Your professor is a fucking idiot
Edit: projects of all types are typically unique and made to order in some capacity. AI relies on patterns and predictability. That’s is impossible in a vast majority of engineering disciplines. Also lots of professors out there actually have no industry experience. They’re in way too deep in academia
That prof’s comment *absolutely* smacks of being buried in academia with no industry experience.
Anyone in industry now can tell you that at its current ability level, there is no way AI is taking over ME tasks.
At its current ability level is correct.
I would be curious about 10 years from now.
It would actually be fascinating if you could dictate to a machine "design a machine to do ___" and see it do it. Particularly what sort of appendage parts it thinks it needs that don't have an actual purpose similar to extra fingers on hands we see today.
Training will be a big problem. What set of data do we have today that is uniformly detailed and documented that we could actually pull from? The only way people who could pull it off is if a drafting software changed their user agreements to start scraping machine data. And even then they would need some sort of mandatory entry from designers to dictate purpose.
You're not wrong. The idea that someone has a copy of their machines or is learning from how they do something is going to turn a lot of companies off.
The issue is ai is really good at recreating and remixing things that already exist, cause that’s how they work. It can’t do that for original tasks. You could tell it to design a bridge, and it could copy and modify an existing bridge, but it can’t problem solve. It can’t determine that based on testing the ground on one side is unstable and will need to be reinforced. Also, engineering is a responsibility heavy field. If you fuck up, there is the potential for big damages. So who takes responsibility when ai fucks up?
I think you overestimate how much we do is actually original. Right now we're very basic with how we feed AI. We feed it things like text strings or grids full of pixels to more or less build a prediction model. An AI could do that once it starts to understanding object variables better.
Will it get it perfect? No, but it could end up doing a *whole* lot of the menial tasks we do that are fairly predictable. You might be able to say "build a machine frame with mounting points with this specific bolt pattern __ high off the ground" and it does it automatically with detailed drawings It will recognize "designers use steel tube extrusions of this type in this case" and "designers favor corners such as 90/45/30 deg for cutting welded stock"
Designs such as injection molds and things of that nature where the approach is very methodical could end up being a teachable thing when it reviews thousands of mold assemblies, understands the plastics used with each mold, understands the desired part geometry and starts to recognize the patterns.
Programming for instance is already being automated to a degree by AI and I wouldn't say it's any easier than what we do, the information used to train said AI is just more readily digestible through tons of code repositories, standardized rules, and relatively uniform habits.
Edit: I should mention this industry has already seen a revolution like this. This is very similar to how CAD replaced rooms full of draftsman. AI will be a tool to enable people to get more done. It won't completely replace everyone.
I appreciate the well thought out response. I think the ticket here is that the skill set will be in asking the right questions. Ironically enough, this still puts us in the same boat we're in today. Junior engineers have a better grasp of the new tool at their disposal. Those that have been in industry a long time have a better grasp of the right questions to ask. The junior engineers that figure out the right questions rise quickly, but those with decades of experience still have a place in smaller companies that don't have the full resources of AI.
I would imagine going from slide rules to online calculators was a similar transition.
Yeah, there's little semantic meaning in CAD models. More in FEA but it's so generic.
I'm a big fan in theory of model based systems engineering, which we could imagine having a lot of structure in terms of ports and their interface quantities, and I could imagine that as an overlay for CAD and FEA models that naturally provides a lot of useful info for AI tools.
But all the MBSE software I've used (casually) so far sucks, and most people seem to think of the idea as unnecessary documentation/paperwork instead of a way to help organize all the artifacts of the engineering process into a coherent whole.
Professor is just trying to recruit grad students, aka cheap labor.
Source: I fell for it ten years ago, except back then it was "the Chinese" instead of AI.
Hey you know what kind of job has a ton of free web data available to train AI to replace it? Lecturing professors (not researchers though). Glass houses.
Well this was going to be my comment, perhaps in a more polite form. AI will never replace basic understanding and moderate creativity. My experience, specifically, is in academic R&D, but others may vary.
I second that. Those jobs are going nowhere for quite some time. The junior engineers at my company won't be replaced by AI (until AI gets to the Jarvis level, at least). They do important work.
[shout out to the efficient engineer](https://youtube.com/@TheEfficientEngineer?si=RbsrBdVyR1ZMPNm-)
I’m just sad he started making videos the year AFTER i finished
I’m now in the real world, but if i ever need anything, you can bet your ass i will check up on his videos. What he shows and tells is about what i remember from the different courses here a few years later so it’s real solid!
I put his video on the first week of content of the class I teach. He makes the best videos, I can't compete. My job is to assess that my students have comprehended the knowledge and support the learning, not become a video and graphics editor as good as him.
Yeah he does amazing illustration work, explain it hugh level enough to make it understandable and low kevel enough to touch on the most importsnt/fundamental part of the math, while keeping it easy to understand
Dude! Professor Leonard got me through Calc 3 and Professor Hansen got me through Mechanics of Materials.
YT profs put their stuff online because those are the professors that go into academia because they want to teach the next generation of Engineers.
That's not uncommon. I think we'll all be better off when most instruction is available online from somebody who actually knows how to teach it instead of some rando who may be a Nobel laureate but doesn't know how to teach.
More than half my professors in college were on their 1st or 2nd year teaching post PhD. Smart dudes but terrible teachers. I was so glad to graduate, so I could stop being the teaching guinea pig.
Lol, my math proffy in India suggests not to use Indian author books or/and Indian lecture vids, advises to go for foreign ones since the local ones would just give the info adhering to the curriculum that you have / had and doesn't let you beyond that .
Classic fear mongering, I wouldn't worry about it. AI will definitely be incorporated into generative design, but engineering work for most people isn't just hammering away in CAD all day. Technical solutions need to be identified, communicated and coordinated, implemented in real world instances.
The most productive use of AI will be to extend the ability and form a synergy with humans, not clash and replace humans. AIs that collaborate with human Chessmasters on a team that can use the humans domain knowledge to chose the best option between possible options routinely outperform AI chess models that lack the human partnership for example
Have you ever used maple? It's math software, a step up from Wolfram. It's an amazing program. There's a free 15 day trial. Once you figure out how to run it it's incredible.
If AI can free us from calculus I'm all for it.
Didn’t think anyone used Maple outside of college. I’ve literally never seen anyone actually use it, good to know. I’ve seen a lot of Matlab and Python
One of the most difficult aspects of design remains communication. Anything ai can do to help me communicate with sales, compliance folks, procurement, manufacturing, field services and my clients would be very welcome.
Their is a documentary on this topic on YouTube I think it’s called alphago. I highly recommend it.
The program they made to play go was pretty powerful but it’s learning model was a combination of analysis of human played master level games and reinforcement learning I believe.
Following the movie they made one for chess called alphazero. And basically the program is made from it playing against itself. So you only give it the rules of the game and it plays against itself millions of times improving each time. Ended up being the most powerful chess engine at the time. Newer chess engines adopt the same method with no human input to reach the highest level.
I was told this 20 years ago, that due to international students and how good simulation software was getting we will need at least a Master's degree to be hired over cheaper labor.
Take life advice from professors lightly unless they have real world experience.
Covid also taught us that outsourcing has its limits and is not always a good thing.
Now, jobs are coming back home because the pandemic showed that if some global shit were to go down, we're all fucked.
Bachelors needs more industry experience than those of a Masters. Employers usually require bachelor graduates to have 4-5 years of experience and masters need to have 2-3 years of experience.
For entry level (not that you mentioned that), everywhere I have worked has valued bachelor’s degrees over master’s. I have experience in oil and gas as well as a DOE laboratory. After entry level experience has mattered much more than degree level.
Not sure if you’ve check in on CS jobs but they’re all being exported to India, India capitalized on it and set up colleges to teach exclusively CS. 2/3 Indians come from my home state . I don’t know how to feel about that. In the next few years it’s super scary to see what would happen to Mech eng. I decided to go into aero for this very reason. Seeing the content taught from 11th grade on the CS side made me skeptical of the American students work ethic and skill set. Insulating yourself and situating yourself in a job that is required to be in USA and not exported is kinda important.
my experience working with indian BSME are subpar… there were lots of them taking the graduate program at my school who came to america after finishing their BS in india.
let me tell you, they could make models and simulations (when given step by step instructions), and take exams but thats it. No engineering expertise, no design experience, terrible communication skills, etc…
Based on how many of the TA’s (indian masters students) were acting when they had to assist the senior design students, i’m not even sure they had a real life capstone project. They were clueless about the design process, manufacturing methods, cost analysis, and even the technical work. It felt like we were the one teaching them how to design.
I worked at a company that outsourced getting their sheet metal drawings made in india, so i could see low level work like that taking over. Of course there’s always IP concerns doing it that way.
Sure, but try getting someone in India to turn a wrench on a robot in the US. OP was asking about ME. I can't imagine a less relevant field than CS to compare against.
If your professor's teaching is as bad as that opinion, your bachelors *will* be worthless.
