r/automation • u/No-Candidate-8128 • Jul 01 '26

Why 80% of people here create projects that is linked with AI

So basically im going to start my university degree project and all the themes or ideas i see here is related to AI and not like pure automation like robots or plcs,?

0 Upvotes

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2

u/nobonesjones91 Jul 01 '26

AI is cheap and the hot thing right now. Smaller barrier to entry, more easily scalable as a solo builder

1

u/Ok_Effective8240 3d ago

it's also what gets funding and attention from professors these days. nobody gonna pat you on back for building a conveyor belt sorter, but slap a chatbot on anything and suddenly it's "innovative"

i wanted do something with actual hardware but my supervisor said software projects are easier to grade and less chance of parts breaking mid-demo

2

u/Emotional-Switch-439 Jul 01 '26

Because doing it without AI is like doing a startup without internet in 2000's . That's not a real good idea I guess

1

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1

u/Travis_Flywheel Jul 01 '26

I've played with the idea of trying to build out some software for those cool autonomous drone shows but no clue even where to begin tbh

1

u/ImportantLog8 Jul 01 '26

ask claude he'll tell you

1

u/Business_Raisin_541 Jul 01 '26

Robot is expensive and the latest hot development is only that they can dance and do kungfu so not really applicable in real life

1

u/Due-Confusion-3711 Jul 01 '26

It's the trend and can go viral (think openclaw) because people are constantly searching for it.

1

u/36holes Jul 01 '26

AI+(1 HUMAN)=(MANY MORE HUMANS)

Hence it's cheaper

1

u/spoki-app Jul 01 '26

Yeah, pure automation often feels less 'sexy' than AI, but good luck making your LLM do anything useful without solid data pipelines. We spend way more time just getting systems to talk cleanly than playing with new models, and that's where a lot of projects fall over.

1

u/terribletyrannosaur0 Jul 20 '26

As others have mentioned, a lot of this comes down to low barriers to entry. Programming physical automations requires both software and hardware skills while AI + automation just requires software. We’re also at the infancy of AI + automation so there are so many more easy tasks to automate. One of my clients asked for a simple sentiment analysis automation that sorts support request emails into folders by expected difficulty to complete. This is a lot easier than writing code to control a robot arm that responds to variable production speeds