Artificial intelligence or AI is one of those buzzwords that will soon either save or destroy the world, but it’s not always clear exactly how, not least for production workers on the floor of an automotive assembly plant. BMW is introducing AI into its production processes to boost efficiency and quality, but wants the initiative for new applications to come from the shop floor personnel, rather than be imposed from above.

Matthias Schindler, cluster supervisor for smart data analytics in the production system at BMW, explains that one of BMW’s goals is to democratise AI by making its applications open-source, and by getting the production staff on board: “Everybody should understand what AI is good for, what AI can do, what needs to be invested into AI to get it running 100% robustly,” he says. “And of course, we don’t want anybody to fear AI because this is some sort of monster. We also don’t want anybody to overestimate it because this isn’t a black box with a magician in it – you also have to invest something into the AI.”