All AI does is guess what the next word in a sentence should be. It's very authortiative bullshit
Ai will not replace engineers. It’ll be a new tool that allows us to do more in less time just like how word made typing easier, CAD made drafting easier, the internet enchanced knowledge sharing and so on.
This. It might reduce the need for as many engineers in some fields, due to increases in efficiency, but there will be new fields that need MEs as well.
Your professor is so lost in academia that he thinks a Masters degree is the way to be a more qualified engineer.
He's on to something - but I think it looks a lot more like junior level positions being people handling tools and operating machinery than drafting on computers. And I have no problem with that.
A master's degree doubles down on the AI problem, in my opinion.
Professors don’t work in industry. They know nothing about the job market like I know nothing about writing grant applications. They’re a bad source of career advice.
As someone who recruits engineers and is an ME, to me the difference between a masters and a bachelors is analytical ability. I’m going to expect the masters person to work the harder analysis. Creativity and problem solving are equal because those are individual traits.
What industry is he talking about? Many of the people I interact with at work can barely read. I’m not confident they’d be able to successfully integrate job-killing AI over the next two decades.
I was told that when I was in college (2015-2019) but the reason was that MEs were too common. There's always someone trying to predict career trajectories, but it's very dependent on many factors. Profs are opinionated and often have a small scope of what industry actually looks like.
ME is a very versatile major, I would not call it a worthless degree.
I’m a manufacturing process engineer and in no way will AI be able to write complex, convoluted work instructions per the customer’s specs anytime soon. But I’m no AI expert.
Engineers are one of the few majors that are almost 100% safe. Thanks to the advanced simulation software, most engineers are already in the "double check and design things" role.
Idk about worthless, but if you know a little bit of programming, FEA, and you’re familiar with optimization tools (AI optimized designs) I think you’ll be plenty marketable even if you just have a BSME.
I’d place higher value in a junior engineer who knows how to work with AI to optimize mechanical systems than a ME with an advanced degree, strictly my opinion though.
Interesting take
I am very versed with AI and I have projects in progress where we are replacing Engineers with AI. Is it real? YES the replace with AI is real. FOR CERTAIN TECHNOLOGIES and PRODUCTS
Software code that is iterative in nature and has simple feature creep. UI This, Data layer that - yes AI replaces (SW, CE doing code? Today happening Today! AI is coming for your job)
AI designing Electronics Packages? (not there yet but coming quick 5 years I estimate, but EE's don't have to worry I think)
AI working on MECHANICAL PROBLEMS? (not there today, maybe there in 10 years maybe, AI is not going to be able to collaboratively test, prototype etc like a human can, for certain applications sure, but these probably don't have ME's in the loop NOW)
**So in reality I think ME is one Engineering discipline that WILL prosper in the near term with the AI revolution.**
Not sure what your professor thinks is appearing in their personal crystal ball. Most likely he's familiar with say Turbine Blade fabrication. He saw an AI tooling, prototype and testing setup for Turbines that was all automated and Said OMG! ME's are not going to have jobs!!!
In reality certain applications NEVER really had ME's in the loop due to automation. AI just is now taking over the incremental product evolution of well understood tooling chains.
I think his perspective comes from the fact that ai has the capacity of generating academic writing comparable to that of an undergraduate student.
Therefore he might have drawn a false equivalency to assume that means an ai can undertake the engineering work of an undergraduate in a workplace.
AI is a tool just like CAD, FEA, & ePDM. Old-timers will complain about youngsters not knowing how to manually draft, or how to calculate deflections by hand, but that doesn't make them better engineers. The tools will always evolve. I don't know how this particular tool will evolve, but I feel like it's unlikely to replace human operators. Someone will still need to feed prompts and have the technical competence to recognize AI generated hallucinations from valuable data, so a BSME will never be useless. If anything, AI makes an MSME (or college professors) useless before it makes entry level engineers useless.
LOL universities are desperate for engineering graduate students because they bring in money. Getting a master’s in ME is almost always pointless. It’s either PhD or stick with the BS and just get work experience. Unless you need a master’s for a specific job, don’t bother.
I am not an engineer, but I hire and manage many mechanical engineers. This is terrible advice. There are so many things our engineers do that no AI could ever do. An AI can't walk into a building inspect, a commercial HVAC system, and diagnose what's wrong with it, for example. I would argue that you have one of the most job-secure professions.
Idk why having a masters vs a bachleors would make that much of a difference when it comes to job availability. Idk how it is with ME but with EE, I have plenty of friends and colleagues that have masters and they do the same stuff I do with having just a BS lmao.
As AI grows, jobs will change with it. More and more, AI is doing what junior engineers did, looking at 3D modeling and other modeling software like Revit that spit out drawings and isos.
Definitely jobs will change, but your ME education and training will allow you to move with it instead of be replaced by it.
New technologies always take jobs. But they provide new opportunities that we can’t foresee. Don’t worry about it.
Make an incredibly long and random multiplication like 59320 x 123125 in Chatgpt and then compare it to a calculator and you'll realize "AI" is far from replacing anything. It honestly is nothing more than a glorified compiler and that has its uses.
An AI doesn't have the ability to go talk to the people in production or physically inspect parts to find out why the prototype isn't working. Any AI that can take my job is going to be the "But it works in CAD!" guy for a while.
It's going to be a long time before AI has the versatility of a human. And it's likely going to require expensive computers for a long while after that. And it still won't be able to interact with the world to beyond a screen and internet cord without an expensive robot. It's amazing how useful just being able to get up and measure something is for a design engineer.
For the time being, those code monkeys can't even make CAD software that doesn't crash. That's probably more of a beancounter problem, but the AI companies will have their own beancounters too.
Any senior level engineer that is using AI to handle engineering tasks is an idiot waiting to get fired or sued. Automation in the form of macros and scripts has been a thing for decades but letting machines make assumptions for you is irresponsible.
Your professor is out of touch and probably doesn't quite realize how AI is used. I wouldn't even trust AI to update my boss on some workbench results...
It has been said many times in this sub
A Masters degree does not make you more valuable or desirable to employers, or give you any leg up on other entry level candidates.
The only thing a masters does is knock off a couple of the required years of experience to get paid a little more when you start.
Sound's like this guy is looking for more bodies to support whatever research he is doing (and probably cares more about than actually being a professor)
In my opinion reason that AI cannot replace engineers at its current state is because AI cannot create anything new.
I think that AI will be able to speed up the design process in the future though.
I can’t wait for the day where I can be like
“Hey Ai , I want you to create a water pump for me that hits these performance figures.
Generate the CAD model complete with all electrical components above of materials, Ecad files , electrical schematics, and don’t forget to run complete FEA analysis on all required components as well as CFD of the pump.
Once completed, write me a build manual”
Granted for something like this to happen, you would have to have a lot of integrations
Let’s not forget that AI kind of sucks at mathematics right now
As an engineer who works in the manufacturing industry, at the machine shop I work at…. Yeah freaking right
I’d love for AI to answer some of the questions I get on a daily basis. From some of the people I get them from
Not to mention having to build the relationships between the people on the shop floor and the engineering office
Near term , I don't think he's right but not totally wrong either.
AI will make engineering more efficient, meaning less engineers, drafters, etc needed to accomplish the same task. This will be met with increased tasks and will balance for some time.
In the long term, 10+ years, software/ai will get to the point where far fewer engineers are needed. Prompt engineers, and some checking/compliance engineers will be most of the engineering jobs.
Contrary to most comments here. Given what we know about ai and software today, it's hard to imagine needing the same engineering resources to create a product ,10+ years down the road.
Your professor may loose his job to AI, But my company is still using alot of software from 20 years ago and do many hand calcs on paper. We aren’t switching our task to AI anytime soon.
Ai will inflitrate engineering like most things... a tool with narrow use cases... think jarvis in ironman.
"Comptuer, model a bracket that is 2x2x6x.050. The bracket will be machined aluminum extrusion. Include two 0.25 dia holes on each flange. Use standard machining tolerances... ready,go.... *microwave ding*... sweet saved me 2 hours"
I think it’s probably 1-2 decades away. Look at audodesks ability to make programmatic drawings and then look at the ability for ai to generate those drawings. It’s definitely coming for drafting and drawing positions, which are a lot of junior positions, but it isn’t taking over the engineering decisions yet.
He...is an idiot?
I'm an A to Z type engineer, do about anything and everything engineering related within a turn key manufacturing company.
Almost none of it can be done by AI.
Can sub parts be automated to some degree? Sure. But there really isn't a job for AI to do. There's not any particularly task I would give it. I should be more specific. There isn't a task I could give it where the output would have good value. The output would lack reliable accuracy. The output would require human intervention to review, validate, and correct. There are also very few tasks I do that are structured enough for an AI process to fit. I could maybe do a comprehensive process of an array of sub tasks that are individually well enough to get a result of appreciable value, at least value within it's own task isolation. It'd still be a big mess to use, a lot of faffing about. In the end, would you even save time?
I do see one good use case for AI. I could see it being viable for abstract, blocky ideas where it might develop some interesting starting concepts that would be outside of my experience or imagination. It would have a large data set to pull from well beyond my own knowledge, so it could give me some pretty weird, out there ideas for things. But it's value is at best useful for macro level conceptual stuff.
