r/ChemicalEngineering • u/sew3r_r4t • Jun 15 '25
Student a relative told me ChemE will eventually be replaced by AI
i have never been so offended.
i’m currently in my second year (bachelor’s) and i had a talk with a relative. they asked why i didn’t do something “useful” like nursing (typical asian mindset). then they said “you know you’ll be replaced by ai anyway in the future, right?” i was so appalled. i’m sure they just dont know what ChemE really is.
how should one even respond to that?
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u/AnxietyScary4494 Jun 15 '25
Tell them their job is also at risk of being replaced by AI.
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u/daphnemadness Jun 15 '25
This is the best answer anyone can give.
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u/TreacleFine5564 Jun 15 '25
Not really. Example easy rebuttal: “I’m already years into my career and pretty much locked in. You’re paying to just start out in your’s.”
I don’t agree with the relative, but let’s not give delusional advice lol
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u/daphnemadness Jun 15 '25
That’s not a delusional answer. This is just a simple way to tell someone to mind their own business lol
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u/TreacleFine5564 Jun 15 '25
Then that’s not actually addressing the matter at hand. That’s just being petty. If you just want them to butt out, be direct, respectfully cuz they’re still a relative and older.
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u/daphnemadness Jun 15 '25
I was just pointing out that maybe the relative is also being petty, but otherwise you are right. I just found this comment funny lol
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u/Low-Duty Jun 15 '25
Good, i’m tired of working
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u/twostroke1 Process Controls/8yrs Jun 15 '25
Seriously. Can it hurry up then.
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u/REDACTED3560 Jun 16 '25
Do you think the powers that be will keep you around if you can’t provide value?
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u/Fluid-Leg-8777 Jun 17 '25
I think our endgame as the proletariat is to vote the first politician that proposes minimum universal income, im sure that once jobs start being replaced on mass it wont take long until those kind of politicians start popping all around the world
So get a good savings account to weather the storm
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u/OwnerOfABouncyBall Jun 15 '25
Where I asked AI on topics related to ChemE I often got really mediocre and inaccurate result.. Rather used it for a second opionion but I would never rely on it. I think we are still far away from the point where AI will replace chemical engineers. It will maybe happen one day but not in the next 10 years.
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u/ooo-ooo-oooyea 15 Years, Corporate Renewable Energy SME Jun 15 '25
I was making a presentation, and my company has an A/I plugin for powerpoint.
I received such great suggestions as "A Diagram of a Machine" for a P&ID, and "A Straight Line" for a suction / discharge flow curve.
A/I running plant well be uh special.
Not to trash it, I think it could really help automate MOC type items and other paper work, but its a really long way off for any significant impact.
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u/Nask_13 Jun 15 '25
Just say, "Okay, so be it then," and move on
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u/sew3r_r4t Jun 15 '25
haha i hope it was that easy, these were the people who doubted me from the start, just waiting for me to fail. i am working on it tho !
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u/juliuspersi Jun 15 '25
Chem eng here, as a product manager, if the clients doesn't know what they need, of course the AI will know.
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u/RebelWithoutASauce Jun 15 '25
I've heard people say that "AI is going to replace your job!" about nearly every job, including my own design-heavy job industrial automation/systems engineering job.
I think it's a result of a combination of 2 things:
- Not understanding what my job is.
- Not understanding what 'AI" is or it's capabilities.
Sometimes I think it is a sort of projection; people have anxiety about their own job becoming obsolete and when I see someone who doesn't feel that way they try to make them feel the same insecurity.
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u/anothercicada Jun 15 '25 edited Jun 15 '25
Well, at least we won't be one of the firsts to get replaced. You're your own person. Don't bother with useless commentary.
Plus, it'll be a LONG time if ever until AIs actually get intelligent. They're trained on past data. They match contexts. Are they good at it? Yes. Very good in fact. But if a novel situation comes up, something that has never happened before or never got fed into this AI, it will freeze. Either that or it will give a confident answer that's dead wrong. Until they do that. I say we, and many other people, will do just fine
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u/lod001 Jun 16 '25
Can't train on past data when all the knowledge is kept as experience by operators, and the P&IDs are all a decade out of date, if they even exist!
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u/swolekinson Jun 15 '25
Chemical engineering predates the computer. But the work done by 19th century chemical engineers would be unrecognizable by 21st century chemical engineers.
This is true across all disciplines, including the medical field quoted by your relative. Because, you know, we don't bloodlet for generic malaise anymore.
