Fear not: Autodesk is paying attention to the Future of Work, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning

At Autodesk, our team focuses on strategic foresight. Strategic foresight is a practice of looking systematically at the future, understanding fragmented indicators that suggest possible futures, and developing a point of view about how to respond. We use imagination to envision how our customers will work in a future world (typically about ten years out) and backcasting to move from the future world to the present. As an alternative to backcasting, we can look at the state of the practice today and forecast how our customers' work will evolve over the next decade. Our team's focus is squarely on the future.

Darren Brooker is a story strategist at Autodesk. Storytelling is related to strategic foresight in that storytelling helps frame Autodesk's future direction. By co-developing strategic narratives, Darren and other members of our team help ensure that our employees are equipped to engage with our customers in a dialog that further develops a shared view of the future. The best way to reach a common understanding is to tell a story that both customers and employees can relate to. Stories provide the waypoints as our technology evolves. Many of you regularly see Darren's work as part of Autodesk University keynote presentations.

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As part of pondering the future, Darren recently shared three articles about the future:

	Amazon will retrain one-third of its U.S. employees to get ahead of tech changes The Washington Post reports Amazon's $700 million initiative that will cover 100,000 workers by 2025, build on existing training programs, and add workshops that can help employees move up within the company.
	AI solves Rubik's Cube in one second BBC News reports an artificial intelligence system created by researchers at the University of California has solved the Rubik's Cube in just over a second.
	HyperFoods: Machine intelligent mapping of cancer-beating molecules in foods Nature.com (a nature research journal) reports that a machine learning model for identifying foods with bioactive molecules can help fight cancer.

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Thanks, Darren.

Our customers' future includes dealing with changes in the future of work, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Our team considers how these will apply to designing and making. What are your thoughts on these topics? Feel free to respond to [email protected] or post a comment.

Autodesk has always been an automation company. Today, more than ever, that means helping our customers automate their design and make processes. We help them embrace the future of making, where they can do more (e.g., efficiency, performance, quality), with less (e.g., energy, raw materials, timeframes, waste of human potential), and realize the opportunity for better (e.g., innovation, user experience, return on investment). Autodesk efforts like Design Graph and Construction IQ leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning. An add-on for Fusion 360 helps employees see what skills they need to learn to advance their careers. We want our solution to address the future of work, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to provide the opportunity for better.

The future itself is alive in the lab.