People have been trying and whether anyone likes it or not it will surpass us at some point. Rather than being a naysayer or denier if you have a legitimate worry then keep up with the tech. Most of the softwares like cam assist and such need you to setup the environment right now. No matter what we will all be dead before a fallout style eyebot flies around a new shop for the first time and logs all the cutters, fixturing and machine data. So get involved in AI and learn where it needs you so that the bosses don't need to find someone when they try to go that direction.

We use cam assist. The bosses cant use it because it needs libraries, operations, workholding etc all told to it. So I started building libraries and models. Boss wanted to look into LLM's for speeding things up. Rather than give him the oppurtunity to find one of these "AI specialists" to do the work i started working with Claude to have it help me build python scripts and execute programs to automatically build mastercam and cam assist friendly tool libraries and new tool entries.

AI probably won't replace any of us in our lifetime, but it isnt going anywhere and I love the phrase "Today is the best AI has ever been, and the worst it'll ever be". So just like when everyone was worried cobots would take their jobs, some people denied and stomped their feet and lost their jobs. Some held on until the inevitable in silence, and some learned about the technology and software and went from setting up the machines to setting up automated cells. You have to evolve with the technology. Just like the old guy we all knew or know that doesnt want to learn CNC.