Now, could your skills become obsolete quicker? Yes. But everyone's has because we're at a point where technology is changing faster than generations are being born. Transitioning from steady-state to change is rough for molecules and humans.
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u/BeersLawww Jun 15 '25
I don’t think this has to do with “Asian mindset.” Most Asian people actually support any type of engineering. I can say this because I am Asian and a ChemE major, and no one has told me what you’re saying.
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u/sew3r_r4t Jun 15 '25
unfortunately most of my family members think like this, they push me to go into medicine. they think of engineers as people who press buttons inside a factory. yes, i’ve been told these exact words
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u/Kenny__Loggins Jun 15 '25
Don't put too much stock into what they're saying. With your own damn family wishing for your downfall, who needs enemies?
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u/asiancleopatra Jun 15 '25
So you are a second year and they're still pushing for medicine?
Fuck that.
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u/Dazzling-Werewolf985 Jun 15 '25
Bro same. To this day my dad still thinks I wanna be a doctor😂I’m in my first yr of chem eng hahaha.
I kinda sympathise with them though because they obviously don’t understand what engineering, especially our kind, entails. My dad’s only point of reference for a “chemical engineer” is likely the guy back in nigeria who mixes cement for £1 an hour
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u/Otherwise_Internet71 Jun 15 '25
Clinical medicine?LoL typical Asian parents "Only doctors/Civil servants are the best"😆
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u/hellonameismyname Jun 15 '25
Chemical engineering opens the door to so many careers that can provide better financial security than medicine for a fraction of the cost and time needed.
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u/scheav Jun 15 '25
Its a Southeast Asian mindset to be specific, not East Asian.
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u/BeersLawww Jun 15 '25
I’d say that still has nothing to do with it, I’m southeast Asian (viet) and majority of my family are engineers with an exception of like 2 doctors.. it’s just probably a select few families who still think like that. But anyways, it’s your life, you do what you want.
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u/DragonPhoenix32 Jun 15 '25
Don't know about that, I'm Indonesian and most working family members are engineers or STEM related like architects.
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u/bagoetz99 Plant Engineer | Food Manufacturing Jun 15 '25
The truth is, when someone says something like this, there's only really two good ways to approach. You can either calmly inform them that that's a long ways off and why, or you can just take the hit and say "sure!" Personally, I usually opt for the latter here as people that give jabs like that aren't usually interested in being corrected.
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u/najeckoR Jun 15 '25
Unless Air Separation Units (ASU) become fully autonomous and can trouble shoot problems via AI, I will have job security lol..
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u/dirtgrub28 Jun 15 '25
of all the processes, this is the MOST likely to get fully automated. they already run without personnel on site 24/7
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u/Cyrlllc Jun 15 '25
Fully automated systems aren't ai.
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u/dirtgrub28 Jun 15 '25
fair, i'm just saying that ASUs are pretty simple, which is where AI is going first
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u/najeckoR Jun 16 '25
What happens when it trips? Someone comes on site. It can be automated to a degree but someone is always getting paid to be on call. If I’m getting paid I’m chillen
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u/naastiknibba95 Petroleum Refinery/9 years/B.Tech ChE 2016 Jun 16 '25
blud picked the easiest unit as if it was the toughest...
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u/Ionic-and-Ironic Jun 15 '25
Your relative doesn’t know what they’re talking about. ChemE has a lot of automation already that is supervised by many engineers… AI can certainly help with design efficiency, but it will not take over unless it’s taken over literally every other labor area too (like nursing).
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u/CharlieCheesecake101 Jun 15 '25
Have you ever tried to use AI to do a basic engineering hw problem? It gets it wrong half the time dw your job isn’t going anywhere - from a fellow engineer
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u/SadQlown Jun 15 '25
I can assure you most chemical engineers are wishing for the day our jobs get replaced with AI
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u/TeddyPSmith Jun 15 '25
ChemE’s with actual knowledge may be replaced with ChemE’s that only know how to use AI and can’t decipher fact from fiction. Most likely scenario IMO
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u/awaal3 Jun 15 '25
Its a shallow elitist mindset. No industry is safe from the AI innovation. I guess nursing might be “safer” but not NPs, just the grunt workers like RNs that take blood and replace catheters.
Live life man - cheme is a good degree and you can translate it a lot of different things.
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u/External-Wrap-4612 Jun 15 '25 edited Jun 15 '25
I work in a power plant(somewhat similar), chemical ain't gonna be replaced by ai unless they want explosion left and right due to computer error. Computers can be supplemental but too dangerous leaving everything to the computer.