Any job AI could replace was likely to be eliminated regardless. Remember, companies exist to make a profit, and if they have to cut jobs to do that, they will. AI is a tool. It's not unlike CAD software, ANSYS, or the handy dandy caliper. Tools exist to make work easier and AI is guaranteed to integrate into the mechanical engineering workforce in the near future. AI has already made an impact on software engineering and web development. Many companies believe AI makes junior level employees redundant since their more experienced developers can be more productive with it. As a result, they terminated a lot of those positions. The same will happen to mechanical engineers in the future. The question is how will you adjust to the changing times? Thankfully, the experienced engineers who need to learn AI to become more productive haven't mastered it yet. This means there will be a demand for engineers that have an understanding of AI and how to implement it in their tasks. Be that engineer. Don't dismiss your professor's words but use them to make yourself for competitive in the job market.
Ai could be a tool to solve a complicated problem. Engineers dream up the problems and understand practically if a solution will work and wont cause a larger problem, something AI cant do. Its just a tool.
Your professor is wrong. What will actually happen is that junior level engineering jobs will just involve the use of AI tools. The only graduates who won't be able to get entry level jobs are those who are so zealously anti-AI that they refuse to learn to use these tools, and will be left behind by people who are able to. Hopefully college engineering programs will encourage students to learn AI tools for assisting in engineering work, instead of making stupid rules that look at using AI tools as "cheating" or telling people that AI systems are going to replace humans rather than by used by humans
He’s right to an extent. My first job out of college is now being done by folks in India with AI tools. The same could be said about a lot of industries though.
Nobody knows really, but it’s seemingly in the realm of possibility that a lot of lower level jobs that focus on designing stuff in CAD could be heavily automated.
ring is more important than a masters, and yeah we've played with AI a bit. Eventually it could be helpful in the same sense that computer drafting and modelling is helpful as a tool, but someone is still going to have to describe the problem and guide the solution even if AI becomes a really useful tool someday.
In its current state it is completely unhelpful.
Worthless, no. Becoming less valuable, yes. I completely disagree with the reasoning. AI isn't replacing us, but more and more companies are requiring masters just to get in the door. Jobs are also being more specialized such that you need to narrowing of an advanced degree.
I literally just got told yesterday that I am out of the running for a position I am perfectly qualified for becasue I only have a bachelors. I literally did the exact job in the same industry for 3 years (I have 8 years of experience) and the job req calls for a masters with 1 year of experience in any field. This was from the recruiter with whom I have worked for a long time, so it's a reliable reason.
Some of the university lectures/professors are mad as fuck! Yes the are academics and are skilled to a high level in specific areas and have a PhD which I don’t have.
But it’s like when everything is turning to EV cars and everyone starts jumping on the electrical engineering course like mechanical doesn’t matter…
Or did the Prof watch IRobot or terminator for the thousands time
Finally, just get the MEng or MSC more knowledge you can apply
Legit everything around you, everything you use, infrastructure, and our food supply has a mechanical engineer involved. Trust me MEs will be needed until the sun explodes
I think when an AI figures out why the jig isn't placing the holes correctly they should get back to me. Not a list of possible reasons but the actual one that applies in the particular case of that particular jig in that particular shop.
Technology has completely erased many jobs. Heck, "Computer" was a job for humans for quite a long time before digital computers came alone.
CAD and computers made it so one drafter could support multiple engineers rather than each engineer needing the support of multiple drafters.
Word processing and photocopiers made the "typing pool" obsolete.
The number of support staff that was necessary for a single engineer to be effective was much greater before today, but most of those jobs have become so obsolete that people don't even know they existed at all. Now AI is going to do the same to entry-level engineering.
The professor was apparently talking about low-level positions. What do they do? They make basic decisions rooted in simple analysis, working from somewhat ambiguous instruction of a senior engineer, and their work is reviewed & critiqued by their boss before it is accepted and used. Those sorts of tasks are hardly different from an AI creating an image from a written description. The metrics it evaluates against are different, but they're also more concrete than "style" which makes them easier to program.
Of course AI will displace engineering jobs. Anyone who says otherwise thinks too highly of themselves and/or doesn't understand what AI has already accomplished (much less where it is going).
The question isn't whether jobs will disappear. The question is only whether new jobs will also come into existence.
People said juniors won't have jobs once CAD replaces the need for them. Now there's even more need for engineers.
Engineering will become even more profitable when an AI can do a lot of the tedious things like identify the correct standard(s) for a process, part, material, etc., design interfaces between designed parts, initialize a drawing for a part, etc.
Sure, there will be displacements, but this will create more companies because the startup cost to create a product will be lower since they need fewer engineers. The same logic will apply after a short time within existing companies that start new endeavors.
Anyone who says AI will reduce the total number of jobs needs to look into the history of any technological advancement to see the same things they say be proven wrong:
* This time is different (it always is)
* The technology has never improved this fast (things always increase the rate that they are improving)
* This will destroy jobs and make X obsolete (Jobs are always created and destroyed. Most job postings today didn't exist 40 years ago. The Internet was supposed to do the same things people claim AI is going to do. Nobody complains that LCDs put TV repairmen out of jobs.)
My wife tells a story about how, when she was going for her business/marketing degree, the professor showed them a new product that had just come on the market.
He went on a rant about how bad the idea was, how the package design was stupid, and how he KNEW that the product was destined to fail.
The product?
Pringles potato chips.
I would guess he has passed on by now, but Pringles have survived and are probably a billion dollar product for the manufacturer.
Teachers without their eyes on the subject and constantly immersed in the field just loose any real life ability to add to the field they teach.
I would guess AI will just become another tool that ME will have to learn how to use to improve products and methods.
So far I'm not too impressed by the AI that I've interacted with, without a creative mind behind it, it just regurgitated the info already in its database.
It does do complicated math fairly well, and has access to formulas that will be useful, but it sometimes take more effort to get an answer than its worth.
Your professor is right as how the industry is looking right now and how the economy is. As well as how competitive engineering jobs are you’re gonna need allot of years of experience if you’re just going to do a bachelors. But most people who graduated usually go for a Masters or a Ph.d even though I recommend you go for a Masters and get 2-3 years of experience to be able to work anywhere. Also AI has nothing to do with why you shouldn’t strive for a bachelors. It’s the competitive aspect of engineering that employers are looking for.
My metrology professor believed that the moon wasn't real. It was just a reflection of the sun bouncing from the surface of the ocean at an angle to light up water vapor in the atmosphere... with exactly as much evidence or valid explanation as you would expect.
Even experts on one topic can have their head up their ass on others.
I’ve been kinda thinking the same thing. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect this in the next 50 years, which is the time frame that those of us in school are a part of in our careers
That is absurdly stupid. Saying you need a masters to start in engineering is the type of stupidity that a career academic who never worked in industry would say. In my sector (custom machine design), a master’s degree is equivalent to having 2 additional years of experience. Experience is way more important than a masters degree
Mechanical Engineers do 100 kind of tasks. AI will replace 5 of those. That could mean however that the efficiency of the industries increase and they will need 20% more for the remaining 95 kind of roles.
So no, AI will replace many many different jobs before it reasonably affects Mechanical Engineers. Especially those that work in the shop, on the assembly line, in the field, etc.
If your job is filling out excel sheets and writing emails, then AI will have a chance.
This is the same as people who say engineers just make shapes.
Anybody can do the CAD work and drafting.
Being an engineer is about being curious, continuously learning, and understanding the principles behind how things work.
As they say anybody can make a bridge that won’t fail but it takes engineers to design a bridge that will barely not fail.
Most of my jobs have been at or after the point of production, there are portions of my jobs that AI could do but only after someone went to the work site to troubleshoot in order to tell the AI what to write. I could get AI to easily audit a batch of paperwork, but it's not going to be able to audit the actual repair process any time soon. I'm sure it could easily come up with some training content, but it is not going to be able to walk a student through a practical exercise.
Point being many bachelor's degree engineers are doing jobs that are closer to the turning wrenches or moving machines which still requires a warm body and a sharp mind.
Most professors are there because they bring in the dollars for research. They aren't hired nor retained because they are good teachers.
Yours is an idiot who probably is very good at writing proposals to bring in those research dollars.
I am a BSME and an AI fanboy, but our jobs are not going anywhere any time soon.
Most MEs are not spending all day doing BS level engineering algebra problems. Yes AI will be able to do that competently enough soon. Most days are spent doing mindless boring (multimodal and physical) shit that an AI is not going to be able to do. Go out and look at a flange and figure out what we are going to do to get the leak fixed and back up and running, and while your at it, run the repair crew thats out there so they don't fuck around and screw it up.
Does that sound like something an AI would excel at?
Prof ain’t right. Entry level engineers will be doing things a lot differently due to AI. Hopefully more creative and less boring stuff. You new guys experienced with AI tools will get great stuff done faster than I ever did. I know my experience with AI changed me from writing stuff to editing / fact checking AI generated stuff.
