A dynamic duo: How the cloud and AI will power the future of work

Autodesk SVP of Research Mike Haley anticipates a future where AI and cloud technologies enhance the future of work across industries, paving the way for designing and making a better world.

Autodesk Video

March 18, 2024

AI is still in its early stages of development, with rapid advancements expected over the next decade, promising transformative changes across industries.
Implementing cloud platforms can break barriers posed by outdated file formats and incompatible systems, enabling faster workflows, adaptability to changing needs, and seamless collaboration across teams.
AI technologies are becoming more accessible and user-friendly, empowering creative professionals to leverage technology efficiently and solve complex problems, ultimately driving innovation and making professions more accessible to a wider range of people.

AI technologies—from machine learning and generative design to generative AI programs such as ChatGPT and Midjourney—are changing the way people work. AI can sift through huge amounts of data quickly and efficiently in a way that humans can’t. AI can automate repetitive tasks, analyze data to provide actionable insights, and augment problem-solving through contextual assistance, all of which allow professionals to spend time more time on creativity and exploration.

But what about the future? As AI technology continuously morphs and improves, new possibilities emerge. What will AI and the future of work look like? Watch the video to see Mike Haley, Autodesk SVP of Research, discuss how AI and the cloud will enable easier, faster collaboration across industries so that professionals can design and make a better world.

View transcript

AI is still at the infancy of its evolution. The AI we have today, 10 years from now, is gonna look like a toy. So if you think of that, you go, “Oh my goodness, so what’s gonna happen over the next 10 years?”

I run a research organization that was specifically created to look 3 to 10 years into the future, both in terms of technology, but also in terms of our industries to understand how technology and industry are gonna come together to serve our customers in the world and all the products we make in different ways in the future.

The current design and make industry is still stuck in so many of the old, file-based, incompatible formats. Many industries still function in certain ways that require these older technologies. They’re kind of a barrier to be able to go faster, to be able to be more reactive to your needs, and to change quicker. A cloud platform would begin to resolve a bunch of these issues.

You can imagine your bottom layer of what is a cloud platform is what we refer to as “granularized data.” It’s how data gets decomposed into its atoms. What happens on top of that, is once you’ve done that, it becomes much easier now to build flexible workflows, so that every single person in your company who has got different work to do can have the right workflow, at the right time, and against just the right data. They don’t have to be worried about what software they’re running or what application.

It’s all kind of seamlessly flowing and it’s interconnected. And it has to be an ecosystem. It has to be extensible, because nobody can build all solutions to everybody. We as Autodesk can’t build every workflow for every one of our customers.

Everybody’s got different needs. And extensibility and customizability is so utterly critical. And you set the stage for creating an ecosystem where other producers can come and extend their platform, they can build customizations, they can buy customizations. AI is gonna radically change the future of all of our industries and all of our customers.

There are a lot of people in the world that have incredibly creative ideas to solve problems. Today they have to use fairly complex software that is traditional software that is often not their forte. It’s not something they’re necessarily good at. With a lot of the new technologies, these technologies are becoming more and more accessible.

AI’s gonna kick in and it’s gonna say, “Hey, don’t worry, I’ve got you. I’m gonna get all this data, I’m gonna analyze it, I’m gonna break it down so that one core insight, that one core signal that I think you need and I’m gonna give it to you,” you know, so you don’t have to worry about spelunking around to trying to find it.

We’ve got a bunch of very tough problems to solve in the world, and these are not problems that are gonna be solved with sort of traditional mechanisms. This is going to require new kinds of technologies, new kinds of techniques. So what really excites me is I think it’ll make certain professions, I think a lot more accessible to more people. The greatest thing for me would be, we see more people being able to use technology to solve more problems in the world, and tools and technology that enable that, that would really make me feel that we’ve done our job.