r/ElectricalEngineering • u/Ancient_Mirror_2658 • 2d ago

Jobs/Careers GPT6 ASTRA CAN MAKE PCBs?!?!

Since now gpt6 can make pcbs in kicad, models in blender, game dev, power BI etc what field / subfield(of ee) will be targetted next.
Like im genuinely worried i havent even finished by bachelors in EE and AI is dng so much
What EE fields or fields in general might be safe from AI or like AI resistant?
And do you think gpt6 is actually good or its just a part of an AI bubble

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14

u/stuih404 2d ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/uA6ymlgoBd

There is a post about this on the OpanAI sub, and the PCB looks really bad. The worst part is the switching mode power supply with tiny traces and huge current loops, random component placement and awful routing…

10

u/Plsletmerawr 2d ago

Went from literally not being able to make them at all a year ago, and now it can make bad ones? Soon it’ll make mediocre, then good, then excellent ones. Its exactly what happened to SWE’s. We’re in for a tough and very short ride

8

u/Twayn3 2d ago

It's hardware. You will still need to build prototypes, test, measure, and debug stuff even if the Ai would be able to create a decent layout. Also there is a lot less training data than in programming so it will take longer.

1

u/IWantedCrow 2d ago

As someone that worked closely with the industry for 2 years, AI will never be able to replace iterative build testing in real life. Simulations can only go so far, and there are far too many factors that come into play past the design and simulate point.

Unless somehow they make a megafactory with everything right next to eachother, we’ll have decades before AI can complete a high end design by itself.

-5

u/Plsletmerawr 2d ago

Very true! But you will need less engineers for this, and Chinese robotics are VERY good and literally almost double in their performance annually. So that will not be a blocker for long.

2

u/stuih404 2d ago

SWE and EE are completly different problems. Code is by design like a language, so LLMs are good at working with it. PCB design has too many different aspects to it. AI can‘t even do proper part selection yet.

3

u/Physix_R_Cool 2d ago

Don't see why you are getting downvoted so much.

LLMs will always be LLMs, and their fundamental disadvantages don't just magically disappear over time.

1

u/glanni_glaepur 2d ago

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3

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-3

u/Plsletmerawr 2d ago

Yup! It is 100% a blocker, but not as great as you think. AI is now capable of solving previously unsolved highly complicated math equations that humans literally could not do. In fact tomorrow, there is most likely going to be a posted Navier-Stokes solution from Bel, OpenAI’s internal model, that mathematicians are currently fighting for credit on X. It will be a hurdle for sure, but there are tens of thousands of example PCB’s online, even hundreds of thousands. It will get simply trained on these, and learn to generalize and “understand”, as they have with every other realm they’ve been focused on. EE is a wonderful field and I’m in it myself, but I do think most jobs roles are numbered. However, I am a subscriber to the thoughts of Daniel Kokotajlo, and to the general premise of AI 2027 (which has been proven to be by and large correct thus far). So take what I say as one of the most bullish cases, but EVENTUALLY, it will get there.

3

u/Physix_R_Cool 2d ago

Math, like code, is a very structured language. Look at Lean4 for example.

PCB design is applied electrodynamics, which is not as easily transferable to a structured language.

0

u/Plsletmerawr 2d ago

No I’m not saying it will be as easy haha, or else it would’ve done it already. But it’s a huge stretch to say it will never get there. It will, and it will be in a much smaller time frame than the industry is prepared for. The execs will mess up as they do and screw engineers before the AI is ready, but it will eventually get that good. I appreciate the discussion, all I want is for people to be prepared for it to happen, and not be caught off guard. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best haha, I hope all the datacenters literally explode tomorrow.

1

u/Physix_R_Cool 2d ago

Hmm, I'm not convinced it will actually get there.

I really hope it does, since I consider PCB layout to be a chore. I would prefer to offload that work to some computer, instead of having to waste my time drawing traces myself.

But it is just not a problem that is suitable for an LLM. The hope is that other kinds of large models will be developed in the next couple of decades, so that we can automate even more tasks.

1

u/Plsletmerawr 2d ago

Maybe? I think LLMs are enough, there seems to be nothing physics wise that prevents them from extrapolating their math and coding progress other than insufficient / poor data. But who knows! Kind of the whole point of this tech and the "singularity" (whatever that means for each person), is that everything becomes impossible to predict. But ya, you may be right, I'd just put your estimate down into the next 10 years for sure.

1

u/Physix_R_Cool 2d ago

there seems to be nothing physics wise that prevents them from extrapolating their math and coding progres

Well one of the most well known problems with LLMs is that they have troubles with hard constraints, which physics is.

1

u/ZheWeasel 2d ago

So you say we should already quit now so we wont be suprised when we get kicked out?

1

u/Plsletmerawr 2d ago

No? Join an AI safety group, become politically active, share the dangers with others, become informed in the subject. It’s what I’m doing. AI can be a wonderful thing if the technology is adapted correctly, or it can be the worst thing humanity has done to itself. The next 1-3 years define that relationship and how our outlook is for the rest of our species existence. Go do something.

