Five common myths about AI

Posted: September 10, 2025

AI is changing the way industry works, but it’s not always in the way people expect

At AVEVA, we see firsthand how industrial AI is helping teams solve tough problems: improving asset reliability, optimizing energy use, and enabling teams to make faster, more confident decisions. But we also hear the same questions come up again and again, often rooted in the same common myths.

Is AI too complex to implement? Is it safe? Will it replace people?

These misconceptions can stall progress before it even begins. That’s why we’re taking a closer look at five of the most common myths about AI in industrial environments—and what’s really true when you apply AI with purpose.

Breaking down the myths of AI:

• AI is expensive and difficult to implement
• (Generative) AI outcomes are potentially unsafe
• AI is neutral and unbiased
• AI will take away human jobs
• AI will replace human expertise

Myth: AI is expensive and difficult to implement

Reality: Many believe that AI requires a massive upfront investment and complex integration, but that isn’t necessarily the case. With the right approach, AI can be both affordable and easy to implement. Today, industries have the flexibility to adopt AI in stages, choosing the areas that offer the most immediate value, such as asset reliability or energy use optimization. By adopting a purpose-driven AI strategy, businesses can reduce complexity and cost, ensuring smoother adoption across all operations. With solutions that utilize pre-built templates and specific industry expertise, implementing AI becomes a streamlined process that aligns with business goals. At AVEVA, we specialize in making AI accessible, scalable and actionable, integrating it into your existing systems with minimal disruption.

Myth: (Generative) AI outcomes are potentially unsafe

Reality: Concerns around the safety of AI outcomes often stem from the idea that AI can generate unpredictable or unreliable results. However, this is not the case when the right processes are in place. Safety and reliability are top priorities in industrial AI. Generative AI, for example, is designed to allow users to quickly find and summarize information in a natural, conversational manner through either voice or text input. These capabilities are powered by large language models (LLMs), which make interactions feel more human. Agentic AI takes this a step further by enabling systems to act more autonomously while still guided by human oversight. Building AI solutions with transparency and human oversight ensures outcomes that are both actionable and safe.

At AVEVA, security is always at the top of our minds, and we have embedded guardrails and citations natively throughout our AI experience. Because we are domain experts in the industrial space, our orchestrator goes a step further by including built-in critique mechanisms of AI-generated plans to ensure the most efficient and accurate results. It’s built from the ground up with a focus on industrial data. We don’t rely on data from just anywhere—answers returned are based solely on the user’s data. If we encounter gaps or can't find the necessary data, we’ll notify you, maintaining complete transparency.

Myth: AI is neutral and unbiased

Reality: While AI may seem impartial, it is ultimately shaped by the data it is trained on. If the data reflects historical biases or inaccuracies, the AI will reflect those as well. Good data is the foundation of effective AI—without it, even the most advanced models will fail to perform as intended. This typically involves ensuring that you have adequate data to represent a given process or asset. In industrial environments, that often means leveraging cloud-based data for consistency and accessibility across multiple sites. To ensure fairness and accuracy, it’s critical to use sufficient and representative data sets, and to continually monitor AI outcomes for potential biases. This process involves regular audits and adjustments to the AI-driven models to ensure they align with both ethical standards and real-world applications. By integrating AI with human oversight, businesses can ensure that decisions made with the assistance of AI are balanced and fair. At AVEVA, we help ensure that your AI strategy is built on transparent, equitable data practices, empowering you to make more informed and unbiased decisions.

Myth: AI will take away human jobs

Reality: One of the most pervasive myths about AI is that it will lead to widespread job loss. In reality, jobs are evolving as AI-driven automation continues to improve. While some roles will inevitably be replaced by AI, history shows that technology shifts—from the Industrial Revolution to the rise of PCs and the internet—have ultimately created a net increase in jobs. AI supports human workers by automating repetitive tasks, enabling them to focus on higher-value, more strategic work. For example, AI-driven systems can predict maintenance needs before equipment failure, freeing engineers to concentrate on optimization and process innovation rather than routine checks. These checks can now be continuous and applied across far more assets than a human could handle at once. AI highlights the critical issues in context, allowing people to act where their expertise is most valuable. This shift redeploys human talent to the activities that require creativity, problem-solving and industry knowledge. While some roles will inevitably disappear, new opportunities are emerging, and the overall shape of work is changing, not diminishing. At AVEVA, we focus on AI solutions that empower your teams to drive innovation, not displacement.

Myth: AI will replace human expertise

Reality: While AI is incredibly powerful, it does not replace the invaluable insights, experience, and creativity that human experts bring to the table. Instead, AI complements human expertise by providing data-driven insights, identifying patterns that may not be immediately obvious, and supporting faster, more informed decision-making. In industries such as manufacturing, energy and utilities, AI helps experts make better, faster decisions by providing real-time analytics and predictive capabilities. The goal is not to replace human knowledge but to enhance it. AVEVA’s AI solutions work alongside industry experts, amplifying their capabilities and enabling them to achieve better results together. At the same time, AI helps codify that expert human knowledge, making it accessible to more than one user and expanding the workforce’s collective knowledge and the expertise they can leverage in operational environments.

AI is most powerful when it’s practical, purposeful and people-first.

That’s the approach we take at AVEVA, where industrial AI is embedded in real-world operations, supporting human expertise rather than replacing it. Whether it’s codifying knowledge, surfacing actionable insights, or helping teams anticipate what’s next, AI is here to elevate performance, not disrupt it.

So if any of these myths have been holding your team back, now’s the time to rethink what’s possible. With the right strategy, AI becomes a trusted partner in your digital transformation.

Curious where to start?