There are At Least 260 Ways To Apply Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Designing and Making

Artificial Intelligence embodies the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. Machine learning allows computers to handle new situations via analysis, self-training, observation, and experience. Since design and make activities are human-centered activities that require intelligence and learning, at Autodesk, we are investigating these technologies so that we can be of better service to our customers.

With this in mind, we decided to tap into our employee base as to how we could best leverage AI and ML. We held a month-long "April is for AI" competition, open to the entire company, where 260 entries were gathered. They were all very thoughtful. Some were more elaborate than others. Nevertheless, most represented ideas we could potentially tackle today. Those who already understand the opportunities of AI and ML shared their ideas and visions. Others, who are still learning about these technologies were able to start seeing patterns between others' proposals to envision what is possible. With all the excellent entries, picking winners was difficult.

In addition to a monetary prize, each of the winners also received an in-house designed 3D printed 'engineered brain' as a physical prize.

Empowering, extending, fixing and making Autodesk's products more approachable can all be done with AI and ML. Autodesk is considering all of the possibilities, not just the winning entries.

Autodesk has always been an automation company, and today more than ever that means helping people make more things, better things, with less; more and better in terms of increasing efficiency, performance, quality, and innovation; less in terms of time, resources, and negative impacts (e.g., social, environmental). AI and ML are tools that can help us serve customers better.

For more on this topic, check out Machine Intelligence on the Autodesk Research site. For a laugh, check this out.

Intelligence is alive in the lab.