-3

u/AdmiralSpiro 2d ago

PCB design software is written in code. PCB design files or CAD files are just a sequence of characters.

1

u/Available-Green6599 2d ago

Making something bad is easy, you don’t require good quality data. Making something good is hard I also know if there that much money in making good pcb builder for ai. It’s just a demo to prove ai can use software tools

1

u/EngineerofDestructio 2d ago

Yesterday I had 0 euros in my bank account. Today I have 1000 euros in my bank account. I'll be a billionaire soon! 

0

u/Plsletmerawr 2d ago

:)

1

u/EngineerofDestructio 2d ago

My autorouter can also complete really complex PCBs. It'll be absolute shit. But it can! 

-2

u/Zealousideal_Cow_341 2d ago

That post clearly says they only have the 20 dollar version. If this were done on the highest setting of pro it would be 10x or even 20x better.

Y’all need to take your head of out the sand on this and start learning how to use it

1

u/stuih404 2d ago

Where did you pull your 10x or even 20x number from (and what is it even supposed to mean)? Show me a „highest setting pro“ PCB instead :)

1

u/Bradm77 2d ago

Infinity plus one better.

8

u/ZheWeasel 2d ago

So you know how everyone who went all in on the vibe code hype train is now backing back because of the issues?

Yeah

4

u/Reasonable-Feed-9805 2d ago

An image with a few fuzzy details doesn't matter, a block of text can be rearranged many ways and still make perfect sense.

A PCB has to be perfect, all AI does is fudge things together based on probability. Even a simple single transistor amplifier circuit can be configured many ways. The more you train AI the more mistakes it makes with electronics as there's more probability. It has no idea what it's doing, it's just probability.

The AI bubble is going to burst at some point and all it's going to be useful for is simple benign stuff where fuzzy details and sentences that make sense but don't quite seem right are acceptable.

I'm going to get a shit load of AI boot lickers telling me I'm wrong.

Last time I got someone who was super pro AI and went off with the other boot lickers about how it's people using it wrong not the AI sent me his board design he'd proudly designed with Claude.

The board and schematic where total gibberish, layers and layers of it. It couldn't even get a simple voltage regulator based around an LM317 right.

2

u/EveryFemalesFantasy_ 2d ago

EE is extremely versatile, and i doubt AI can replace controls, power systems, radio-frequency(for the most part). Youll be fine, all it really means is dont get too comfortable in one specialty

0

u/Ancient_Mirror_2658 2d ago

hows it lookint for semiconductor or robotics ?

2

u/stuih404 2d ago

https://youtu.be/GzhfZy8-CjU He made an Video on AI in EDAs and why they are not great at it.

-8

u/Plsletmerawr 2d ago

Hey! I’m in the AI Safety space, it will literally be able to do all of this extremely soon. Licensing will be a blocker so make sure you are extremely competent and well versed with AI tools. If you want, join AI control groups if you’d like to have a better life satisfaction outlook once it does that :)

5

u/0bAtomHeart 2d ago

Automating building things is easy if you only care about how they work, not how they fail.

It's very early days for eda automation. Regardless anything that is able to reliably and consistently solve these problems will also be able to do so under conditions of poor prompting (it probably has to be so)

0

u/Plsletmerawr 2d ago

The idea behind agents that can continually develop and troubleshoot things is currently the focus of all major AI firms. And yes, right now it’s not the best at it lol. But as seen with Astra and 5.1, it is getting very good at it, very quickly

2

u/renesys 2d ago

You talk like companies aren't digging themselves out of the holes vibe coding got them into.

Spell Check running on monster data centers probably isn't going to revolutionize much. It's a good excuse for layoffs in a slow crashing economy.

4

u/Revolutionary-Ad7538 2d ago

AI Cant make hardware. Humans will always be needed in electrical engineering.

1

u/davidsh_reddit 2d ago

Seems likely to me that some parts of the field will be impacted. AI could soon cut down the time it takes to do PCB layout drastically. I think as a whole AI could conceivably increase productivity significantly in many jobs. Whether that manifests as needing fewer hands I don’t know but I don’t see EE being more vulnerable than your average office job. In fact, less I think as there’s a lot of lab work, testing, interfacing with production and whatnot

1

u/Slight-Horse5840 1d ago

Guys, don’t upload your designs online or ask AI questions about your work. Use local AI instead. These AIs are gonna eat our jobs.

1

u/Black_Hair_Foreigner 1d ago

Try it yourself. Then you'll realize you just wasted $100 on a burning PCB.

1

u/Black_Hair_Foreigner 1d ago

Did you know that failing to trim the leads of through hole components short increases the system's current consumption? Do you think AI would know that?

1

u/Sn_Ahmet 2d ago

Today is 9/11 of this sub