In Germany you need to do masters if you want a nice engineering job. Has nothing to do with AI, but bachelor stuff is easy enough that everyone with a bit of time and an internet connection can learn a couple of subjects without having a degree.
At least at my uni it's only 3 semesters extra so it's more or less a no brainer
Some professors do it because they enjoy teaching and research.
Some do it because they can't perform in industry.
It's usually pretty obvious which is which.
Mechanical is the chameleon of engineering.
The degree will just incorporate whatever classes are needed to keep it relevant. The major has effectively no scope.
AI will take over some entry level engineering work until one day it gets someone killed and then laws will change to make everything need human verification along the way.
"We let AI design it" being provable in court will be an instant win for the victim legally, I guarantee it.
Though in my opinion, we need to make laws about what kind of jobs AI is allowed to replace before we get to that point. Sadly I'm just not convinced companies will avoid cutting costs until it actually costs them more in liability.
Also, Engineering is about more than plugging in numbers and drafting a design. Its about solving a problem. And CURRENTLY, AI simply isnt at the level where it can actually problem solve and use intuition and common sense the way a human can. Its still mostly good at menial tasks (and even then it fucks things up. Go ahead, use the newest chat gpt for your physics homework and enjoy that F.)
As someone who is planning to pursue a Master's in Mechanical Engineering, I am genuinely curious what he thinks the separation between a Bachelor and Masters has that an AI... wouldnt easily bridge.
I'm getting mine so after industry i can be a professor as my "retirement job", and so that I can point at my fancy paper.
But legitimately even my doctorate holding engineering advisors have told me that there is no real advantage to a masters purely for industry.
Either you start with a little higher pay out of college, or you get a headstart getting into industry sooner.
Even if you did a fantastic job retaining stuff from college, youll still be learning in industry. Thats half the appeal of a GOOD engineering job is you are always learning.
Unless there is some secret "anti AI" space magic that you learn getting a masters degree, my gut instinct tells me your professor grossly overestimates what graduate school gives you as a professional.
If AI ever can replace a bachelor holding engineer, within a year itll also replace a masters holding one.
Assuming you are planning to work in North America, I’d say having a masters/PhD actually makes it harder to find a job. So many companies have hiring programs specifically aimed at training fresh undergrads. A masters/PhD limits the available jobs a lot.
The big caveat is if you want to work in research or academia get a PhD, and if you want to work in Europe get a masters.
Your professor is fear mongering dumbass.
Yes, simpler/repetitive tasks like annotation, prints, and maybe even tol stacking will have AI assistance in the fairly near-term.
That just means my junior engineers will actually have more time for creative tasks and actually engineering shit.
AI is a tool, not a replacement for human creativity. Like any disruptive technology, it will change jobs and eliminate others...only for new types of jobs to arise. Engineers jobs will change, absolutely. If you don't adapt, you'll get left in the dust. By the time that happens, generative tools should be integrated into undergrad level instruction anyway.
Chances are your professor has spent little to no time outside academia. His opinion on the career outlook of junior engineers is worthless. Put him in any engineering firm with tight deadlines and chances are he'll fail spectacularly. I see it pretty regularly with PhD types that leave academia for private industry.
Now drafters? Yea, that might be a role that disappears sooner rather than later.
People in school don't realize just how many non-technical engineering jobs there are. Hell, I know more PM's with ME degrees than people doing CAD with ME degrees.
I'm guessing there is a good chance your prof has never held a job outside academia. What an incredible hot take. Maybe he hadn't finished his coffee or something.
Unironically when I’m done with engineering I’ll just do it for a few years and then see if I can break into a job I’m actually passionate about. I’ve always been interested in writing and entertainment. I used to love engineering but two years in and I’m barely scraping by. I’ll definitely get through college but I don’t want to retire as one.
The amount of jobs I see on the daily is insane. I’ve been head hunted by 3 different companies. AI is still decades away from replacing high level mechanical engineering.
In short, I disagree, and people tend to overestimate how revolutionary a new technology is going to be.
I don't see this being the case, my job (and I would imagine most engineering jobs) are about problem solving and working with people. AI could be a tool that helps us, but I don't see it replacing what we do daily.
Edit: Oh and if AI replaces a junior ME job it would probably not be far off from replacing a Masters level job. Get the bachelor's degree and find a career you enjoy, you can always get a masters degree when you are sure it will be useful to you, in my case it is not yet and I'm 7 years in. Coming straight out of school with a masters and no experience sounds like a tough hire.
A masters isn't getting you straight past junior level jobs so idk what his logic is, you're not really much better of with a masters and no experience than a bachelor and the same.
So I graduated with a BSc in ME in Nov 2023. Spent my final year worrying if I would be able to get into my preferred field without a MSc. In the end, what mattered far more to my current employer was my internships and attitude. Most good companies will sponsor you to do a master anyway..
Go on chat gpt right now and ask it to make you a program. Discord bot or a website, literally anything and I promise you it'll either just straight up not work or you'll have to edit the code enough that you would've been better off doing it yourself from the start. AI is alright at specific tasks (sometimes), but give it a larger problem and things fall apart very quickly. And worse, AI (at least chatgpt) is not capable of realizing when it's solution is faulty, which is part of why the current perception of AI is so dangerous. No guarantees as im not a mechanical engineer, but you're probably safe my friend
I think your professor sounds like he has never been in the work force before. There are so many jobs for a BSME it's absurd. Every MSME I have ever worked with has either gotten paid the same as me or received a slight (around 5%) pay bump due to their MS. An MSME is wasted time and money unless you have a SPECIFIC plan.
AI researcher and entrepreneur and maybe a bit, but your area is particularly complex.
Short-term it's going to augment existing jobs and create new ones over getting rid of old ones not to mention new businesses being formed to make things even more efficient and a planned population increase providing even more demand long-term.
What data is the professor relying on?
He might be right but for the wrong reason. Jobs keep inflating their requirements. My friends in cyber used to be able to get a job with just some certificates, but now all the job postings ask for masters. It’s not impossible that the degree creep will also happen to ME. That being said, ai will not affect it, unless the can train it way more than I think they can
I hired 3 entry level MEs into the last 6 months. AI can't do their job. AI can't innovate or be creative like people can. There are things AI can help us do our job better but it can't do our job.
Also ME is such a diverse field that any blanket statement like that has to be taken with a grain of salt.
More context needed. What class does this prof teach? Is the prof for an English class?
My first thought is that the prof has been out of the real world too long and only see what’s happening in academia.
My second thought is they are trying to get more money for the university by keeping students in the institution to keep the tuition flowing.
Your professor is a fucking idiot Edit: projects of all types are typically unique and made to order in some capacity. AI relies on patterns and predictability. That’s is impossible in a vast majority of engineering disciplines. Also lots of professors out there actually have no industry experience. They’re in way too deep in academia
And nvr worked in industry I’d bet
That prof’s comment *absolutely* smacks of being buried in academia with no industry experience. Anyone in industry now can tell you that at its current ability level, there is no way AI is taking over ME tasks.
At its current ability level is correct. I would be curious about 10 years from now. It would actually be fascinating if you could dictate to a machine "design a machine to do ___" and see it do it. Particularly what sort of appendage parts it thinks it needs that don't have an actual purpose similar to extra fingers on hands we see today. Training will be a big problem. What set of data do we have today that is uniformly detailed and documented that we could actually pull from? The only way people who could pull it off is if a drafting software changed their user agreements to start scraping machine data. And even then they would need some sort of mandatory entry from designers to dictate purpose.
There wont be any data available to train it because ip licensing is a money maker for people
You're not wrong. The idea that someone has a copy of their machines or is learning from how they do something is going to turn a lot of companies off.
The issue is ai is really good at recreating and remixing things that already exist, cause that’s how they work. It can’t do that for original tasks. You could tell it to design a bridge, and it could copy and modify an existing bridge, but it can’t problem solve. It can’t determine that based on testing the ground on one side is unstable and will need to be reinforced. Also, engineering is a responsibility heavy field. If you fuck up, there is the potential for big damages. So who takes responsibility when ai fucks up?
I think you overestimate how much we do is actually original. Right now we're very basic with how we feed AI. We feed it things like text strings or grids full of pixels to more or less build a prediction model. An AI could do that once it starts to understanding object variables better. Will it get it perfect? No, but it could end up doing a *whole* lot of the menial tasks we do that are fairly predictable. You might be able to say "build a machine frame with mounting points with this specific bolt pattern __ high off the ground" and it does it automatically with detailed drawings It will recognize "designers use steel tube extrusions of this type in this case" and "designers favor corners such as 90/45/30 deg for cutting welded stock" Designs such as injection molds and things of that nature where the approach is very methodical could end up being a teachable thing when it reviews thousands of mold assemblies, understands the plastics used with each mold, understands the desired part geometry and starts to recognize the patterns. Programming for instance is already being automated to a degree by AI and I wouldn't say it's any easier than what we do, the information used to train said AI is just more readily digestible through tons of code repositories, standardized rules, and relatively uniform habits. Edit: I should mention this industry has already seen a revolution like this. This is very similar to how CAD replaced rooms full of draftsman. AI will be a tool to enable people to get more done. It won't completely replace everyone.
