AI for Engineers

“I sit within the Digital Engineering Team, which is another, relatively new department. Obviously, with Digital in our name, AI is at the forefront our minds. But, as Paul mentioned, DB ESG is proactive and wanted to lift the knowledge across the whole organisation, not just digital departments.

“Like many people, I have used AI to quickly gather information, but I hadn’t fully considered how to use it within a business. For example, how can we create a product, manufacture it and then market it – and whether that was even possible. On a personal level, I wanted to get a base level of knowledge so that I could understand the possibilities.”

“The course was driven internally by our Projects Director James Hornsby. It was clear that certain people needed to be there, but others were also able to request to take part. There were about 20 people and Ali ran two courses. The course was broadly split into two sections: an educational segment about AI and that was followed by sessions on how we could use AI at DB ESG.

I hadn’t realised how much mathematics there is behind AI – it is purely algorithms. The first day was largely theory on how AI algorithms work, what the basis of the algorithms are, what type of learning there is for AI and so on.

This brainstorming session was critical. You could see themes emerging. It allowed us to understand colleagues’ priorities and, at the same time, consider the wider business priorities.

Ali took us through our ideas, explaining how we could start to tackle them: Were they viable? Is the technology there yet? What would give the business the best outcome?

There were quite a few questions that arose during the course, including some complex ones around theory, and Ali was able to answer them all immediately. He was incredible! He also has an engineering background and knowledge, so understood where we were coming from. He was able to readily suggest which applications he believed could be used in the railway sector. The course was just a great combination of theory and practical knowledge.”

“We covered so much! Firstly, I think to program AI tools you need a base understanding of the minimum requirements. I now have that. I can use the knowledge I’ve gained on future projects – such as image generation using arrays or the tracking of objects in images.”

1. “Experiment with Co-Pilot, ChatGPT, Gemini or one of the other AI programs. I’d not used ChatGPT that much before the course. As soon as we’d finished, I wanted to see if I could program a bit of software. I had no experience using this particular game engine. With the right prompts, ChatGPT produced really good code. I was just amazed by it. So, have a go first. That’s the best starting point.”
2. “Consider the possibilities of how AI can be used across the business – not just engineering, but finance, HR and new business, say. We were able to brainstorm 10 to 15 examples of where we could use it to solve both internal and external problems.”
3. “Reflect on your motivation for enrolling on this course. For me, one of main elements was to uncover my preconceptions. There are a lot of different preconceptions, and they can be very negative. You need to throw those preconceptions out of the window! Be open-minded as AI allows you to realise what’s outside the box.”