Chemical engr is mostly about chemical processes using thermo and fluid knowledge. I think ur relative is thinking ai doing chemical composition looool... great, when they find it then they need chemical engineer to process it so no explosion.
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u/pack2k Jun 15 '25
Did you say…. Yeah, well stupid relatives will be replaced by AI too…. So there!
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u/Lurkerwasntaken Jun 15 '25
They do realize the AI has to be trained to understand a chemical process, right? Like people, AI has to get fed the correct information in order for it to give accurate responses. It might be able to do small things starting out like provide code to automate a specific thing in a chemical process, but it will be a while before ChemEs are obsolete. If you work in production (process, production, or automation engineers), you are helping train the AI. Each chemical process has so many quirks that AI can’t find every single problem on its own.
Like others said, most jobs would be completely replaced by the time ChemEs are obsolete.
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u/No_Objective1045 Jun 15 '25
All CS majors are trying to gain domain knowledge of physics, mech or ChemE to stay relevant. Studying ChemE will let you have a job longer than other majors.
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u/Additional_cheme5655 Jun 15 '25
Technically, every job is at risk of being replaced by AI. Adapt and learn to keep being updated with the system. But tbh even I've heard this argument and it's honestly so annoying. As for "useful" majors like nursing, wait till we get robot nurses/doctors, then even their jobs will get replaced by AI.
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u/msd1994m Pharma/10 Jun 15 '25
I usually tell people I’m excited because AI is another tool that makes engineer’s jobs easier and allows us to push science even further. Ask them what parts of our job will be replaced.
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u/AbdulRehmanVirk Jun 15 '25
As someone who is planning to work on the development of the models that predict and assist the process engineers to operate plants at the optimum conditions. I am pretty sure that AI will assist engineers to solve problems quicker, instead of replacing them completely. By the time we are replaced completely by the AI, most jobs would already be replaced earlier. As for now, the early adaptors would benefit the most from the AI.
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u/Rippedlotus Jun 15 '25
Don't think AI will replace ChemE's, but I never thought I'd see engineering roles being shipped overseas and that is happening at an alarming pace right now. EE and ME jobs are heading overseas for cheaper labor.
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u/OgeeWhiz Jun 15 '25
AI is a tool you need to know how to use. ChE is extremely versatile, don’t worry.
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u/TechDifficulties99 Jun 15 '25
Went to a conference recently where some of the presentations were about potential applications of AI in the industry, and I was shocked and relieved to hear the conversation following every one of these presentations about the importance of human control, especially in terms of large scale manufacturing operations.
Even when the suggested application was just safety and hazard analysis, which sounds simple enough, the conversation leaned into issues with AI hallucinations and the fact that it would be limited by how much we put into it. People won’t imagine a vessel and insist it’s there. People will consider incidents that logically should never happen, but still could.
I am healthily concerned about AI applications in the future, but unless it can someday tell me the maximum temperature and pressure rise rates during a thermal runaway between components that have never been mixed before, it’s not replacing our jobs
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Jun 15 '25
Nursing is the safe bet. Everywhere has nursing. Everywhere doesn’t have chem eng. I moved from Southern California to Missouri to get the right experience to get into traditional chem eng roles.
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u/ArghBH Jun 15 '25
Slow burn. Graduate, get a high paying job in oil/gas, buy a mansion, buy a super car, and show up at that relative's. Sure, takes a while but worth it?
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u/Oatsee Jun 15 '25
For R&D "AI" will transform the industry but will not replace people fully ever. You will always need people who understand the topic enough to be able to define what you actually want, as well as actually verify accuracy of results.
In industry "AI" will probably never take over. There are so many decade old plants, or plants that dont have enough data recorded to solve all issues. Anyone in industry knows how often something will go wrong that cannot be found by just looking at data.
They have no idea what they're talking about and are definitely projecting. Just such a ignorant thing to say when they have no idea what they are talking about.
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u/thewanderer2389 Jun 15 '25
If ChemE is replaced by AI, that would mean that AI has gotten good enough to replace just about every job out there.
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u/S-I-C-O-N Jun 15 '25
How should you respond... Consider Biological science or Bio-E. Just a super computer mapped the entire human genome and AI is blasting through thousands of organic reactions to develop pharmaceuticals. Although your relative may be correct, it is still a decade or two away and you have an opportunity to grow with the technology.
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u/sl0w4zn Jun 15 '25
If your parents have a place in the family theater, you can tell them that your relative told you to quit your major.
