{"id":730964,"date":"2026-06-28T12:18:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T12:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/730964\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T12:18:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T12:18:00","slug":"ford-hired-ai-and-sacked-humans-it-backfired-badly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/730964\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Your support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-1uza6dc-0 iOIawn\">From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it&#8217;s investigating the financials of Elon Musk&#8217;s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, &#8216;The A Word&#8217;, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-1uza6dc-0 iOIawn\">At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-1uza6dc-0 iOIawn\">The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.<\/p>\n<p>Your support makes all the difference.Read more<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/ford\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ford<\/a> has admitted to rehiring hundreds of human workers after its aggressive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/ai\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AI<\/a> adoption strategy backfired.<\/p>\n<p>The US automaker hired over 350 veteran engineers, referred to internally as \u201cgray beards\u201d, over the past three years in order to address mistakes made by automated systems.<\/p>\n<p>The staff will lead quality reviews after the automation issues cost the company billions of dollars, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2026-06-25\/ford-has-been-rehiring-quality-inspectors-after-ai-fell-short?embedded-checkout=true\">Bloomberg<\/a> reported, while some workers will also help improve and train the AI systems.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had been relying more and more on automated quality systems and not getting the desired results,\u201d said Kumar Galhotra, Ford\u2019s chief operating officer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe brought back technical specialists and they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ford had been increasingly relying on AI-driven inspection systems to streamline production and address quality control issues, however the firm acknowledged that AI lacked the nuanced judgement when it came to complex problems.<\/p>\n<p>After rehiring experienced engineers, Ford experienced a marked improvement in its quality standards.<\/p>\n<p>According to the latest J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey, an annual automotive benchmark that measures the quality of new vehicles, Ford ranked top among mainstream brands \u2013 the first time it has achieved that milestone in 16 years.<\/p>\n<p>Ford continues to have quality issues with its older vehicles, and remains the most recalled automaker in the US, though executives blamed this on past issues involving automation, rather than the rehiring of humans.<\/p>\n<p>The company said it would not abandon its use of AI, but plans to now use it in conjunction with human oversight and experience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/artificial-intelligence\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Artificial intelligence<\/a> is a fantastic tool, but it\u2019s only as good as the information you use to train it,\u201d said Charles Poon, Ford\u2019s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver prior years, we didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-730964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}