The automaker says artificial intelligence alone couldn’t replicate the expertise of seasoned engineers
The move comes as companies across industries race to integrate AI into their operations to reduce labor costs and increase productivity. Ford had expanded the technology across parts of its manufacturing process, including deploying AI-powered quality inspections at its factories.
“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” said Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, according to BBC.
Poon acknowledged that Ford underestimated the value of its most experienced engineers as it accelerated its AI adoption.
“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,” he said.
Ford CEO Jim Farley has previously championed AI’s potential to reshape the workforce. In an interview with author Walter Isaacson last year, Farley said, “AI will leave a lot of white collar people behind.”
However, Ford’s latest assessment suggests the technology alone wasn’t enough to deliver the results executives expected.
“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product,” Poon said.
According to the executive, automated systems lacked the institutional knowledge and practical experience of veteran technicians, many of whom had already left the company before their expertise could be incorporated into the AI models.
“We recognised that for us to enhance some of our automation and machine learning and artificial intelligence tools we needed to ensure that they were trained by the most experienced individuals,” Poon said.
Those veteran employees have since returned not only to help train Ford’s AI systems but also to mentor younger engineers.
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Source: Black Enterprise
