‘We didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers,’ says automaker

Ford has admitted to rehiring hundreds of human workers after its aggressive AI adoption strategy backfired.

The US automaker hired over 350 veteran engineers, referred to internally as “gray beards”, over the past three years in order to address mistakes made by automated systems.

The staff will lead quality reviews after the automation issues cost the company billions of dollars, Bloomberg reported, while some workers will also help improve and train the AI systems.

“We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems and not getting the desired results,” said Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s chief operating officer.

“We brought back technical specialists and they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.”

  • Babalugats@feddit.ukEnglish
    36·
    17 hours ago

    The important bits:

    The staff will lead quality reviews after the automation issues cost the company billions of dollars - while some workers will also help improve and train the AI systems.

    “We brought back technical specialists and they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.”

    After rehiring experienced engineers, Ford experienced a marked improvement in its quality standards.

    “Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles.

    Basically saying that they massively underpaid and undervalued their staff, took and are still taking a hit that’s costing them BILLIONS and rehired the staff to train their ai so that they can do it again.

    I hope the staff that were rehired asked and received a massive pay increase, inline with what it would be costing ford still, if they didn’t.

    • aramis87@fedia.io
      10·
      15 hours ago

      See, what I see is that Ford intends to keep using AI, they’re just temporarily using experienced humans to train the AI to be better at it’s job before getting rid of the humans again.