Seeing all the projects and some of the AI on lathes, sure makes me think that there will soon be no need for skill at all. Cut a block of wood (or preorder a dozen) insert the block, download the program and walk away. It will self start, do the job, shut down and text you that it is finished. 

Yep.

No skills required........load the machine with wood stock pieces. Push a button.......walk away

Heck, some stuff is made that way now! 

 

But what happens when the computers and AI go belly up or fry a component or 900?

 

Those of us with any skills will be back in demand.     For a while anyway til the stoopid machine's parts come in.

 

Yep, that is where the skill comes in. However, making the projects is push button. Just like our smart phones,  talk or text........no problem. Except when they quit. I saw an accident tonight. 3 cars with high school kids involved in an accident. Texting. All were OK, but what a mess

I'm sure it takes a lot of skill and larnin' to operate some of those machines. I'll never know. After two years, I can barely use our smart phone. 

My Shopsmiths are as complicated a machine as I'll ever use.

Edited November 2, 20178 yr by Gene Howe

As long as there are folks wanting to make things, then there will be tools available just like there are tools available today. 

 

I had a student ask me Friday if I knew of any examples where the engineering of a thing to work complicated/corrupted or distracted from what the designer had imagined/designed to build. 

I see many things that are beautiful beyond their raw functionality and know no A.I. came up with that beautiful part.  I've also seen many things that were beautiful because they were the simplest execution of the desired functionality.  

 

Will an android brain ever dream?   Can the human thing that makes us creative/inventive/original and WANT to express those thoughts ever be anything more than mimicked by a sim?  

Personally I'm not worried.  Much of what I do no "smart" robot would want to do.