AI is the technology of our age and that is reflected in every issue of E+T.
This is about the tech, like our ‘roboscience’ article in this issue. However, there is an underlying mistrust of a technology that is ultimately seen as a replacement for jobs. Our first feature (dramatically called ‘Job killer?’ on p16) looks broadly at how AI may have a considerable – arguably detrimental – effect on a variety of jobs (including editors’!). Interestingly, while it will certainly have an effect on engineering, technology and science, it doesn’t seem that there is the same trepidation about the impact of AI as exists in other sectors, as discussed in the second article (‘The virtual workforce’, p32). I think there are two key reasons: one is we can see that AI actually has the potential to do a lot of the boring and repetitive stuff. The second is that we are desperately short of engineers.
Despite claims to the contrary, AI in the engineering sphere is not yet the finished article. But it is...