Siemens follows the path of industrial AI
The global tech conglomerate has adapted generative AI technology to create intelligent systems to control machines.
Siemens is focused intently on industrial AI.
The Germany-based multinational tech giant has been a dominant presence in manufacturing automation, energy technology, transportation and healthcare, among other sectors. Long involved with traditional, largely predictive AI, the vendor has transitioned to generative AI technology by adapting and fine-tuning models from leaders in that field, including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google, to control industrial processes around the world.
"There was definitely a huge mindset change happening in the AI research community, both industrial and nonindustrial, in 2022 with this jump that we saw in performance in language models," said Olympia Brikis, director of industrial AI research at Siemens, on the Targeting AI podcast from Informa TechTarget.
"While those applications of AI are very exciting, our personal assistants or the recommendations that you get ... those types of applications are very different than industrial applications for AI," she continued. "In the industrial world, when we apply AI, we are dealing with environments that are much more critical. The AI consequently has to be much more resilient and specifically tuned to this type of environment."
Brikis emphasized the importance of ensuring that humans control and work together with AI, and not just letting the AI control the machines alone.
"It's a mistake if you just think of industrial AI as something that is just steering this ... infrastructure," she said. "I think it's very much something that interacts with humans, that needs human input, that assists humans that are operating those facilities."
Shaun Sutner is senior news director for Informa TechTarget's information management team, driving coverage of artificial intelligence, unified communications, analytics and data management technologies. He is a veteran journalist with more than 30 years of news experience. Esther Shittu is an Informa TechTarget news writer and podcast host covering artificial intelligence software and systems.
