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jrfloyesterday at 5:11 PM1 replyview on HN

AI cannot physically build anything in the real world, what are you referring to? That's a huge part of mechanical engineering.

And you can give it simulation tools, but those are far far away from accounting for everything in real-world physics. You can simulate very tightly constrained problems, but you can't simulate "assemble this actuator and test it", there are so many more variables in the real world that are not easy to account for in a simulation.

If you aren't an engineer that works on physical products, it's hard to articulate just how far from reality CAD and simulations are.


Replies

matchstickman23yesterday at 5:38 PM

This is how LLMs have been since the beginning. They can be really okay at the most surface level information, but as soon as you dig any bit beyond that, it all falls apart. Inquire any chatbot about something that you're an expert in and it becomes quickly apparent.

I'm here for using LLMs to take some of the tedium out of product design/mechanical engineering, but I just haven't seen a good proof of concept yet. It always seems to be some variation of "Design a sphere. Oh wow, this is incredible!"