Ford has rehired more than 300 veteran engineers, nicknamed ‘gray beards,’ to improve vehicle reliability after artificial intelligence systems failed to meet quality expectations. The move underscores a reliance on human expertise to augment and guide AI in complex engineering tasks.
Charles Poon, vice president of vehicle hardware engineering at Ford, stated that while AI is a valuable tool, its effectiveness is dependent on the quality of the data used for training. He acknowledged that the company had not adequately prioritized the experience of its most knowledgeable engineers in previous years. Ford's chief operating officer, Kumar Galhotra, had previously announced the company's intention to deploy AI across its industrial systems, but Poon noted an over-reliance on automation.
"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. The veteran engineers are now tasked with training Ford's AI systems and mentoring younger staff. They lead troubleshooting meetings for quality problems and have reprogrammed AI tools to preempt potential glitches.
"We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems and not getting the desired results," Galhotra added. "We brought back technical specialists - they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor."
This shift comes as Ford was recognized as the highest-rated mainstream carmaker in the latest U.S. JD Power Initial Quality Study, a position it had not held in 15 years. Ford attributed this turnaround, in part, to a "significant talent refresh" that included recalling experienced engineers. The company's approach emphasizes that AI functions best in collaboration with extensive human experience, rather than as a replacement for it. This development counters widespread concerns about AI rendering experienced engineers obsolete, suggesting that seasoned experts remain indispensable for the foreseeable future.