Grace Kang
Elevate your design and manufacturing processes with Autodesk Fusion
Welcome back to Shop Talk, a podcast by Autodesk Fusion to listen to designers and makers live from their workshop. We’re excited to give our listeners candid conversations with talented folks who pour their hearts and soul into their craft. Join Jonathon Odom and Pete Squared as they dig deeper into what it means to be a maker and how we can make resources, like AI tools and machines, more accessible.
Being a creative powerhouse in the entertainment and tech industries isn’t enough for Pete Parisi. His love for learning and making is what led him to create online content under the name Pete Squared. As technology and AI evolve in design and manufacturing, what does that mean for current makers? Johnathon and Pete talk about how AI might inspire people to get even more creative and the importance of increasing the accessibility of tools and knowledge.
Things like AI have been super exciting. I know it can be a little bit scary because it leads some people to think we don’t need software engineers anymore. The answer is that it’s absolutely not true. You still need software engineers for the same reason you still need structural engineers. Someone needs to sign off on each step. You can’t blindly trust machines or expect them to do everything. People will always need to be there.
I completely agree. You need people to sit there and know how to use AI to guide the project towards the result that you’re looking for. Take the writers’ strike in Hollywood, for example. Let’s say these big studios were like, “Hey, we need a lot of stories. We’re going to have AI write a lot of stories!”
You’re going to get a lot of similar stories that are super mediocre. The real stories that people are going to care about are the ones that come from personal experience, that come from a real writer who knows the emotional beats of a story and what will people engage with? I have a hard time thinking that AI will ever be able to replicate the human experience.
This might be controversial to some and make sense to others, but with AI coming as a help tool, like [my friend] just showed me how to do a Python script in ChatGPT, I’m blown away by it. A lot of that kind of stuff is going to get more and more automated. But I also believe we’re going to need more creative people who know how to use AI, while also knowing how to come up with different types of ideas or approach problems differently. Right now, we’ve talked a lot about problem-solving. AI is going to help with this or that. But the people driving the idea brainstorms are going to be so valuable.
CNC manufacturing isn’t much different from manual manufacturing. You can make just about everything you can with a CNC machine. The difference is, you spend a lot more time planning and making. There are more mistakes along the way. But now, we have products like Fusion doing all the heavy lifting. It’s going to fill in the gaps. From there, you still get your creation at the end of it. The grunt work that’s not worth your time.
It’s just a different type of tool— it’s not magic. People who have come into [my] comment section and say my work isn’t real woodwork because they’re more used to using traditional tools. I have such admiration and respect for people who understand how to do woodworking with more traditional tools, but I’m sure that anytime new technology comes around like a table saw or a track saw, there’s been a group of people who will say that it has no place in “real” woodworking.
I think there’s space for all different kinds of methods. If you enjoy the process of using a plane, only hammers and nails, or even building your own nails through old blacksmithing methods, I think it all has value. But there’s also value in automating one thing and focusing more on a different part of the process instead. I love designing rather than implementation, but some people love the implementation which is also valuable.
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