Everywhere we turn, someone is talking about Artificial Intelligence. It’s in our phones, our cars, our homes — but some of its biggest moves are happening out of sight, deep inside factories, power plants, oil rigs, shipping yards, and data centers that quietly run the world’s backbone industries. I’ve spent years watching this unfold, and I keep asking myself the same questions: Is AI really going to be better than us? Are we ready for what it means when machines don’t just help us work — but quietly outdo us at the very tasks we built entire economies and communities around? Smarter Machines on the Factory Floor