this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly (www.the-independent.com)
submitted 1 day ago by FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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.”

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[–] Babalugats@feddit.uk 44 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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 17 points 1 day 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.

[–] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Billions? Fuck, they might need to get bailed out with taxpayers' money!

[–] JordanZ@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Say what you will but Ford was the only one of the big three that didn’t take money directly. That isn’t to say they didn’t benefit from those programs however.

This move was still colossally stupid. They tried to save millions and costs themselves billions.

[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

Ford got six billion in low-interest loans with fantastic terms, that's a bailout

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

This is a myth the internet will not let die. Ford did not take the Obama bailout because they didn't qualify, as they already took a huge bailout by Bush a year prior.

[–] JordanZ@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

My link is to factcheck.org so if you have another link I’d be willing to read it.

Edit: I went searching for what you’re talking about around the 2007ish time period and I simply can’t find it. Everything is about TARP in 2008 which started with Bush and Ford didn’t take from. Ford did take a 5.9B loan from the Department of Energy in 2009. Looks like they did pay that loan back but have since taken another.

[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

It's not a myth, it's all public record. FORD got six billion in low-interest loans (at least, I didn't look up every year).

You can see for yourself at your leisure. Search "Ford bailout loans"

[–] CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

They didn’t qualify because they weren’t struggling as badly, the F150 is the best selling truck in the world and domestic sales of the mustang and focus were their buoys. Not qualifying is a good thing… they didn’t need to take the bailout so they weren’t offered to