Ford rehires ‘gray beard’ engineers after AI falls short

Ford executives said they hired 350 experienced engineers — some of them former employees, while others had worked at suppliers — after artificial intelligence and automated systems failed to deliver the desired level of quality.

Bloomberg reports The company’s chief operating officer, Kumar Galhotra, told reporters that Ford was “increasingly relying on automated quality systems,” with disappointing results. So the company “brought back engineering specialists,” and those specialists “hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the factory floor.”

Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, added: “We wrongly thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and incorporating the design requirements we had, that would deliver a high-quality product.”

To be clear, this doesn’t mean Ford is completely abandoning its AI plans. Instead, it uses the rehired workers — known as “gray beard” engineers — to train younger staff and reprogram AI tools.

This new hire appears to be paying off, with Ford expecting it to result in up to $1 billion in cost savings this year. The automaker also claimed the top spot among mainstream brands in the JD Power Initial Quality Survey released this week.