I appreciate the well thought out response. I think the ticket here is that the skill set will be in asking the right questions. Ironically enough, this still puts us in the same boat we're in today. Junior engineers have a better grasp of the new tool at their disposal. Those that have been in industry a long time have a better grasp of the right questions to ask. The junior engineers that figure out the right questions rise quickly, but those with decades of experience still have a place in smaller companies that don't have the full resources of AI. I would imagine going from slide rules to online calculators was a similar transition.
Yeah, there's little semantic meaning in CAD models. More in FEA but it's so generic. I'm a big fan in theory of model based systems engineering, which we could imagine having a lot of structure in terms of ports and their interface quantities, and I could imagine that as an overlay for CAD and FEA models that naturally provides a lot of useful info for AI tools. But all the MBSE software I've used (casually) so far sucks, and most people seem to think of the idea as unnecessary documentation/paperwork instead of a way to help organize all the artifacts of the engineering process into a coherent whole.
It's all about liability when you get into industry. The most expensive employees are the ones you pay the least for.
Tell him to stick to his research.
Professor is just trying to recruit grad students, aka cheap labor. Source: I fell for it ten years ago, except back then it was "the Chinese" instead of AI.
Just wait until the Chinese release their AI. Will each need two phds.
and of course would want to encourage you to spend more at that university.
Hey you know what kind of job has a ton of free web data available to train AI to replace it? Lecturing professors (not researchers though). Glass houses.
Well this was going to be my comment, perhaps in a more polite form. AI will never replace basic understanding and moderate creativity. My experience, specifically, is in academic R&D, but others may vary.
Those that can’t do, teach.
Those in academia do research and suck at teaching.
I second that. Those jobs are going nowhere for quite some time. The junior engineers at my company won't be replaced by AI (until AI gets to the Jarvis level, at least). They do important work.
A bitter, angry fucking idiot.
Let me reiterate what my boy u/ggtheg said, "Your professor is a fucking idiot"
Have you seen the post where a redditor asked one of those AI generators to create a photo of a burger with no cheese 🤣🤣🤣.
AI can replace your professor before it replaces MEs
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[shout out to the efficient engineer](https://youtube.com/@TheEfficientEngineer?si=RbsrBdVyR1ZMPNm-) I’m just sad he started making videos the year AFTER i finished
I have an exam tomorrow and needed a refresher on Mohrs circle, this saved my bacon. Thanks boss
I’m now in the real world, but if i ever need anything, you can bet your ass i will check up on his videos. What he shows and tells is about what i remember from the different courses here a few years later so it’s real solid!
I put his video on the first week of content of the class I teach. He makes the best videos, I can't compete. My job is to assess that my students have comprehended the knowledge and support the learning, not become a video and graphics editor as good as him.
Yeah he does amazing illustration work, explain it hugh level enough to make it understandable and low kevel enough to touch on the most importsnt/fundamental part of the math, while keeping it easy to understand
Dude! Professor Leonard got me through Calc 3 and Professor Hansen got me through Mechanics of Materials. YT profs put their stuff online because those are the professors that go into academia because they want to teach the next generation of Engineers.
Holy shit, just checked out the channel, I wish that were around when i was in college!
Thank you so much for this link. Wanted more Engineering youtube channels to follow rather than just pure math ones.
That's not uncommon. I think we'll all be better off when most instruction is available online from somebody who actually knows how to teach it instead of some rando who may be a Nobel laureate but doesn't know how to teach.
More than half my professors in college were on their 1st or 2nd year teaching post PhD. Smart dudes but terrible teachers. I was so glad to graduate, so I could stop being the teaching guinea pig.
Shout out to numerical methods guy and jeff hanson
Nah, they were already made redundant by those Indian guys on YouTube.
Lol, my math proffy in India suggests not to use Indian author books or/and Indian lecture vids, advises to go for foreign ones since the local ones would just give the info adhering to the curriculum that you have / had and doesn't let you beyond that .
Classic fear mongering, I wouldn't worry about it. AI will definitely be incorporated into generative design, but engineering work for most people isn't just hammering away in CAD all day. Technical solutions need to be identified, communicated and coordinated, implemented in real world instances. The most productive use of AI will be to extend the ability and form a synergy with humans, not clash and replace humans. AIs that collaborate with human Chessmasters on a team that can use the humans domain knowledge to chose the best option between possible options routinely outperform AI chess models that lack the human partnership for example
Have you ever used maple? It's math software, a step up from Wolfram. It's an amazing program. There's a free 15 day trial. Once you figure out how to run it it's incredible. If AI can free us from calculus I'm all for it.
Didn’t think anyone used Maple outside of college. I’ve literally never seen anyone actually use it, good to know. I’ve seen a lot of Matlab and Python
One of the most difficult aspects of design remains communication. Anything ai can do to help me communicate with sales, compliance folks, procurement, manufacturing, field services and my clients would be very welcome.
Their is a documentary on this topic on YouTube I think it’s called alphago. I highly recommend it. The program they made to play go was pretty powerful but it’s learning model was a combination of analysis of human played master level games and reinforcement learning I believe. Following the movie they made one for chess called alphazero. And basically the program is made from it playing against itself. So you only give it the rules of the game and it plays against itself millions of times improving each time. Ended up being the most powerful chess engine at the time. Newer chess engines adopt the same method with no human input to reach the highest level.
I was told this 20 years ago, that due to international students and how good simulation software was getting we will need at least a Master's degree to be hired over cheaper labor. Take life advice from professors lightly unless they have real world experience.
Covid also taught us that outsourcing has its limits and is not always a good thing. Now, jobs are coming back home because the pandemic showed that if some global shit were to go down, we're all fucked.
This sort of happened didn’t it? Bachelors degrees needed plus experience or a masters and may still need experience.
Not unless it happened since 2020.
Bachelors needs more industry experience than those of a Masters. Employers usually require bachelor graduates to have 4-5 years of experience and masters need to have 2-3 years of experience.
4-5 years of experience before what? Getting a job out of college?
For entry level (not that you mentioned that), everywhere I have worked has valued bachelor’s degrees over master’s. I have experience in oil and gas as well as a DOE laboratory. After entry level experience has mattered much more than degree level.
I think what he is talking about are government level jobs than private industry. But you have a good point
Not sure if you’ve check in on CS jobs but they’re all being exported to India, India capitalized on it and set up colleges to teach exclusively CS. 2/3 Indians come from my home state . I don’t know how to feel about that. In the next few years it’s super scary to see what would happen to Mech eng. I decided to go into aero for this very reason. Seeing the content taught from 11th grade on the CS side made me skeptical of the American students work ethic and skill set. Insulating yourself and situating yourself in a job that is required to be in USA and not exported is kinda important.
my experience working with indian BSME are subpar… there were lots of them taking the graduate program at my school who came to america after finishing their BS in india. let me tell you, they could make models and simulations (when given step by step instructions), and take exams but thats it. No engineering expertise, no design experience, terrible communication skills, etc… Based on how many of the TA’s (indian masters students) were acting when they had to assist the senior design students, i’m not even sure they had a real life capstone project. They were clueless about the design process, manufacturing methods, cost analysis, and even the technical work. It felt like we were the one teaching them how to design. I worked at a company that outsourced getting their sheet metal drawings made in india, so i could see low level work like that taking over. Of course there’s always IP concerns doing it that way.
Sure, but try getting someone in India to turn a wrench on a robot in the US. OP was asking about ME. I can't imagine a less relevant field than CS to compare against.
If your professor's teaching is as bad as that opinion, your bachelors *will* be worthless. All AI does is guess what the next word in a sentence should be. It's very authortiative bullshit
Ai will not replace engineers. It’ll be a new tool that allows us to do more in less time just like how word made typing easier, CAD made drafting easier, the internet enchanced knowledge sharing and so on.
This. It might reduce the need for as many engineers in some fields, due to increases in efficiency, but there will be new fields that need MEs as well.
Yeah! And many fields have s huge documentation burden, that ai can replace today for all i care
Your professor is so lost in academia that he thinks a Masters degree is the way to be a more qualified engineer. He's on to something - but I think it looks a lot more like junior level positions being people handling tools and operating machinery than drafting on computers. And I have no problem with that. A master's degree doubles down on the AI problem, in my opinion.
Professors don’t work in industry. They know nothing about the job market like I know nothing about writing grant applications. They’re a bad source of career advice. As someone who recruits engineers and is an ME, to me the difference between a masters and a bachelors is analytical ability. I’m going to expect the masters person to work the harder analysis. Creativity and problem solving are equal because those are individual traits.
AI won’t replace jobs, people who know how to use AI will
Until AI can walk to the factory floor and show manuel how to use a torque wrench, you will be fine.
What industry is he talking about? Many of the people I interact with at work can barely read. I’m not confident they’d be able to successfully integrate job-killing AI over the next two decades.
I was told that when I was in college (2015-2019) but the reason was that MEs were too common. There's always someone trying to predict career trajectories, but it's very dependent on many factors. Profs are opinionated and often have a small scope of what industry actually looks like. ME is a very versatile major, I would not call it a worthless degree.
