Is technology becoming an impediment to the revival of American manufacturing? If you “Think About It”, the majority of applications of technology in manufacturing are geared towards the automation of manual tasks. Which makes sense. But this being the primary focus means that this technology may be reducing , instead of adding manufacturing jobs.

Technology that truly revives manufacturing will be the one that creates opportunities to add jobs and add them fast and at scale. AI can help change the paradigm. But it is currently not.

The challenge is that the research on manufacturing technology, and applications of AI to unconstraint manufacturing, is not happening at a significant level outside universities, but more importantly, whatever research is happening, is siloed from the ground reality.

Most manufacturing is based in the mid-west, but the technology hubs in America are elsewhere. So other than the research that happens in universities in the mid-west, the real-world research on applications of AI in manufacturing is limited.

And it happens in technology hubs that are disconnected from the manufacturing hotspots. This is the topic we will cover in Episode 6 of “Think About It.”