When everyone has AI, what matters?
AI is becoming available to everyone. So where will the real competitive advantage come from? Carlo Conta from Seco explores why trusted knowledge, human expertise and collaboration could make the difference in manufacturing.
Episode 70
When everyone has AI, what matters?
The knowledge challenge
Manufacturers face a difficult equation. Global competition is increasing at the same time as experienced employees retire and valuable knowledge risks disappearing with them.
AI offers a way to make expertise more accessible. But for Conta, the technology itself is becoming less of a differentiator. What matters is the knowledge behind it, and whether that knowledge can be trusted.
“Anyone can have a large language model (LLM). But what makes the difference is: where is the LLM getting the knowledge from? Can I trust the information behind it?” says Conta.
That changes where the advantage lies. If access to AI becomes commonplace, simply having the technology is not enough. The difference lies in the expertise that feeds it, and in knowing when to question its answers.
When knowledge comes together
But bringing the right knowledge together matters beyond AI, too. Conta describes a customer that needed more production capacity and believed the answer was a major investment in a new facility and equipment.
Instead, Seco united expertise from across the company and its partners throughout the manufacturing value chain with the customer’s in-depth operational knowledge. By looking at the entire process together, they found another solution: the customer could add capacity in six months, avoid the planned capital investment and put that money to work elsewhere.
“The customer is the ultimate expert on their own component. If you don’t combine the two, you’re not going to have the best result,” says Conta.
Extending expertise, not replacing it
For Conta, bringing knowledge together is not about replacing human expertise, but extending its reach. AI can help people access and use accumulated knowledge, but human expertise remains essential, particularly when the answer requires something new rather than the most likely solution based on what has been done before.
Discover more podcasts:
- The Hidden Technology Driving the Future of Manufacturing
- Smarter software for smarter manufacturing
- Culture is what remains when everything else changes
In each episode of the podcast Meet Sandvik you will meet different persons that give their perspective on Sandvik. Sometimes it´s an employee telling his or her story. Sometimes you will meet experts discussing how a hot topic can affect Sandvik.