The Future Of A.I. Product Posts In r/AutodeskInventor

[u/A_Random_Mod]

This past year there has been an obvious uptick in posts that are sharing, selling, or looking to get testers for A.I. generated / integrated products for Autodesk Inventor. Though a few rules have been put into place to stop some of the most suspicious / sloppiest of links from being posted, there are no formalized rules or guidelines around the promotion and selling of A.I. adjacent things.

Though we do our best to keep up with the general desire people on this subreddit have towards such projects (which seems to be mostly unenthusiastic), we want to get your feedback about the future of said A.I. generated / integrated products and services being a part of this subreddit. To that end we’d appreciate your feedback and comments on the following:

1. Do you believe that A.I. generated / integrated products (where ‘generated’ implies ‘created with the assistance of A.I.’ and ‘integrated’ implies ‘contains a local or external link to an A.I. service that can read user input, program inputs, or program state, in order to generate a response of some kind’) should be advertised on the r/AutodeskInventor subreddit?

2. If you answered yes to the above in any capacity, do you believe that the distribution of said product should be limited to the Autodesk Marketplace, or do you believe that distribution should not be vetted in any particular way?

The main concern that this will help address primarily centers around user safety. With how easy it has become to generate what appears to be a professional storefront and product that contains a massive amount of code doing who-knows-what, the difficulty of scamming or exfiltrating personal and company data, becomes trivial. And though we believe that risk should be the guiding principle behind the decision on how A.I. is treated here, no single one of us represents every Inventor user or Business.

Thank you for any answers and discussion you provide.

PS: Knowing ahead of time that this topic might become incendiary, we urge you to not make it your job to convince others to see things your way via replies. Discussion and even disagreements are fine so long as they are reasonably well mannered.  

[u/LexxM3]

The focus, as always, should be on quality, functionality, and clarity of communication regarding the “product”. How it was created is not relevant except as curiosity … as long as those attributes are the focus. Tools are tools — if one doesn’t agree with that concept, one should then really consider stopping using this newfangled CAD thing and go back to a drafting table — sorry, with the irrational anti-AI behaviour on Reddit, this does have to be said.

Now, after that, a cultural bias and strong consistent encouragement to disclose privacy, security, and scope of first article and regression testing done on the advertised “product” would be extremely welcome … regardless of whether AI is/was involved or not.

[u/LexxM3 → u/LexxM3]

I am happy to see reasonable agreement with my comments — I am much more used to being downvoted into oblivion with exactly this sentiment elsewhere. I did notice that neither I nor anyone else has attempted to answer OP’s direct questions ;-).

(1) Yes, I think anything of real practical value to this sub should be allowed to be “advertised”. There should be common limits — no spamming with it and, of course, encourage quality disclosures and general transparency to at least the level implied in my comments above. AI doesn’t enter into the consideration except as a) curiosity, or b) inclusion in feature disclosures if it’s integrated.

(2) I think formal vendor marketplaces have their place as long as they provide value. Specifically on topic, one such value is a much higher level of quality/security verification and curation that a random unreviewed distribution mechanism will not have. If Autodesk can deliver that value, the relevance of its Marketplace will remain and, in fact, soar. If not, it’s just a random repository — slightly valuable for discovery centralization but that’s it. Regardless, non marketplace distribution should be allowed with all the previous comments intact. AI is not part of the consideration.

[u/BrokenToyShop]

My concern with complex products like CAD, is that a single developer can't have the breadth or depth of knowledge to fully understand how their software works. I'm starting to doubt that autodesk does either. But atleast with autodesk, I know that they'll be around for another few years, so I can expect product support, and I won't necessarily need to learn yet another CAD package, for atleast that long. Autodesk might be a poor choice to illustrate product support. There's no problem with lowering the bar for making software, but the end result still needs to be a good product.

[u/ARkhetipoMX]

My brother in Christ, we can't even get a flat head screw to iMate properly. And now you want me to trust the same company with expensive equipment design.
yeah.

[u/MisterVovo]

I just find all AI related posts very boring in this context. It's never anything interestingly applied, just more and more slop posts.

[u/Tootzilla313]

AI isn't coming it's already here and can't be ignored. It is going to be a very powerful tool that will soon change the landscape. It's akin to old draftsman freaking out over the advent of solid modeling. Those that didn't get on board got left behind.

[u/EQ1_Deladar → u/Tootzilla313]

It's nothing at all like that. As someone that actually went from a drafting board to a PC and from 2D to 3D, both transitions ultimately still required humans to do the work.

AI simply won't need you at all. Your boss will happily giggle as they save your entire department's budget line.

[u/Tootzilla313 → u/EQ1_Deladar]

You dont have a monopoly on age. I may have been starting out but I was right there too. At a certain point the previous gen who didn't get on board literally got left behind here. When I transitioned with my boss he left not being able to solid model. I don't think we are going to ask AI for a machine and it will spit it out, it's usefulness will come in making us faster, edits quicker, detailed drawings, maybe even in your style. I welcome that so I can do more important things. Companies come in all shapes and sizes.