AI in Hardware: Where's the real impact for engineers today? (From a non-traditional background)

Hey Product Hunt community,

I'm J, and my journey into hardware has been a bit non-traditional, coming from economics, product, and AI, rather than core EE. Observing the industry, I often feel like hardware innovation, particularly around component intelligence, hasn't fully leveraged AI's potential compared to software.

For those of us building physical products, I'm curious: where are you seeing (or wishing to see) AI make a genuine, tangible difference right now? Beyond the hype, what specific problems in your design, sourcing, or manufacturing workflow do you think AI is uniquely positioned to solve?

My team has been exploring this by building an AI co-pilot designed to tackle some of the biggest time sinks in component intelligence – things like using Ai to find appropriate components, analyzing datasheets, and navigating complex supply chains. We're finding it can dramatically cut down days of work into minutes (and we are planning to launch it this Saturday on Product Hunt!).

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences! What's your take on AI's current and future role in hardware development, especially in a space often overshadowed by pure software solutions?

If you are interested in what we are building, you can also visit https://partgenie.ai/