Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 592 posts

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

#141

Post by sneak »

khriss wrote: post #57

Interestingly, there were no consequences for the execs that made this 'mistake'. There seems to be almost unlimited cover for execs cargo culting on using AI as a pretext for layoffs. If it doesn't implode almost immediately, they get massive bonuses, if it blows up in their face, oh well they had the courage to 'take a bold strategic decision' In other words, they don't really have a plan, but they are happy playin…

Layoffs aren’t “playing with people’s lives”. Employment is only by mutual consent and everyone knows that. Consent can be revoked at any time which is why anyone prudent (especially in a software engineering role) isn’t living paycheck to paycheck.

Don’t blame a customer for the vendor’s irresponsibility.

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

#142

Post by simonw »

justonepost2 wrote: post #117
simonw wrote: post #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 editori…

Cope

What exactly am I coping with here?

The headline gives the impression that Ford fired 350 engineers and tried to get AI to train the replacements and then re-hired them when that didn't work.

That impression is false, which means we're wasting time having conversations about it.

(The top comment thread on here right now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674446#48675092 - starts with the assumption that Ford execs made the mistake of laying off 350 people and then discusses if they got good severance packages etc. - here's the best comment I've seen calling that out so far: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674446#48675486)

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

#144

Post by sneak »

teiferer wrote: post #127
spwa4 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The frustration of being an engineer in Europe comes from the rules that this implies. Well, aside from the fact that this is mostly gone, but still exists in some big public or banking companies. 1) you can only get promoted if the company grows and/or someone above you leaves, or dies, or ... Btw it really requires leaving permanently. They leave for 10 years due to being in coma after a traffic accident? Nope. 2)…

That's not mandated by law though. Shouldn't companies following such stupidity be easily out-competed by those that don't? In he market for their products/services but also in the market for employment.

This would be true if the government didn’t have ridiculous outdated requirements for starting new companies.

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

#145

Post by calgoo »

exabrial wrote: post #94

For those of us who lived through the "Offshoring" Craze of the mid-2000s, this has the exact same arc. Corp CEOs / CFOs golf buddies coouldn't stop yapping about how much they saved paying people less by offshoring. So step 1, they fire a bunch of people and send work overseas, driving up their financial metrics for 5-6 quarters until their staff and their organization finally break at stage 2. Turns out cultural an…

This is still going on, just that they try to keep a few internal tech people. The problem is the incentive for the internal people to stay as they, in theory, should not be making any changes just help out.

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

#146

Post by pkulak »

khriss wrote: post #57

Interestingly, there were no consequences for the execs that made this 'mistake'. There seems to be almost unlimited cover for execs cargo culting on using AI as a pretext for layoffs. If it doesn't implode almost immediately, they get massive bonuses, if it blows up in their face, oh well they had the courage to 'take a bold strategic decision' In other words, they don't really have a plan, but they are happy playin…

That's how it works for every rich/powerful person in every aspect of their lives; maybe to a slightly lesser degree with health.

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

#147

Post by makeitdouble »

stagger87 wrote: post #18

> The return of the veteran engineers at Ford cuts against the prevailing wisdom — and fear — that AI will replace all kinds of knowledge workers. But Ford found the machines couldn’t replace experience. I'm not sure this story is illustrative of that, when you have a VP of engineering saying “Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers tha…

Yes.

And for people focusing too much on AI, Xiaomi kicked their first vehicle into production with a fully automated factory three years ago [0]. That's where the industry is going and has tried to go for decades now.

They might want to also reduced head out on the designing side, but it's also an ongoing trend that started before the AI boom.

That's not an industry that will keep hiring as much as they did in the past, however it turns out.

[0] https://youtu.be/v6jb6PP4APc

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

#148

Post by hello4263 »

drob518 wrote: post #91
yifanl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they gave the engineers appropriate severance packages, then they're at least out that much as a stupidity tax, but that's probably the most we can expect as far as consequences for the exec suite.

There is a huge cost for this either way (severance packages, yes, but also lost productivity, reduced team coherence, etc), but that unfortunately doesn’t necessarily translate to a political cost for the managers involved in pushing the dumb idea, particularly if the CEO was pressuring everyone for cost savings. They will escape by saying, “We did it because everyone else is doing it and we were told it was the rig…

Why do u even bother about lost productivity. Come on dude how many firings need to happen before one has to see the reality. Just do the minimum job required for the position and move on. Loyalty should be both ways. But that's not the case

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

#149

Post by alwa »

simianwords wrote: post #104
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's just a hype cycle. In my 15 years in data, I've seen around 3-4. Every time leadership get way too invested in the possibilities…

I think you are misleading people by calling it a "hype cycle". There is no going back from this technology. It is going to encroach every part of lives more and more. What does hype even mean concretely? I think this is just a coping mechanism if you ask me.

“Hype Cycle” is a Gartner term of art, which they use to describe the way waves of technological innovation penetrate the business world:

https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hy...

The idea is there’s a rush of irrational exuberance when an “innovation trigger” makes a new toy looks promising, and everybody rushes to use it for everything, regardless of whether its suitability-for-purpose is proven. Inevitably many of those pioneers find that it’s not good for their particular problems after all; usage reaches a “peak of inflated expectations,” and crashes into a “trough of disillusionment.”

Then the tech enters a quieter and more gradual “slope of enlightenment” as people work out use cases where the tech actually adds value; then adoption reaches a “plateau of productivity.”

Worth a glance at the way they map this to prior waves of technological exuberance.

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

#150

Post by loeg »

khriss wrote: post #57

Interestingly, there were no consequences for the execs that made this 'mistake'. There seems to be almost unlimited cover for execs cargo culting on using AI as a pretext for layoffs. If it doesn't implode almost immediately, they get massive bonuses, if it blows up in their face, oh well they had the courage to 'take a bold strategic decision' In other words, they don't really have a plan, but they are happy playin…

This is how it has always been? C-suite is incentivized to make big speculative changes; if it goes well, they get credit. If not, oh well.
Post reply on HN