Inductive Automation Predicted Industrial AI in 2019 — Were They Right?

In 2019, Inductive Automation's Colby Clegg, Don Pearson, and Kevin McClusky sat down with Zack at IA's Folsom headquarters and predicted nearly everything that's now dominating the industrial software conversation: AI accountability, the open-systems revolution, algorithm liability in closed-loop control, and the mobile-first plant floor.Nobody had names for any of it yet. They just had precision.This episode is a curated remaster of those three conversations — nearly two hours of 2019 archive compressed into 38 minutes of what now reads as evidence rather than prediction.In this episode:Why unlimited licensing wasn't just a pricing decision — it was a prerequisite for digital transformationThe open/closed architecture cycle and why we're back in the loosely-coupled phaseHow AI adoption in manufacturing follows the self-driving car trajectoryWhy the question for closed-loop AI isn't "why did the algorithm decide that" — it's "who chose the training data"The Gartner hype trough, the Exchange, and what's actually coming in the next 2-3 yearsFeaturing Colby Clegg, Don Pearson, and Kevin McClusky of Inductive Automation. Recorded remotely with Colby Clegg (Ep. 90) and in October 2019, Folsom, CA. with Don & Kevin. (Ep. 149 & 150) Remastered in 2026.Timestamps:00:00 — Cold Open: The Moments That Still Land 02:08 — Open vs. Closed: The Cycle That Never Ends 05:24 — How Ignition Started: Steve's Idea in 2003 07:00 — OT/IT Convergence and the Technology Bridge 09:19 — Sparkplug, MQTT, and the Eclipse Foundation 11:39 — Open Source: Why 90% of Your Idea Isn't Special 12:08 — AI in Manufacturing: Where It's Safe to Start 13:23 — Closed-Loop AI and the Liability No One Wants 18:05 — The Self-Driving Car Threshold for Industrial AI 19:35 — Gartner Hype Cycle: "We're Squarely in the Trough" 20:04 — The 10-Year-Old Who Doesn't Know What Wikipedia Is 21:13 — Mission-Driven Companies vs. Quarterly Return Machines 24:22 — Ignition's Final Mile Secret Sauce 25:00 — Mobile: The Technology You Should Already Have 28:18 — The Ignition Exchange and Ecosystem Velocity 31:54 — Closing: "If the Body Is Automation, AI Is the Brain"Guests:Colby Clegg · https://www.linkedin.com/in/colby-clegg-860460a/Don Pearson · https://www.linkedin.com/in/don-b-pearson/ Kevin McClusky · https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmcclusky/#ZackScrivenPodcast #InductiveAutomation #Ignition #IIoT #Industry40 #OpenSystems