Designing Autonomous AI

Chapter 9. Designing AI Brains That Someone Can Actually Build

My first two summer internships in college, I worked for Ford Motor Company. The first summer, I worked as a manufacturing engineer with two MIT graduate students to figure out how to manufacture a newly invented air-conditioning compressor. We reduced the time to create a prototype compressor housing from 6 weeks for a sand-cast part to 45 minutes to send the manufacturing instructions over the phone line directly to the CNC machine which would cut it.

The second summer, I worked on the same product from the design side. I worked with University of Michigan acoustics professors to suggest design changes to reduce the noise vibration harshness of the compressor. While at Ford, I witnessed firsthand the natural and healthy tension between designers and builders.

Designers and Builders Working Together in Harmony (Mostly)

Both summers at Ford I attended many meetings where designers and builders interacted. Design engineers designed the parts and manufacturing engineers were responsible for making the parts. Design engineers were typically younger college graduates in mechanical engineering. The manufacturing engineers varied. They tended to be more experienced and some of them got their engineering education with that experience in the manufacturing plants.

In most meetings there was a conversation that sounded a lot like this. The design engineer makes a presentation and says, “This is what I want to build.” The manufacturing ...