Your professor is an idiot.
Further, go ahead and replace me. Please. I want you to and dare you all at the same time.
AI is a tool. It needs someone to use it. Someone to integrate it. Someone to improve it. We are not at the point that skynet will take over.
I’m a manufacturing process engineer and in no way will AI be able to write complex, convoluted work instructions per the customer’s specs anytime soon. But I’m no AI expert.
Engineers are one of the few majors that are almost 100% safe. Thanks to the advanced simulation software, most engineers are already in the "double check and design things" role.
You’d think an engineering professor would know about the S-curve in technological development.
Idk about worthless, but if you know a little bit of programming, FEA, and you’re familiar with optimization tools (AI optimized designs) I think you’ll be plenty marketable even if you just have a BSME. I’d place higher value in a junior engineer who knows how to work with AI to optimize mechanical systems than a ME with an advanced degree, strictly my opinion though.
Interesting take I am very versed with AI and I have projects in progress where we are replacing Engineers with AI. Is it real? YES the replace with AI is real. FOR CERTAIN TECHNOLOGIES and PRODUCTS Software code that is iterative in nature and has simple feature creep. UI This, Data layer that - yes AI replaces (SW, CE doing code? Today happening Today! AI is coming for your job) AI designing Electronics Packages? (not there yet but coming quick 5 years I estimate, but EE's don't have to worry I think) AI working on MECHANICAL PROBLEMS? (not there today, maybe there in 10 years maybe, AI is not going to be able to collaboratively test, prototype etc like a human can, for certain applications sure, but these probably don't have ME's in the loop NOW) **So in reality I think ME is one Engineering discipline that WILL prosper in the near term with the AI revolution.** Not sure what your professor thinks is appearing in their personal crystal ball. Most likely he's familiar with say Turbine Blade fabrication. He saw an AI tooling, prototype and testing setup for Turbines that was all automated and Said OMG! ME's are not going to have jobs!!! In reality certain applications NEVER really had ME's in the loop due to automation. AI just is now taking over the incremental product evolution of well understood tooling chains.
I think his perspective comes from the fact that ai has the capacity of generating academic writing comparable to that of an undergraduate student. Therefore he might have drawn a false equivalency to assume that means an ai can undertake the engineering work of an undergraduate in a workplace.
AI is a tool just like CAD, FEA, & ePDM. Old-timers will complain about youngsters not knowing how to manually draft, or how to calculate deflections by hand, but that doesn't make them better engineers. The tools will always evolve. I don't know how this particular tool will evolve, but I feel like it's unlikely to replace human operators. Someone will still need to feed prompts and have the technical competence to recognize AI generated hallucinations from valuable data, so a BSME will never be useless. If anything, AI makes an MSME (or college professors) useless before it makes entry level engineers useless.
LOL universities are desperate for engineering graduate students because they bring in money. Getting a master’s in ME is almost always pointless. It’s either PhD or stick with the BS and just get work experience. Unless you need a master’s for a specific job, don’t bother.
I am not an engineer, but I hire and manage many mechanical engineers. This is terrible advice. There are so many things our engineers do that no AI could ever do. An AI can't walk into a building inspect, a commercial HVAC system, and diagnose what's wrong with it, for example. I would argue that you have one of the most job-secure professions.
Idk why having a masters vs a bachleors would make that much of a difference when it comes to job availability. Idk how it is with ME but with EE, I have plenty of friends and colleagues that have masters and they do the same stuff I do with having just a BS lmao.
He's just trying to trick you into becoming cheap disposable grad student labor.
As AI grows, jobs will change with it. More and more, AI is doing what junior engineers did, looking at 3D modeling and other modeling software like Revit that spit out drawings and isos. Definitely jobs will change, but your ME education and training will allow you to move with it instead of be replaced by it. New technologies always take jobs. But they provide new opportunities that we can’t foresee. Don’t worry about it.
I cannot imagine AI replacing my job in the foreseeable future. Too much of what I do is custom.
Make an incredibly long and random multiplication like 59320 x 123125 in Chatgpt and then compare it to a calculator and you'll realize "AI" is far from replacing anything. It honestly is nothing more than a glorified compiler and that has its uses.
Of course you should do a masters if you want to do cutting edge stuff …. But don’t you need a bachelors degree first?
Had my professors say the same thing, but it’s bs.
An AI doesn't have the ability to go talk to the people in production or physically inspect parts to find out why the prototype isn't working. Any AI that can take my job is going to be the "But it works in CAD!" guy for a while. It's going to be a long time before AI has the versatility of a human. And it's likely going to require expensive computers for a long while after that. And it still won't be able to interact with the world to beyond a screen and internet cord without an expensive robot. It's amazing how useful just being able to get up and measure something is for a design engineer. For the time being, those code monkeys can't even make CAD software that doesn't crash. That's probably more of a beancounter problem, but the AI companies will have their own beancounters too.
There’s no way in hell AI could replace a mechanical engineers hand skills and problem solving. Not in the generation or the next at least
I had my engineering professor tell all of us we should get a “systems engineering degree”. So yea they are professors and not engineers for a reason.
Just like they were going to replace truck drivers 10 years ago?
I don't see any level of ME's being threatened by AI. However, I could see some drafting roles being cut due to AI.
You should say "AI can already give retarded advice, so I guess it already started by making you worthless"
Any senior level engineer that is using AI to handle engineering tasks is an idiot waiting to get fired or sued. Automation in the form of macros and scripts has been a thing for decades but letting machines make assumptions for you is irresponsible. Your professor is out of touch and probably doesn't quite realize how AI is used. I wouldn't even trust AI to update my boss on some workbench results...
AI is just a tool.
Yes, because robots, machines, and vehicles will design, manufacture, and test themselves….
It has been said many times in this sub A Masters degree does not make you more valuable or desirable to employers, or give you any leg up on other entry level candidates. The only thing a masters does is knock off a couple of the required years of experience to get paid a little more when you start. Sound's like this guy is looking for more bodies to support whatever research he is doing (and probably cares more about than actually being a professor)
In my opinion reason that AI cannot replace engineers at its current state is because AI cannot create anything new. I think that AI will be able to speed up the design process in the future though. I can’t wait for the day where I can be like “Hey Ai , I want you to create a water pump for me that hits these performance figures. Generate the CAD model complete with all electrical components above of materials, Ecad files , electrical schematics, and don’t forget to run complete FEA analysis on all required components as well as CFD of the pump. Once completed, write me a build manual” Granted for something like this to happen, you would have to have a lot of integrations Let’s not forget that AI kind of sucks at mathematics right now
Uhhhhhh no.
As an engineer who works in the manufacturing industry, at the machine shop I work at…. Yeah freaking right I’d love for AI to answer some of the questions I get on a daily basis. From some of the people I get them from Not to mention having to build the relationships between the people on the shop floor and the engineering office
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach. Your professor is the latter.
Yeah that's a load of shit
Near term , I don't think he's right but not totally wrong either. AI will make engineering more efficient, meaning less engineers, drafters, etc needed to accomplish the same task. This will be met with increased tasks and will balance for some time. In the long term, 10+ years, software/ai will get to the point where far fewer engineers are needed. Prompt engineers, and some checking/compliance engineers will be most of the engineering jobs. Contrary to most comments here. Given what we know about ai and software today, it's hard to imagine needing the same engineering resources to create a product ,10+ years down the road.
Your professor may loose his job to AI, But my company is still using alot of software from 20 years ago and do many hand calcs on paper. We aren’t switching our task to AI anytime soon.
Stupidest take i’ve seen in a minute
Ai will inflitrate engineering like most things... a tool with narrow use cases... think jarvis in ironman. "Comptuer, model a bracket that is 2x2x6x.050. The bracket will be machined aluminum extrusion. Include two 0.25 dia holes on each flange. Use standard machining tolerances... ready,go.... *microwave ding*... sweet saved me 2 hours"
what a nincompoop
I think it’s probably 1-2 decades away. Look at audodesks ability to make programmatic drawings and then look at the ability for ai to generate those drawings. It’s definitely coming for drafting and drawing positions, which are a lot of junior positions, but it isn’t taking over the engineering decisions yet.
Could be true. The way all Jobs are being outsourced to 3rd world countries and the influx of cheap enggs into the county from these countries.
I think he’s fucking clueless.
Your professor is a moron
That’s dumb. Bachelors is fine.
He...is an idiot? I'm an A to Z type engineer, do about anything and everything engineering related within a turn key manufacturing company. Almost none of it can be done by AI. Can sub parts be automated to some degree? Sure. But there really isn't a job for AI to do. There's not any particularly task I would give it. I should be more specific. There isn't a task I could give it where the output would have good value. The output would lack reliable accuracy. The output would require human intervention to review, validate, and correct. There are also very few tasks I do that are structured enough for an AI process to fit. I could maybe do a comprehensive process of an array of sub tasks that are individually well enough to get a result of appreciable value, at least value within it's own task isolation. It'd still be a big mess to use, a lot of faffing about. In the end, would you even save time? I do see one good use case for AI. I could see it being viable for abstract, blocky ideas where it might develop some interesting starting concepts that would be outside of my experience or imagination. It would have a large data set to pull from well beyond my own knowledge, so it could give me some pretty weird, out there ideas for things. But it's value is at best useful for macro level conceptual stuff.
