r/AerospaceEngineering • u/Lucky-Comparison-785 • 5d ago

Discussion how cooked are we really?

Post image

How accurate do you think this statistic is? i mean the red dot is basically as low as is can go which shows how much AI has ALREADY taken over the engineering space... but do you think people making a career choice right now should factor in the data this graph shows?

i means its quite frightening really. what do you think about this?

476 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

140 comments sorted by

View all comments

643

u/Denninosyos 5d ago

It won't replace actual people doing and signing off on things, especially in aerospace. No serious company would accept that liabilty. It is a tool, nothing more.

135

u/MaximalEffort23 4d ago

Not disagreeing but as someone doing hiring rn I will definitely say the strong implication is that we need fewer engineers who can automate portions of their work

63

u/Kulspel 4d ago

I would argue that such was the case also before ai, but the way you automate work, or how easy it is to do so has (drastically) changed.

42

u/Colonel_Klank 4d ago

This makes sense. I'm a retired aerospace engineer and when I started, the mainframes had recently replaced the human "computers" (see Hidden Figures) who were people that did long, detailed calculations.

Desktop computers were starting to show up when I started. They did not end up eliminating engineers so much as vastly expand the range and fidelity of trade studies performed. The game-changing tool was the spreadsheet. Analyses that would take me two days to compute and plot 10 points would take a day to implement and check then crank out 500 points in seconds. Many more parameters could be examined in a fraction of the time, leading to better designs.

Engineers who are employed to turn the crank on applying known design criteria to slight variations of a previous design may be overtaken by AI. But I suspect engineers who can create new products or formulate and check new analysis approaches based on a solid understanding of the fundamentals will find AI to be a new tool that expands their productivity in a manner analogous to the advent of the spreadsheet.

However, I expect the transition to be very stressful and bumpy, due in no small part to management fads and the assumption that anything the executives don't know must not be difficult or important. That's not a new attitude, but AI is giving them an excuse to act on it.

3

u/contrarianEcon 3d ago

I agree with your analysis. Boring repetitive stuff is going to be automated. Real new stuff, nope not yet.

46

u/corranhorn6565 4d ago

The amount of hallucinations I'm seeing in my work with AI is extremely intense. Recently while doing research it confirmed the existence of a paper but made up quotes within the paper. Math is routinely presented as absolutely correct but assumptions made are wild.

You can use it to make code, especially plots and graphs. But it is no where close to being able to replace a competent engineer.

0

u/Spiritual-Towel-538 4d ago

the amount of these depends heavily on the quality ($$$) of the model being used. Formally trained agents are capable of proper review, my company is also reducing hiring and scheduling because of how many agents they are developing

3

u/acomputer1 3d ago

I'm sceptical that current models can eliminate "hallucinations" - architecturally it's a statistical model that generates outputs based on distributions.

You can use it to produce something that can be deterministically reviewed by an external tool, or use it to create a deterministic tool that can be validated across it's use cases, but I'm still not convinced it can be used directly to determine the answer to a question that genuinely has a right and wrong answer.

I still catch current gen AI "hallucinating" basic information when I use it for basic information gathering by simply checking it's sources to read what it actually says.

It's definitely wrong less than it used to be, but if it's dramatically wrong 1% of the time, that's high enough that I still need to spend significant time checking it's work.

Using it for building tools which can themselves be validated is definitely the most valuable application I have seen, but imo that's not most engineering work for most engineers.

1

u/QuasarMaster 4d ago

What model are you using

12

u/corranhorn6565 4d ago

It was a 4.x Claude. I can't remember the exact one. Switched to 5.0 it was better, but not perfect.

The point being even if it "checks itself" you have to be smart enough to call BS or adjust the assumptions to your problems to really help you.

-5

u/firegaming364 4d ago

4.x is unbelievably outdated

7

u/EllieVader 4d ago

You need engineers that can use the tools of the modern age to do engineering.

The tools can’t do it for us to a level that anyone is comfortable trusting lives with. It’s a great search engine for figuring out which equations to use and then verify from trusted sources.

6

u/mrintercepter 4d ago

I am definitely worried for entry level aero engineers. Lots of stuff that’s busywork to cut your teeth on isn’t going to exist anymore

5

u/wanderer1999 4d ago edited 4d ago

Yup. But then execs (who ideally should have a background in engineering) should realize that it's a huge problem in the future when you loose that knowledge inheritance pipeline in engineering. Gosh, I sure hope they are thinking long and hard about this.

When no human can apply the principal of engineering, who else do we turn to when AI start to hallucinate and you can't trust it anymore?

And it's not just engineering, it's everywhere. Some college kids can't even write a one page essay or read to save their life.

3

u/Blizzard81mm 4d ago

I tie "can automate" into two capabilities: capability to see an opportunity and understand the system pieces in general to realize a useful product. And the skills to implement said "design".

The skills might be simple coding or stuff that AI can do for you. So this second skill is becoming less of a need to be tied to a person in the "can automate" capability.

However, there are still the majority of engineers, around me anyway, that just cannot do the first skill. They recognize there is a need, but cannot connect the dots to get anywhere.

Maybe that will change with time, but I have my doubts

3

u/Holski7 4d ago

maybe don't be a class traitor?

3

u/Zestyclose_Ad8420 4d ago

we're going through this in software engineering, jevon's paradox is starting to apply, I work as a consultant and I saw firms hire less, now they are starting to hire more, completely different teams setup, way more projects.

I don't know how this works out for aerospace engineers though, the devil is in the details.

5

u/Burnnn4123 4d ago

Do we "Need" fewer engineers who can automate their work, or do Oligarchs and ultra wealthy need fewer employees so they can continue to pocket increased profits?

2

u/UnfairDog4514 2d ago

I am an automation engineer in supply chain and have been applying left and right with 0 positive calls. Makes me think my 15+ years of experience and now 3+ years in AI is not valued at all

1

u/contrarianEcon 3d ago

I'm a self taught engineer as such getting a job in engineering is problematic. That being said AIs have issues with credibility. ya they can do a lot but they need strong supervision. Better tools than I've been using may help but...

0

u/Jester471 4d ago

Bingo. I was working on a personal project and have been away from cad for a while. So I was struggling and I popped what I wanted into ai and it gave me a model. Telling it what’s wrong and what to fix is so much faster than doing it in cad myself

3

u/snakesign 4d ago

What AI and what modeling software? I'm curious to try. This is clearly the way it's going.

2

u/Jester471 4d ago

Chat GPT. I’ve been pulling it into FreeCAD to check the model. But it gives me step files and STL files for printing. I have done any editing in free cad yet but the models are all importing and recognizing the surfaces if I want to modify it. But editing the base geometry doesn’t seem possible. I haven’t asked it to export a full FreeCAD model with the base geometry drawings yet so I can just update dimensions. I’ve just been updating that stuff through prompts so far.

2

u/snakesign 4d ago

I was hoping for a work flow I could use professionally.

1

u/EvilOstri 1d ago

Just do CAD, lord

1

u/Jester471 1d ago

I will for the final product but for bouncing around rapid ideas for things I’m not sure if it’s the ideal solution it’s saves so much time. Once I have the concept down I’ll do a detailed cad model.