Next time, tell them to pay for your school and housing if they want a say in your future. Or ignore them. Or figure out what kind of chemE you'll be and explain it to your ignorant relative. Lots of choices here!
Automation has been the fear for underpaying laborious jobs, and AI is the fear for underpaying creative jobs. ChemE is not going to be obsolete because things that break and things that need to be designed are all unique from the last problem. AI can show you a pattern, but as it stands, the solution will be human-made.
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u/Brainprint Jun 15 '25
They are just closed minded and think their opinion is the only one that matters or is the only answer to any problem.
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u/volleyballer12345 Jun 15 '25
To a certain extent, hasn't that already been done with the likes of Aspen / Hysys etc? I'm sure there was once a legion of ChemE's who actually knew how to do it all by hand and did it regularly.
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u/ReynAetherwindt Jun 15 '25
The minute you replace ChemEs with AI, you are taking on personal criminal liability for any potential disaster that ensues.
Now, can AI be used to help make adjustments in process simulations by drawing on existing fluid behavior models, plant designs, and operating conditions to help with research? I'd be surprised if it's not already in the works.
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u/pharosito Jun 15 '25
They should spend 5 minutes in a control room , not even on the floor of a plant , just in a control room. 5 min.
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u/brendax Jun 16 '25
Literally nothing has been replaced by AI. It is a pump and dump tech scam like IoT, big data, blockchain, etc
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u/PerspectiveMuch3647 Jun 16 '25
I was reading the CSB reports just tonight. It just baffles me people think even with our current problems that leaving everything to something inherently not able to take responsibility is the world you’d like to live in. We already have issues from companies mismanagement, bad training, turnover etc. causing preventable death and millions in damages.
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u/PerspectiveMuch3647 Jun 16 '25
I think your relatives comment comes from not understanding what is actually required to do different types of engineering.
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u/YT__ Jun 16 '25
"ha ha ha, so true. Good thing we aren't there yet."
Than just never talk to them about degree again.
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u/Additional_Status178 Jun 17 '25
Retired ChE professor here: if you learn to learn, you'll never be replaced by AI. I tried to use AI to help me make up exam problems. What i got was laughable.
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u/Skysr70 Jun 18 '25
yeah i think getting my blood pressure read is probably gonna be easier for an ai than optimizing a product synthesis line, hot take
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u/OkMuffin8303 Jun 15 '25
People think everything they don't understand will get replaced with AI (which they also don't understand)
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u/foco177 Jun 15 '25
I think the only response is nobody knows the future and manufacturing is too complicated to predict what will happen. It’s also to early in AI to determine what it’s actually capable of.
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u/nadthevlad Jun 15 '25
AI is not going to take your job. It might help be more productive.
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/sam-altman-ai-will-make-coders-10x-more-productive-not-replace-them
https://futurism.com/apple-damning-paper-ai-reasoning
The important thing here is to control your reaction and not lets others knock you off balance.
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u/hataki7 Jun 15 '25
at my uni recently Venkat Venkatasubramanian (Columbia university prof) was invited to speak about this, as a chemE and also an expert at the topic. you might want to hear what his opinion is on this, it's surely interesting. that might actually give you insight (and also depress you a bit, sorry)
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u/Gallagr1 Jun 15 '25
AI and other machine learning might replace some engineering tasks ( which by default will reduce the required number of engineers required). However, AI can not at this time walk a plant floor and listen to the pumps, feel the vibrations, and account for true real world conditions that do not match the theoretical. Those tasks still require skilled engineers especially in areas such as ChemE and FireProtection Eng where mistakes can cost lives and environmental disasters.
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u/collonius10 Jun 15 '25
You'd better start using the AI before somebody with out a chemE degree does or they'll be right!
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u/Difficult_Ferret2838 Jun 15 '25
I'd be a little more worried if half the industry wasn't ran by custom excel files with no descriptions.
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u/Interesting-Sky-7014 Jun 15 '25
😂😂no it won’t. Genuinely impossible to replace I think. AI won’t be anything but a helpful tool to speed up some of the initial work or formatting some text for a report quickly but it cannot do the work
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Jun 15 '25
Some things will be eased by AI…but chemical engineering is very tied to low-level chemistry and physics. AI can be used to speed up simulations and many things, but a vast majority of things still need humans.