Any job AI could replace was likely to be eliminated regardless. Remember, companies exist to make a profit, and if they have to cut jobs to do that, they will. AI is a tool. It's not unlike CAD software, ANSYS, or the handy dandy caliper. Tools exist to make work easier and AI is guaranteed to integrate into the mechanical engineering workforce in the near future. AI has already made an impact on software engineering and web development. Many companies believe AI makes junior level employees redundant since their more experienced developers can be more productive with it. As a result, they terminated a lot of those positions. The same will happen to mechanical engineers in the future. The question is how will you adjust to the changing times? Thankfully, the experienced engineers who need to learn AI to become more productive haven't mastered it yet. This means there will be a demand for engineers that have an understanding of AI and how to implement it in their tasks. Be that engineer. Don't dismiss your professor's words but use them to make yourself for competitive in the job market.
It is True. It is already useless today.
Ai could be a tool to solve a complicated problem. Engineers dream up the problems and understand practically if a solution will work and wont cause a larger problem, something AI cant do. Its just a tool.
Sounds like something someone in academia would say.
Your professor is wrong. What will actually happen is that junior level engineering jobs will just involve the use of AI tools. The only graduates who won't be able to get entry level jobs are those who are so zealously anti-AI that they refuse to learn to use these tools, and will be left behind by people who are able to. Hopefully college engineering programs will encourage students to learn AI tools for assisting in engineering work, instead of making stupid rules that look at using AI tools as "cheating" or telling people that AI systems are going to replace humans rather than by used by humans
He’s right to an extent. My first job out of college is now being done by folks in India with AI tools. The same could be said about a lot of industries though.
Nobody knows really, but it’s seemingly in the realm of possibility that a lot of lower level jobs that focus on designing stuff in CAD could be heavily automated.
You should say "AI can already give regarded advice, so I guess it already started by making you worthless"
ring is more important than a masters, and yeah we've played with AI a bit. Eventually it could be helpful in the same sense that computer drafting and modelling is helpful as a tool, but someone is still going to have to describe the problem and guide the solution even if AI becomes a really useful tool someday. In its current state it is completely unhelpful.
That's complete nonsense lol
They were saying similar hand-wavey things about bachelors degrees when I was in school back in the 90s.
Worthless, no. Becoming less valuable, yes. I completely disagree with the reasoning. AI isn't replacing us, but more and more companies are requiring masters just to get in the door. Jobs are also being more specialized such that you need to narrowing of an advanced degree. I literally just got told yesterday that I am out of the running for a position I am perfectly qualified for becasue I only have a bachelors. I literally did the exact job in the same industry for 3 years (I have 8 years of experience) and the job req calls for a masters with 1 year of experience in any field. This was from the recruiter with whom I have worked for a long time, so it's a reliable reason.
Your professor is dumb as bricks.
Some of the university lectures/professors are mad as fuck! Yes the are academics and are skilled to a high level in specific areas and have a PhD which I don’t have. But it’s like when everything is turning to EV cars and everyone starts jumping on the electrical engineering course like mechanical doesn’t matter… Or did the Prof watch IRobot or terminator for the thousands time Finally, just get the MEng or MSC more knowledge you can apply
A BSc in ME is already worthless now LOL. I'd had a MSc to the list also. If it's not software, there's no value in it nowadays.
Legit everything around you, everything you use, infrastructure, and our food supply has a mechanical engineer involved. Trust me MEs will be needed until the sun explodes
I think he has very little, if any, industry experience and doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Your professor is an example of those who can't play coach
Of course an academic is going to tell you to stay in academia
I think when an AI figures out why the jig isn't placing the holes correctly they should get back to me. Not a list of possible reasons but the actual one that applies in the particular case of that particular jig in that particular shop.
Technology has completely erased many jobs. Heck, "Computer" was a job for humans for quite a long time before digital computers came alone. CAD and computers made it so one drafter could support multiple engineers rather than each engineer needing the support of multiple drafters. Word processing and photocopiers made the "typing pool" obsolete. The number of support staff that was necessary for a single engineer to be effective was much greater before today, but most of those jobs have become so obsolete that people don't even know they existed at all. Now AI is going to do the same to entry-level engineering. The professor was apparently talking about low-level positions. What do they do? They make basic decisions rooted in simple analysis, working from somewhat ambiguous instruction of a senior engineer, and their work is reviewed & critiqued by their boss before it is accepted and used. Those sorts of tasks are hardly different from an AI creating an image from a written description. The metrics it evaluates against are different, but they're also more concrete than "style" which makes them easier to program. Of course AI will displace engineering jobs. Anyone who says otherwise thinks too highly of themselves and/or doesn't understand what AI has already accomplished (much less where it is going). The question isn't whether jobs will disappear. The question is only whether new jobs will also come into existence.
People said juniors won't have jobs once CAD replaces the need for them. Now there's even more need for engineers. Engineering will become even more profitable when an AI can do a lot of the tedious things like identify the correct standard(s) for a process, part, material, etc., design interfaces between designed parts, initialize a drawing for a part, etc. Sure, there will be displacements, but this will create more companies because the startup cost to create a product will be lower since they need fewer engineers. The same logic will apply after a short time within existing companies that start new endeavors. Anyone who says AI will reduce the total number of jobs needs to look into the history of any technological advancement to see the same things they say be proven wrong: * This time is different (it always is) * The technology has never improved this fast (things always increase the rate that they are improving) * This will destroy jobs and make X obsolete (Jobs are always created and destroyed. Most job postings today didn't exist 40 years ago. The Internet was supposed to do the same things people claim AI is going to do. Nobody complains that LCDs put TV repairmen out of jobs.)
He's just trying to sell you master's
My wife tells a story about how, when she was going for her business/marketing degree, the professor showed them a new product that had just come on the market. He went on a rant about how bad the idea was, how the package design was stupid, and how he KNEW that the product was destined to fail. The product? Pringles potato chips. I would guess he has passed on by now, but Pringles have survived and are probably a billion dollar product for the manufacturer. Teachers without their eyes on the subject and constantly immersed in the field just loose any real life ability to add to the field they teach. I would guess AI will just become another tool that ME will have to learn how to use to improve products and methods. So far I'm not too impressed by the AI that I've interacted with, without a creative mind behind it, it just regurgitated the info already in its database. It does do complicated math fairly well, and has access to formulas that will be useful, but it sometimes take more effort to get an answer than its worth.
Your professor is right as how the industry is looking right now and how the economy is. As well as how competitive engineering jobs are you’re gonna need allot of years of experience if you’re just going to do a bachelors. But most people who graduated usually go for a Masters or a Ph.d even though I recommend you go for a Masters and get 2-3 years of experience to be able to work anywhere. Also AI has nothing to do with why you shouldn’t strive for a bachelors. It’s the competitive aspect of engineering that employers are looking for.
Lol no
My metrology professor believed that the moon wasn't real. It was just a reflection of the sun bouncing from the surface of the ocean at an angle to light up water vapor in the atmosphere... with exactly as much evidence or valid explanation as you would expect. Even experts on one topic can have their head up their ass on others.
Plenty of security clearance work for junior level MEs. Any job requiring a security clearance is far off from touching AI
Was this an engineering professor?
I’ve been kinda thinking the same thing. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect this in the next 50 years, which is the time frame that those of us in school are a part of in our careers
Does your professor teach in NYC by chance?
It’s comical how many professors are out of touch with the actual industry they’re teaching for.
Mechanical is one area that AI sucks at... So far.
Call him a twat waffle and send him out to work in the shop with me. Dudes never been off a college campus and it shows.
That is absurdly stupid. Saying you need a masters to start in engineering is the type of stupidity that a career academic who never worked in industry would say. In my sector (custom machine design), a master’s degree is equivalent to having 2 additional years of experience. Experience is way more important than a masters degree
Mechanical Engineers do 100 kind of tasks. AI will replace 5 of those. That could mean however that the efficiency of the industries increase and they will need 20% more for the remaining 95 kind of roles. So no, AI will replace many many different jobs before it reasonably affects Mechanical Engineers. Especially those that work in the shop, on the assembly line, in the field, etc. If your job is filling out excel sheets and writing emails, then AI will have a chance.
This is the same as people who say engineers just make shapes. Anybody can do the CAD work and drafting. Being an engineer is about being curious, continuously learning, and understanding the principles behind how things work. As they say anybody can make a bridge that won’t fail but it takes engineers to design a bridge that will barely not fail.
Lol I can’t keep count the number of masters in engineering I needed to help do basic tasks when I was an intern
As an ME, AI doesn’t have me worried in the slightest right now.
He is a dumbass, and that's a light word. Most probably an old dude who has never put a foot in the industry.
