The fear that “The machines are coming for you!” has been around since before the Luddites, and we can still find it everywhere from blockbuster movies about sentient killer robots to mainstream news reports. A recent The New York Times article asks, “What Exactly Are the Dangers Posed by A.I.?” before warning us that a rapid rise in disinformation is only the start of the problems with artificial intelligence (AI). The final fear, we’re warned: loss of control and the destruction of humanity.
But for facility and maintenance professionals, it’s always made more sense to say, “The machines are coming to you, not for you.” Modern maintenance management is all about working with large data sets; often to track key performance indicators, but increasingly to use predictive maintenance (PdM), where, for example, you feed an asset’s digital twin a steady stream of real-time data so it can warn you about future failures long before they happen.
And that’s just the start of the possible applications for AI in maintenance.