And even if I’m wrong, engineers always readapt based on new technologies…
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u/NefariousnessSad2283 Jun 16 '25
I would get back at them and say 'you know relatives will get replaced by AI too right? For once we would have relatives that are genuinely supportive'
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u/naastiknibba95 Petroleum Refinery/9 years/B.Tech ChE 2016 Jun 16 '25
stop giving a shit about anything a relative or a stranger says.
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u/Lotus_buds Jun 16 '25
Human intervention is needed at any point, AI can't do all the chemical engineering stuff alone...Even if it does in future say , you and I both won't be alive to witness that so you are safe to pursue it and tell them the same 😉
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u/bkidcudder Jun 16 '25
It holds no value. At the end of the day, AI cannot replace entire systems. If they could, we would’ve lost the war a long time ago
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u/Maioranaa Jun 16 '25
How good is an AI talking to an operator at 4 AM about some batch that's way off?
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u/chillimonty Jun 16 '25
It’s a spectrum. Some are easy to replace by AI. Some are hard. Chem Engineer is probably in the hardest 30% of jobs to replace. And when that day comes all jobs will likely be replaced by AI with a year or two.
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u/rhl Jun 17 '25
Who’s going to use an AI to make molecules, if not a ChemE? If anything there will be more demand for chemical engineers, especially if you know how to train AI models for materials and molecules! Don’t be offended, be encouraged - sign up for CS and ML classes as part of your electives, there’s a vibrant community of chemical engineers training AI models for molecules and you can learn all of it easily with your ChemE calculus and linear algebra skills! After all, AlphaFold got the Nobel Prize for Chemistry!
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u/Far_One_360 Jun 18 '25
Everyone and everything is getting AIed ... That's just the new thing.. like how everything got computerized and everything got automated
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u/spideyamino Student (Diploma) Jun 26 '25
in my opinion i honestly HOPE and doubt this doesnt happen because theres just things that humans can do that AI cant that are important not only in chem eng but in so many industries.
and also as an Asian myself (not that it matters) i dont get how they could compare engineering to nursing like both are equally useful and important jobs ever since they existed
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u/crashddr Jul 02 '25
I had an AI belabor the point several times and even cited references that supposedly show nitrogen having much lower vapor pressure than CO2... it was really stuck on this even when it acknowledged the data I told it.
LLMs aren't going to replace our jobs, but they might help with things like patent searches or having something to bounce ideas off of. Machine learning can also prove to be super useful and has been for many years. Got a trillion different molecular or crystalline structures to dig through? Having a machine sift through the mountain of data alongside a person could certainly speed up the process.
Don't worry about AI preventing you from finding work. Focus on getting all the experience you can right now through internships or co-ops. I interned over summers and winter breaks and started at ~$90k immediately out of school a decade ago.
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Jul 04 '25
Yeah it’s easy for them to say shit like that when they have a narrow perspective and don’t have a grasp on what the market or job is like.
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u/Ok-Bandicoot-2465 Jul 12 '25
I am pretty sure it is hard for AI to replace us . I keep getting stupid answers to questions I ask AI for my chemical engineering queries . I am pretty sure it will take more than a text based language model for replacing us. and more importantly with the type of industrial accidents we have in our industry( god forbid any more to happen) I dont suppose anybody will be foolish enough to employ AI for that matter unless tested .
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u/KobeGoBoom Jun 15 '25
You should not be offended by someone thinking your job could be replaced by AI. It’s arrogant to suggest that it never could.
Generalize much? There are plenty of Asians who won’t tell you to pursue something “useful.”Just like there are plenty of non-Asians who will tell you to pursue something “useful”.
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u/Ok-Librarian1015 Jun 15 '25
If you’re offended by someone stupid saying something you’re also stupid
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u/1PrestigeWorldwide11 Jun 15 '25
Engineers are on top 10 list last to be automated. Nurses can’t be AI hmm let’s see a speaker camera and mic in every patients room connected to an LLM chatbot that knows what med doses etc all patience are supposed to get and can alert a doctor if anything is needed (and pretty much tell the doctor what to do anyway). They will need like one nurse for every 5 currently. There any job can be dreamed up an AI disruption. AI diagnoses better than doctors already. ChemEs mix ups could blow up a town. They will have us checking AIs work for a long time yet. P.S. have they not heard of humanoid robots? They already want them as nurses and healthcare aides. If we get to the point AI replaces Chem engineers we will be post scarcity anyway. It will be up to society to distribute the riches and luxury fairly for all to live well in our Utopian future.
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u/secondchancepleez Jun 15 '25
If chem eng gets replaced by AI then by that point everything has been replaced by AI. That's not an exaggeration.