Live data from Hacker News

Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors

bloomberg.com

41–50 of 592 posts

Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors

#41

The reason AI fails in Industry is that SKILL.md or other knowledge-injection methods do not guarantee compliance. AI just thinks it "knows better".

A friend of mine prepared an arsenal of hooks and the like to address this and LLMs still disobey them at times.

I don't have high hopes that there exists a bulletproof solution to this.

Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors

#42
post #20

> Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product. Clearly a lot of careful thought went into their strategy of using AI and firing engineers.

Had a couple of Taurusii back in the day. 100% ended up having a problem where the power steering pump shit the bed because a plastic piece in the pressurized side failed. Paid to repair one, oem pump broke on drive home due to same plastic piece under pressure. My point being, Ford's had shit for brains for decades. Its a fucking wonder any of their vehicles make it out of the parking lot.

I had a Focus in the 2000's that was the most reliable car I ever owned. Rust got it eventually but it still started instantly at any temperature and ran like a new car.

Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors

#43
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says Ford fired any employees? The article doesn't.

"Ford rehires 350 engineers after AI fails to preserve expertise or train juniors" In order to rehire someone they must laid off or fired? You don't rehire new employees?

Farther down it clarifies that only some of them were former employees, and others were poached from other companies:

>Over the last three years, Ford says it has hired 350 veteran engineers, many of them former employees and others from suppliers

And not all former employees were laid off. Senior 'greybeards' have many job opportunities elsewhere and often leave for better offers.

Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors

#44

I hope those engineers made Ford pay out the nose.

They did not. I been saying for decades that software devs form a union.

It's just so strange any other profession have unions or bodies that protect their job against this sort of practice.

if software devs were lawyers then AI would've been banned

Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors

#45
post #20

> Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product. Clearly a lot of careful thought went into their strategy of using AI and firing engineers.

Step 1: fire everyone. Step 2: figure out how to use AI.

In that order, apparently.

Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors

#48
This HN headline is editorialized, the Bloomberg headline is "Ford AI Hiccups Push Carmaker to Rehire ‘Gray Beard’ Inspectors".

The editorialized headline is also misleading: "Ford rehires 350 engineers after AI fails to preserve expertise or train juniors" - there is nothing in the original story that suggests Ford were expecting AI to "train juniors".

And since the Bloomberg headline is behind a paywall the editorialized headline is most of what we have to go on.

This Verge story would be a better link: "Ford had to hire back former engineers to fix mistakes made by its automated systems" https://www.theverge.com/transportation/956316/ford-quality-...

And the crucial detail: nothing indicates Ford laid off the 350 people who were re-hired. It looks to me like it could be bringing back people who retired.

Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors

#49
post #20

> Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product. Clearly a lot of careful thought went into their strategy of using AI and firing engineers.

This idea is everywhere right now, that AI is some magic black box that will solve all your business problems. The sentiment is spreading through the exec team where I work now too. It's like a disease.

C-suites completely disconnected from reality and assuming we've already achieved ASI/AGI, and marketing teams & business journals are only furthering that narrative.

It's so weird. I don't know what it is about AI that causes people to throw all thought and caution to the wind and charge forward blind. Its like they've been chomping at the bit for decades to get rid of those pesky humans and are so hyped up over it they can't see clearly anymore.

Post reply on HN