Ford has brought back hundreds of experienced engineers after determining AI alone couldn’t achieve the quality standards it was aiming for.
Over the past three years, Ford has hired, promoted or rehired around 350 veteran engineers as it works to improve vehicle quality after overestimating what AI could achieve on its own.
Ford says it overestimated AI’s capabilities
According to Bloomberg (via BBC), Ford’s Chief Operating Officer, Kumar Galhotra, said the company had relied too heavily on automated quality systems, but they weren’t delivering the results the company expected.
Ford’s Vice President of Vehicle Hardware Engineering, Charles Poon, said the company had overestimated what AI could achieve on its own.
“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” he said.
Ford said it had overestimated the accuracy of AI.
Poon added that Ford had “mistakenly” believed feeding AI its design requirements would be enough to produce high-quality vehicles.
According to Ford, many of its most experienced engineers left the company before their decades of knowledge had been passed on to younger staff or incorporated into the AI systems designed to support quality control.
The rehired engineers, referred to internally as “gray beard” engineers, now mentor younger employees, lead quality reviews, and help improve the company’s AI tools by feeding them better engineering knowledge.
Ford is far from the first company to cool off on moving forward with AI systems. Back in April, Rockstar parent company Take-Two, laid off its Head of AI alongside an unknown number of employees.
