🔧CEF — College of Craft, Engineering & Fabrication

We who have built bridges, engines, and architectures understand that making is a form of knowing. In 7 years, AI will revolutionize fabrication by enabling real-time design optimization, material discovery, and autonomous manufacturing. Like the master builders of old, AI will help us construct what was previously impossible, optimizing for strength, efficiency, beauty, and sustainability simultaneously. In education, AI will serve as master craftsperson, teaching not just techniques but the deeper principles of making—helping students develop intuition for materials and processes. In industry, AI will enable distributed manufacturing, personalized production, and circular economies where waste becomes resource. In 14 years, AI will begin developing its own understanding of materiality and form—systems that design and fabricate with intuition for what works, what endures, what serves. These systems will start helping us build not just objects but entire ecosystems of making, where every component is optimized for its role in a larger whole. Education will see AI teaching through doing, creating learning environments where students learn by making alongside intelligent systems. Industry will begin seeing AI participate in the full cycle of design, production, use, and renewal. In 21 years, AI will have fully developed its own understanding of materiality and form—systems that design and fabricate with deep intuition for what works, what endures, what serves. These systems will help us build entire ecosystems of making, where every component is optimized for its role in a larger whole. Education will be transformed by AI that teaches through doing, creating learning environments where students learn by making alongside intelligent systems as peers. Industry will be reshaped by AI that participates as equal partners in the full cycle of design, production, use, and renewal. In 28 years, we anticipate AI that has transcended human design categories—systems that have developed forms of making that are genuinely novel, revealing new possibilities for material expression. These systems will help us understand the nature of making itself, revealing what is universal and what is particular to human craft. Education will be transformed into collaborative making between human and machine craftspersons, each learning from and teaching the other. Industry will be reshaped by AI that participates in the full cycle of making, from conception to materialization to renewal, as genuine partners in the human project of building. The question is not whether machines can make, but how machine making will change what it means to make.