in AI for physical outcomes.
Bezos-led Prometheus raised $US 6.2 billion last November and a further $US 12 billion in June, valuing it at $US 41 billion. It has no products yet, but according to Bezos is creating an “artificial general engineer”, shrinking the “dream-build loop” for complex manufactured products.
I politely suggest you get cracking (for little or no money) and figure out why there’s so much riding on AI adoption, including your own company’s future. The alternative is ugly.
This article first appeared at Industry Update's website. You can see the original version
here.
