The AI Revolution in T&M: Engineer-Led, AI-Enhanced, and Industry-Ready
It’s already clear that artificial intelligence will be the defining technology of our era. More importantly to us, I’m absolutely certain AI will transform virtually every aspect of test and measurement in ways we’ve never seen before—and in new ways we can only imagine right now.
?I also believe one of, if not the, most crucial and ongoing goals for NI is to equip T&M engineers with tools that enable them to take full advantage of this this amazing technology as it continues to evolve.??
?AI is revolutionizing product and system architectures. Systems are becoming increasingly software-defined with machine learning capabilities embedded within every layer of these products. The complexity of components and the volume of data generated necessitate AI for impactful analysis.
?But regardless of the type or complexity of the system being tested, NI’s core is acquiring, analyzing, and presenting data relevant to a test engineer, with solutions that reduce development time, increase data utilization and prevent rework.
?My focus is on our innovation – how we’re going to improve workflows, how we’re going to get more intelligence in our systems, and how we’re going to drive what we call “Intelligent Test” forward. To help guide us (and the industry) on this evolutionary journey, we’ve established three key principals that we believe are essential for the conception, development, and integration of AI solutions for T&M:
?ENGINEER-LED
The heart of our AI principles is our deep respect for engineers. Empowering engineers to make informed final decisions is integral to every step in T&M processes. We believe that by empowering engineers and experts with the right tools and insights, we can unlock the true potential of intelligent test. So, our AI strategy begins with this foundational principle: Engineer-Led. For pivotal decisions and actions, we cannot rely on black-box components, which aren’t auditable to the professionals in charge of ensuring accurate validation.
AI-ENHANCED
Our second principle, AI-Enhanced, builds on the foundation of engineer involvement. We don’t need AI to take over, we need it to provide the deepest, most reliable data insights when and where we need them. At NI Connect 2024, my colleagues Michael Phillips, Shruti Shirhatti, and Alejandro Barreto demonstrated how engineers can take advantage of AI to accelerate test, improve operational efficiency, and turbo-charge data analysis. Our AI enhancements enable engineers to bring even more value to the T&M process. These solutions simplify and speed-up workflows and daily tasks, such as reviewing code, synthesizing technical documents, and provide engineers with more useful and insightful recommendations by reporting on enterprise-wide lab condition readiness, detecting product defects, improving signal processing, and analyzing waveforms.
INDUSTRY READY
The third pillar, Industry-Ready, ensures that NI’s AI technology will adhere to industry standards, especially regarding data security and privacy. We know our customers work with proprietary information, codenamed products, and projects with national security implications, so NI’s solutions will empower engineers with local language models within their own labs, ensuring performance and scalability while maintaining data integrity and security. Your data, prompts, and test questions remain under your control, never leaving your lab.
At NI, our legacy has been one of leading innovation and establishing responsible testing practices. These principals and our commitment to incorporate AI creatively, practically, and safely will continue that legacy. The test leaders of tomorrow will be the ones who embrace AI today. You need a trusted partner who can navigate this complexity and rate of change, and NI is ready to be that partner.