Artificial Intelligence in Mechanical Engineering Education: Analysis and Implications

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently transforming education and the student experience. Students are frequently using AI as an assistive aid in completing homework and writing assignments. Within engineering, students are using AI both as an analysis tool and to generate design concepts. This paper demonstrates how well three common AI algorithms solve both fundamental and advanced engineering problems. The selected engineering problems represent a range of topics commonly encountered in undergraduate curricula. The results show that AI can solve most fundamental engineering problems, but it has significant limitations with professional engineering work. This work demonstrates several cases where AI can generate incorrect solutions and explains the rationale behind such errors. At the time of this paper, AI still has significant limitations that make complete reliance on generated solutions both unwise and unethical. The value added of an engineer comes from areas where AI tools are too often incorrect or incomplete, such as modeling real physical systems, designing and interpreting experiments, and designing and building physical systems to achieve multiple objectives. This paper urges engineering educators to be knowledgeable about AI and encourage students to use it in assistive means and not as a replacement for fundamental knowledge. Future work will continue to refine AI’s role in education as well as test its ability to solve advanced problems.