Acquired Intelligence - AI for Woodworkers
Saturday 2nd September 2023
Hello friends,
For anyone who has genuinely engaged with the incredible AI tools that have been released over the last couple of months, it is impossible not to be a little phased. Artificial intelligence is taking on white collar administrative and digital-creative professions at an alarming rate. It was previously assumed that these roles would be relatively ‘safe’, given the challenges that thinking creativity presents to the mind - but no.
The production of all kinds of art - including writing and images, can now be automated with ease…and don’t think that furniture making is immune. Before too long, anyone producing furniture will have to contend with the fact that artificial intelligence could design a hundred different iterations of a piece in a few minutes, chose the best one, and then ‘print’ it using a 5-axis CNC machine.
But as woodworkers, all is not yet lost. We have a powerful and unique AI tool in our toolkit - Acquired Intelligence.
Intelligence that has been acquired through hundreds of hours of physically being with the wood. Knowing the wood in our bodies as well as in our minds. And working in community.
When we celebrate a piece of beautiful homegrown timber in our work, we are accessing the intelligence of hundreds if not thousands of years. Just think of all the different ‘intelligences’ that are at play here. A board of oak might have had 200 years of intelligent care from foresters, tree-surgeons, lumberjacks and sawyers:
Intelligence in chosing which tree to cut, and how and when to cut it.
Intelligence in how and when to plank up the timber.
Intelligence in storing and drying the timber.
And before all of this occurs, there is the incredible natural networks of intelligence innate to the tree, the soil and the forest itself.
Then there are the woodworkers.
Once we have this board in our workshops, the acquired intelligence of the woodworker comes into play. An intelligence we have developed for our craft.
This is an intelligence that is not only in our minds, but in our hands.
It is an intelligence that can see and know what is possible with this unique piece of timber. Intelligence to understand which pieces are needed for each part of the furniture. An intelligence that is wrapped up in a set of physical skills that can draw out all of this potential.
This vast expansive story of acquired intelligence - from acorn to coffee-table - can’t be replicated with a piece of software, however advanced that software is.
Please don’t read into this that I am somehow anti-tech. Technology is amazing, and can support our lives and our work in so many different ways. And I am sure that AI-driven CNC will be a feature in many workshops sooner or later.
But the need for those with a physical intelligence in wood, all the way through the process, will still be there.
There are just too many real-life processes that cannot be replaced digitally.
So it is up to us to value what we do, celebrate our skills and our community, not be scared by AI, and communicate why all of this matters.
Over to you.
Stay sharp, friends.
~sh