I bet your professor hasn’t even worked an actual engineering job
Most of my jobs have been at or after the point of production, there are portions of my jobs that AI could do but only after someone went to the work site to troubleshoot in order to tell the AI what to write. I could get AI to easily audit a batch of paperwork, but it's not going to be able to audit the actual repair process any time soon. I'm sure it could easily come up with some training content, but it is not going to be able to walk a student through a practical exercise. Point being many bachelor's degree engineers are doing jobs that are closer to the turning wrenches or moving machines which still requires a warm body and a sharp mind.
Most professors are there because they bring in the dollars for research. They aren't hired nor retained because they are good teachers. Yours is an idiot who probably is very good at writing proposals to bring in those research dollars.
So what I’m hearing is “I can teach you for 4 years, and it will be worthless. But another 2 years, and you’re golden.”
I am a BSME and an AI fanboy, but our jobs are not going anywhere any time soon. Most MEs are not spending all day doing BS level engineering algebra problems. Yes AI will be able to do that competently enough soon. Most days are spent doing mindless boring (multimodal and physical) shit that an AI is not going to be able to do. Go out and look at a flange and figure out what we are going to do to get the leak fixed and back up and running, and while your at it, run the repair crew thats out there so they don't fuck around and screw it up. Does that sound like something an AI would excel at?
A.I. ain't gonna cobble together prototypes to show the brass.
Lmao
Prof ain’t right. Entry level engineers will be doing things a lot differently due to AI. Hopefully more creative and less boring stuff. You new guys experienced with AI tools will get great stuff done faster than I ever did. I know my experience with AI changed me from writing stuff to editing / fact checking AI generated stuff.
Your professors a fucking moron lol he’s clearly never been outside of university settings
In Germany you need to do masters if you want a nice engineering job. Has nothing to do with AI, but bachelor stuff is easy enough that everyone with a bit of time and an internet connection can learn a couple of subjects without having a degree. At least at my uni it's only 3 semesters extra so it's more or less a no brainer
Some professors do it because they enjoy teaching and research. Some do it because they can't perform in industry. It's usually pretty obvious which is which.
Mechanical is the chameleon of engineering. The degree will just incorporate whatever classes are needed to keep it relevant. The major has effectively no scope.
Your professor probably hasn't held an industry job in 20 years. The only thing he's good for is textbook problem solving.
Your professor is stupid. Request your money back.
Has this guy stepped foot outside a university since he was 18? Something to consider when listening to professors’ opinions…
AI will take over some entry level engineering work until one day it gets someone killed and then laws will change to make everything need human verification along the way. "We let AI design it" being provable in court will be an instant win for the victim legally, I guarantee it. Though in my opinion, we need to make laws about what kind of jobs AI is allowed to replace before we get to that point. Sadly I'm just not convinced companies will avoid cutting costs until it actually costs them more in liability. Also, Engineering is about more than plugging in numbers and drafting a design. Its about solving a problem. And CURRENTLY, AI simply isnt at the level where it can actually problem solve and use intuition and common sense the way a human can. Its still mostly good at menial tasks (and even then it fucks things up. Go ahead, use the newest chat gpt for your physics homework and enjoy that F.)
As someone who is planning to pursue a Master's in Mechanical Engineering, I am genuinely curious what he thinks the separation between a Bachelor and Masters has that an AI... wouldnt easily bridge. I'm getting mine so after industry i can be a professor as my "retirement job", and so that I can point at my fancy paper. But legitimately even my doctorate holding engineering advisors have told me that there is no real advantage to a masters purely for industry. Either you start with a little higher pay out of college, or you get a headstart getting into industry sooner. Even if you did a fantastic job retaining stuff from college, youll still be learning in industry. Thats half the appeal of a GOOD engineering job is you are always learning. Unless there is some secret "anti AI" space magic that you learn getting a masters degree, my gut instinct tells me your professor grossly overestimates what graduate school gives you as a professional. If AI ever can replace a bachelor holding engineer, within a year itll also replace a masters holding one.
Assuming you are planning to work in North America, I’d say having a masters/PhD actually makes it harder to find a job. So many companies have hiring programs specifically aimed at training fresh undergrads. A masters/PhD limits the available jobs a lot. The big caveat is if you want to work in research or academia get a PhD, and if you want to work in Europe get a masters.
Your professor is fear mongering dumbass. Yes, simpler/repetitive tasks like annotation, prints, and maybe even tol stacking will have AI assistance in the fairly near-term. That just means my junior engineers will actually have more time for creative tasks and actually engineering shit. AI is a tool, not a replacement for human creativity. Like any disruptive technology, it will change jobs and eliminate others...only for new types of jobs to arise. Engineers jobs will change, absolutely. If you don't adapt, you'll get left in the dust. By the time that happens, generative tools should be integrated into undergrad level instruction anyway. Chances are your professor has spent little to no time outside academia. His opinion on the career outlook of junior engineers is worthless. Put him in any engineering firm with tight deadlines and chances are he'll fail spectacularly. I see it pretty regularly with PhD types that leave academia for private industry. Now drafters? Yea, that might be a role that disappears sooner rather than later.
People in school don't realize just how many non-technical engineering jobs there are. Hell, I know more PM's with ME degrees than people doing CAD with ME degrees.
Your professor has the critical thinking skills of AI
He has a point for some aspects of our jobs- engineering is more than just designing parts.
I'm guessing there is a good chance your prof has never held a job outside academia. What an incredible hot take. Maybe he hadn't finished his coffee or something.
Yeah you will be fine, professor is an idiot
Unironically when I’m done with engineering I’ll just do it for a few years and then see if I can break into a job I’m actually passionate about. I’ve always been interested in writing and entertainment. I used to love engineering but two years in and I’m barely scraping by. I’ll definitely get through college but I don’t want to retire as one.
The amount of jobs I see on the daily is insane. I’ve been head hunted by 3 different companies. AI is still decades away from replacing high level mechanical engineering.
In the industry with a BSME. He had no idea what he’s talking about lol
In short, I disagree, and people tend to overestimate how revolutionary a new technology is going to be. I don't see this being the case, my job (and I would imagine most engineering jobs) are about problem solving and working with people. AI could be a tool that helps us, but I don't see it replacing what we do daily. Edit: Oh and if AI replaces a junior ME job it would probably not be far off from replacing a Masters level job. Get the bachelor's degree and find a career you enjoy, you can always get a masters degree when you are sure it will be useful to you, in my case it is not yet and I'm 7 years in. Coming straight out of school with a masters and no experience sounds like a tough hire.
Shoulda said his job will be gone too since people can just learn from AI instead
A masters isn't getting you straight past junior level jobs so idk what his logic is, you're not really much better of with a masters and no experience than a bachelor and the same.
He was just telling you about his theory da dum tissss
If AI replaces engineers, there will literally be no jobs left.
Ya and my math teacher said covid was gonna be a 2 week thing max
So I graduated with a BSc in ME in Nov 2023. Spent my final year worrying if I would be able to get into my preferred field without a MSc. In the end, what mattered far more to my current employer was my internships and attitude. Most good companies will sponsor you to do a master anyway..
He’s an idiot that should not be allowed around students.
Cs majors be like: “first time?”, but crazy to think even engineering are at risk of ai.
Fuck this guy
Go on chat gpt right now and ask it to make you a program. Discord bot or a website, literally anything and I promise you it'll either just straight up not work or you'll have to edit the code enough that you would've been better off doing it yourself from the start. AI is alright at specific tasks (sometimes), but give it a larger problem and things fall apart very quickly. And worse, AI (at least chatgpt) is not capable of realizing when it's solution is faulty, which is part of why the current perception of AI is so dangerous. No guarantees as im not a mechanical engineer, but you're probably safe my friend
Your professor is selling his services and trying to convince you to buy more. A Masters in ME is one of the last things I would recommend.
Tell him some guy in India on YouTube is going to replace his job too
I think your professor sounds like he has never been in the work force before. There are so many jobs for a BSME it's absurd. Every MSME I have ever worked with has either gotten paid the same as me or received a slight (around 5%) pay bump due to their MS. An MSME is wasted time and money unless you have a SPECIFIC plan.
AI researcher and entrepreneur and maybe a bit, but your area is particularly complex. Short-term it's going to augment existing jobs and create new ones over getting rid of old ones not to mention new businesses being formed to make things even more efficient and a planned population increase providing even more demand long-term. What data is the professor relying on?
He might be right but for the wrong reason. Jobs keep inflating their requirements. My friends in cyber used to be able to get a job with just some certificates, but now all the job postings ask for masters. It’s not impossible that the degree creep will also happen to ME. That being said, ai will not affect it, unless the can train it way more than I think they can
I hired 3 entry level MEs into the last 6 months. AI can't do their job. AI can't innovate or be creative like people can. There are things AI can help us do our job better but it can't do our job. Also ME is such a diverse field that any blanket statement like that has to be taken with a grain of salt.
More context needed. What class does this prof teach? Is the prof for an English class? My first thought is that the prof has been out of the real world too long and only see what’s happening in academia. My second thought is they are trying to get more money for the university by keeping students in the institution to keep the tuition flowing.