VIDEO REVIEW · CAREER
AI Is Here — Should CNC Machinists Be Afraid? TITANS' Career Answer Across Two Videos, Three Years Apart
01Two videos, three years apart
In April 2023, just as the discussion of generative AI was flooding every industry, TITANS of CNC uploaded "How CNC Machinists CONQUER the RISE of AI," which has since accumulated over 80,000 views. The video cited a mass of the news and discussion of the time, responding to the question pervading the trade: are we going to be replaced?[1]
Three years later, in March 2026, the same channel uploaded "Everyone is Wrong About AI in CNC Programming…"[2]. By this point TITANS was no longer a bystander — over these three years they ran a full series of hands-on trials of AI programming tools (see the US hands-on case study and this series' human-vs-machine showdown video review).
02From "conquer" to "hands-on": how the perspective changed
Put the two videos side by side and the change has three layers:
- The stance of the title: 2023 was "conquer the rise" — AI is an external threat, the machinist is on defense; 2026 is "everyone is wrong" — what needs correcting is instead the community's misconception of AI (both overpanic and overdismissal).
- The source of the argument: the 2023 video cited news, celebrity interviews, and other channels; behind the 2026 video is a series of hands-on trials run on their own machines. From secondhand accounts to firsthand testing, the credibility is on a completely different level.
- The focus of the question: from "will we be replaced" to "how do we use it well." This isn't the channel softening its stance, but a natural conclusion after hands-on testing — once the tool's capabilities and limits are clear, fear turns into an operating manual.
The value of this trajectory for Taiwan is that the US craft community has already walked one full lap from anxiety to hands-on for us. You don't have to repeat three years of watching from the sidelines — you can start directly from "how to use it."
03What the research says: what changes is the skill mix, not the total number of jobs
Career anxiety deserves to be calibrated with data. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs report notes: technological change both creates and displaces work, and manufacturing's core problem is the skills gap — far more people need retraining than there are jobs being eliminated[3]. The title of the study by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute says it all: "The jobs are here, but where are the people?" — manufacturing has long been in a state of not being able to find people, not of people not being able to find work[4].
The history of automation also offers a precedent: CNC itself was once a "replace the machinist" technology — it replaced the motion of cranking a handwheel, yet created new skill demands in programming, process planning, and quality assurance, and overall let one machinist take responsibility for a much larger output[5]. AI's effect on programming is, structurally, the same thing happening again: compressing the repetitive labor of "expanding toolpaths," and amplifying the value of "judgment and gatekeeping." For Taiwan's local counterpart, see the CNC labor-shortage self-help guide.
04Three concrete paths for machinists and new entrants
- Working machinists: make "reviewing AI" your skill. AI-generated programs need someone who can spot what's wrong — and that requires exactly the machining intuition you already have. Learn to operate an AI CAM tool and build your own checklist, and you go from "the person AI races on speed" to "AI's quality control," and your scarcity actually rises. For the full learning path, see the CNC engineer's AI-era learning path.
- Veteran machinists: turn experience into an asset. What's most valuable in the AI era isn't operating speed, but the judgment you've built over thirty years. Through systematic recording and transfer (see the practice of transferring veteran experience), experience can keep working for the shop after you retire — and preserve bargaining power for you too.
- Young people wanting to enter: the trade welcomes you more than you think. Both videos and all the research point to the same thing: the industry is short of people, and increasingly short of people who "understand machining and can use digital tools." Learn from fundamental methods while treating AI tools as everyday — your growth curve can be much shorter than your seniors'.
BestAI CAM's role in this transition is to lower the bar for "being able to use AI": AI reads drawings, models, generates code from the shop's tool crib, and has built-in simulation and dimension cross-verification — the machinist's work focuses on review and decisions, and our training courses exist precisely to get teams onto this way of working quickly. AI won't replace machinists; but as the two videos proved over three years — the machinist who can use AI takes the opportunity first.
05FAQ
Will AI replace CNC machinists?
The evidence points to "replacing part of the work content, not the job": what gets compressed is repetitive programming expansion and prep work, while what gets amplified is the value of review, judgment, and shop-floor gatekeeping. Manufacturing's structural problem has always been a shortage of people, not a shortage of jobs — international research and TITANS' three-year hands-on trajectory both support this conclusion.
What should a working machinist learn to avoid being left behind?
The highest-leverage single thing: learn to review AI's output. This combines the machining intuition you already have (which AI lacks) with operating a new tool (which most of your peers don't yet). Concretely, master an AI CAM workflow and build your own program checklist, so you become the mandatory gate between AI output and the machine.
The two videos are three years apart — what's the biggest change?
From "AI is an external threat to be conquered" to "the community's understanding of AI needs correcting." The reason behind it is that over these three years the channel ran a whole series of hands-on trials — once they'd figured out what AI can and can't do, the question naturally shifted from "will we be replaced" to "how do we use it well." This mindset trajectory is exactly the path every machining team will walk.
Is there still a future for young people in Taiwan entering CNC now?
The industry's labor shortage is a long-term structural feature, and AI is lowering the repetitive labor of getting started while raising the value of digital skills — the combination of "understands machining and can use AI tools" is scarce in the market. Building a base in fundamental methods while learning AI CAM as an everyday tool can grow you noticeably faster than the traditional path.
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Contact an implementation consultant Training courses06References
- TITANS of CNC MACHINING (YouTube). How CNC Machinists CONQUER the RISE of AI (published 2023-04-04). youtube.com/watch?v=mFhngJUGMSo
- TITANS of CNC MACHINING (YouTube). Everyone is Wrong About AI in CNC Programming… (published 2026-03-26). youtube.com/watch?v=JPjbZ_DZh3s
- World Economic Forum (2023). The Future of Jobs Report 2023.
- Deloitte & The Manufacturing Institute (2018). The jobs are here, but where are the people?
- Groover, M. P. (2019). Automation, Production Systems, and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (5th ed.). Pearson.