Intelligent Design 4.0: Paradigm Evolution Toward the Agentic AI Era

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Jiang, Shuo, Xie, Min, Chen, Frank Youhua, Ma, Jian, Luo, Jianxi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Jiang, Shuo
Xie, Min
Chen, Frank Youhua
Ma, Jian
Luo, Jianxi
author_facet Jiang, Shuo
Xie, Min
Chen, Frank Youhua
Ma, Jian
Luo, Jianxi
contents Research and practice in Intelligent Design (ID) have significantly enhanced engineering innovation, efficiency, quality, and productivity over recent decades, fundamentally reshaping how engineering designers think, behave, and interact with design processes. The recent emergence of Foundation Models (FMs), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), has demonstrated general knowledge-based reasoning capabilities, and open new avenues for further transformation in engineering design. In this context, this paper introduces Intelligent Design 4.0 (ID 4.0) as an emerging paradigm empowered by foundation model-based agentic AI systems. We review the historical evolution of ID across four distinct stages: rule-based expert systems, task-specific machine learning models, large-scale foundation AI models, and the recent emerging paradigm of foundation model-based multi-agent collaboration. We propose an ontological framework for ID 4.0 and discuss its potential to support end-to-end automation of engineering design processes through coordinated, autonomous multi-agent-based systems. Furthermore, we discuss challenges and opportunities of ID 4.0, including perspectives on data foundations, agent collaboration mechanisms, and the formulation of design problems and objectives. In sum, these insights provide a foundation for advancing Intelligent Design toward greater adaptivity, autonomy, and effectiveness in addressing the growing complexity of engineering design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_09755
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Intelligent Design 4.0: Paradigm Evolution Toward the Agentic AI Era
Jiang, Shuo
Xie, Min
Chen, Frank Youhua
Ma, Jian
Luo, Jianxi
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.7; I.2.1
Research and practice in Intelligent Design (ID) have significantly enhanced engineering innovation, efficiency, quality, and productivity over recent decades, fundamentally reshaping how engineering designers think, behave, and interact with design processes. The recent emergence of Foundation Models (FMs), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), has demonstrated general knowledge-based reasoning capabilities, and open new avenues for further transformation in engineering design. In this context, this paper introduces Intelligent Design 4.0 (ID 4.0) as an emerging paradigm empowered by foundation model-based agentic AI systems. We review the historical evolution of ID across four distinct stages: rule-based expert systems, task-specific machine learning models, large-scale foundation AI models, and the recent emerging paradigm of foundation model-based multi-agent collaboration. We propose an ontological framework for ID 4.0 and discuss its potential to support end-to-end automation of engineering design processes through coordinated, autonomous multi-agent-based systems. Furthermore, we discuss challenges and opportunities of ID 4.0, including perspectives on data foundations, agent collaboration mechanisms, and the formulation of design problems and objectives. In sum, these insights provide a foundation for advancing Intelligent Design toward greater adaptivity, autonomy, and effectiveness in addressing the growing complexity of engineering design.
title Intelligent Design 4.0: Paradigm Evolution Toward the Agentic AI Era
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.7; I.2.1
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09755