How is Industrial AI supercharging American manufacturing?

In a recent podcast episode, I shared some insights with listeners on a topic you’re hearing about all the time. That’s artificial intelligence – or, as I like to say, augmented intelligence. (I’ll return to that idea in a bit.)??

So, what can I share with you that you haven’t heard already? Well, I wanted to focus on AI breakthroughs in American manufacturing. I wanted to share with you our vision at 西门子 for what we call Industrial AI.????

Let’s go back a little over a year. ChatGPT has arrived on the scene. Everyone’s talking about AI and our future.???

Top of mind were risks. We heard many ask: Is AI advancing too rapidly – faster than we’re prepared for???

And let’s focus on this for a minute. Because these questions are now prompting important conversations between government and industry. There’s no doubt that government and industry will need to work together.?

And here’s the thing. Yes, we do need to guard against risks. But we also need to seize the many positive opportunities ahead. AI is a powerful tool to solve problems and shape a better future.???

I recently talked about this with the White House’s Anne Neuberger at a technology gathering in Washington, D.C.??

Anne is the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology. And she described AI as having both “promise and peril.” She wants to ensure we capture benefits while being equally focused on managing risks.??

At Siemens, we applaud this perspective. We’re encouraged by efforts led by the Administration and Congress to guide AI development in a way that strikes the right balance of ensuring safety and security while still furthering innovation.??

In fact, this reflects Siemens’ own approach to AI. Siemens has been incorporating AI into products for decades. We have more than 1,500 AI experts globally. Our software and AI applications all get put through a full risk review before they’re deployed.??

We believe that all technologies should be applied with purpose and applied securely. When we deploy AI within this framework, we see the incredible promise and value that we can create for customers and society.???

This is about helping customers to be more productive and more sustainable. It’s about helping them to design products faster, adapt to supply chain challenges, and manage buildings more efficiently.????

But let’s look a little closer at what’s possible.???

The big change coming with the rise of ChatGPT – and with it, what’s called generative AI – is how we interact with AI.???

Creating AI models used to require deep coding and programming knowledge – but generative capabilities make everything more accessible. We can ask a question or provide a simple prompt. AI models then take those inputs and evolve, rapidly becoming more advanced. The ability to now bring generative AI to factories means that we can apply Industrial AI at a much larger scale.??

In his annual shareholders speech, our global CEO Roland Busch compared AI to electricity. Innovating with electrification has been part of Siemens since we were founded in 1847 and continues today. Generative AI, as Roland said, now brings us to the start of a new growth curve.??

And the key aspect of this is data. Think about the incredible amount of data produced by a factory. In one month, a factory produces data equivalent to 500,000 movies.???

Industrial AI is helping workers make sense of this massive amount of data – and here’s an example from the automotive sector. A customer had an abundance of sensor data that just couldn’t be analyzed manually. It would take too long.?With AI, they executed a predictive maintenance model that could check more than 10,000 machines for problems. The result? They now receive advance warnings of machine failures up to six months in advance, which means less downtime and more efficiency.??

For most capital expenditures in business, a return-on-investment of years is generally acceptable. With Industrial AI, we’re now seeing a return-on-investment in weeks and months.???

Lastly, let’s address the big concern: Is AI coming to take our jobs????

You’ve probably already heard a lot of perspectives on this issue too! But again, let me provide an outlook for industry.???

I want to return now to the idea of “augmented intelligence.” Because, across American industry, AI isn’t taking jobs; it is expanding what humans can do.???

There’s been a discussion about repetitive factory floor jobs. But what about repetitive programming? Or repetitive data monitoring? With AI, every worker can be empowered to do more and do more safely.??

This is a solution to the worker shortage we face today. In recent years, manufacturing job openings in the U.S. have exceeded 600,000 positions. Even with perfect recruiting efforts, I’m not sure we can fully close this gap.????

But that’s another thing that AI does – it helps us close gaps. It closes gaps by opening doors into industry for people who haven’t yet developed specialized skills. With generative AI – and its more intuitive user interfaces – we can democratize technologies and engage more people with them.???

This is what we’re doing with the Siemens Industrial Copilot, which we recently introduced with Microsoft. This is a generative AI-powered assistant that improves human-machine interaction in manufacturing. In practice, users can rapidly generate, optimize, and debug complex automation code and shorten simulation times. Again, a task that once took weeks now takes minutes.???

This changes everything. So, when people now ask, “How do we develop a skilled workforce?” I’m reframing the question a bit.??

How can we bring people technologies that empower them to immediately make an impact???

My prediction is that Industrial AI will advance digitalization projects that have been held back by too much complexity. These efforts will start speeding forward.???

So, no; AI will not be relegating people to the sidelines in American manufacturing. It will, though, expand what’s humanly possible. It will enable our workforce to be more productive and to innovate like never before.????

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