Letters Our Readers Wrote This Month
Opinion by Ralph Grabowski and Our Letter Writers
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Re: Welcome To Burhop
From the editor: Mark Burhop has launched his his programming and AI-oriented Substack at burhop.substack.com. He explains, “I used to be a software developer and mechanical engineer, but then came AI.”
His first article is “From Code to Atoms: How AI Will Change Manufacturing by Following – and Departing From – Software” and is heavily footnoted.
Re: Free CAD Software To Consider
I think LibreCAD is still around, but I’m not sure of its development.
- Dave Edwards
The editor replies: There are two free CAD systems with similar names, so I find it easy to get confused which is which. LibreCAD is 2D only, while FreeCAD is 3D parametric CAD. Both continue to be updated.
Re: Newcomers Who Bet $9 Billion on AI for MCAD, Part 1
Another good article, thanks Ralph. Question: has your research uncovered any (useful) AI apps targeted at land development civil engineering?
There are several apps out there which certainly lack the “World Model AI” as the outputs have nothing to do with how we design sites.
- Mark
The editor replies: You make a good point. Civil engineering ought to be a natural. I think that World Modeling is at the input stage, where scans of the world are input, but not output, where it’s used to create designs of roads and so on.
I sometimes think that the current ranting about AI is a little excessive, with the emphasis being on computer software. Let’s back up a bit.
I recall “intelligence” being defined as the ability to collect data, analyse it, and then take appropriate action. Wait a minute! My furnace thermostat can do that!
-Bill Fane
Autodesk AI? I’d just be happy if they’d fix the decade old bugs in C3D [Civil 3D software].
- smackypete
The editor replies: Large CAD vendors sell to executives, who probably don’t understand CAD in the first place, and not to users. So AI has to become the selling point, and not the benefits of fixing old problems, sadly.
Re: Two Guys Debate the Beneficence of AI
Thanks for another interesting discussion.
Imho, AI firms will undergo serious financial wreckage, as they do seem to comprise (still another) current market bubble. Their genuine use in speeding up otherwise tedious calculations seems, on the other hand, unlikely to be abandoned.
There are many valid uses for AI, including vital communication/targeting in military defense, to say nothing of everyday professional design. So, industry consolidation by being bought, borrowed or stolen adaptation within existing design/manufacturing firms would seem to be an outcome?
The deeper issue -- I agree with Ralph -- concerns innovation. Any way one codes, how ever powered by massive groups of servers, computers are linear processors. Linking and multiplying parallel linear calculations gives swift, useful speed, if surveying existing conditions and past results distilled into a present situation is sought — say, by a B2 pilot or a guided drone.
But crucial innovation, whether for design and construction of an eventual new type of architectural structure, or an instantaneous new route to a military target implemented on the spot, will have to come from a human brain.
For all the superb medical research that has given us cures for previously fatal neurological conditions, brain injuries, etc, we still actually know very little about human consciousness, as to how it works, especially when applied to innovation.
As the great economist, Ludwig von Mises pointed out, scientifically speaking there is no such thing as The Present — except subjectively, within an individual’s human consciousness. To oversimplify, history is not prediction, no matter the vast data mass, or the speed of calculating its lists, comparisons, and rankings.
To use or communicate any instant cognition of a present event, whether by a radar or a human, ensures a delay, however brief electronically, or in subjective experience, for information useful to others, or for oneself, about that event. Reprocessing the data via AI may be a heck of a lot faster than ever before, but won’t be able to predict a specific outcome, if it isn’t something that’s already happened.
Anecdotally, observing others or one’s own success in innovation in one’s work seems to show a process of interpreting a set of known data and their existing previously-understood interrelations in a new, different way.
Worth remembering, of course, is that most innovation fails; most new ideas are discarded, most new businesses go broke, political revolutions bring back dictatorship, etc. So, for the timid or the conformist personalities, claiming to “follow the science” spit out by AI algorithms (or salesmen) is attractive
And yet, when something new does work out to be valuable, we want it, don’t we? So AI can always take new stuff, usually created by innovative humans who tend to be personally annoyingly “different,” and then stir it into their next round of speedy calcs.
This benefits everybody, including, of course politicians, bureaucrats, corporate execs, et al., who already seem to find AI/algorithmic control of others to be a useful instrument.
Question seems to be whether AI itself can written to counter this sort of thing and be available to us common folk.
- Michael David Rubin
The editor replies: The debate rages between determinist materialists and dualists, with me on the side of dualists.
The first 30 minutes of this video gives a reasonable overview of some of the scope of AI: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw_o0xr8MWU. AI is everywhere, in all industries, because it can be so powerful. Invest!
- Peter Lawton
The editor replies: Among the enthusiasm for AI, it is my job as an industry analyst to describe the drawbacks to technology, whether cloud, AI, or even CAD itself.
Mr Lawton responds: Yes, for sure, I do understand the role you have chosen, and it makes excellent sense for you to highlight our blind spots, wherever you may see them.
However, from a personal standpoint, you should also invest real money in tech-oriented ETFs [exchange-traded funds], because gains in that market segment are strong and will likely stay that way for quite a while. Of course, follow the recommendations of your financial advisor, as I am just an old CAD monkey.