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

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

#211

Post by grosswait »

luckydata wrote: post #202
cakeface wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's right to categorize "no consequences". Leadership made a decision and that decision was bad. This happens all the time, including allocating budget for staff. Any effective organization is going to judge the outcomes of these types of decisions and it's going to come up in performance and hiring. If this was an isolated situation then possibly they won't fire anyone over it. But you really need the…

oh poor babies they got sad their human sacrifices didn't work, that's surely as much punishment as losing your livelihood because a pack of morons act randomly based on feels.

Life is not fair and there are no guarantees. It’s a hard phase of realization to go through but life’s surprises are easier to get past once you do.

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

#212

Post by simianwords »

alwa wrote: post #149
simianwords wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prov…

Motte and Bailey.

From your video, it looks like your definition of hype involves a situation where eventual adoption increases above what is in the hype today.

Here's what the parent comment thinks:

> 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, and they waste tons of money on doomed efforts. A good example of the prior one was "Big Data" which was even more pointless than the current AI boom.

Obviously the parent doesn't think of hype the way you think of it because they claim that big data was pointless -- they don't see the eventual "slope of enlightenment". They think of hype cycle in the colloquial way and I was responding to that.

I see this all the time in the website and frankly the patronising "but actually hype means something else" is pointless and pedantic. I urge you to respond to words within the context and not bringing in academic definitions.

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

#213

Post by mrandish »

WarmWash wrote: post #136

Ford has hired 350 engineers over the last 3 years which happened alongside short comings in using AI inspection tooling. This has nothing to do with LLMs and instead is almost certainly about their MAIVIS and AiTriz pilots, which use old school CNNs on custom IBM hardware to do visual inspections.

Yes, it seems like many are missing the crucial aspect of the timing. The mistake was realized 3 years ago and auto design and manufacturing process lead times are long. Plus the occasion for the story was 'Ford returning to the top of the JD Power Quality Survey rankings', so that's another 6-18 months of reporting lag. That puts the original layoff mistakes being made 5 to 8 years ago.

I don't know when the "MAIVIS and AiTriz pilots" you mention were implemented but another possibility is the Ford PR team saw that 'AI Backlash' stories are currently trending and opportunistically focused on that to explain a positive news event which likely had many causes. IMHO, we should view these 'AI Backlash' themed stories as no more valid than the 'AI Downsizing' themes they previously seized on to justify layoffs they wanted to do anyway.

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

#214

Post by pesus »

cakeface wrote: post #191
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…

I don't think it's right to categorize "no consequences". Leadership made a decision and that decision was bad. This happens all the time, including allocating budget for staff. Any effective organization is going to judge the outcomes of these types of decisions and it's going to come up in performance and hiring. If this was an isolated situation then possibly they won't fire anyone over it. But you really need the…

If the only consequence is that they're not rewarded, then it seems like it's very fair to categorize it as "no consequences".

Even if you categorize missing out on some bonus or something as a consequence, it pales in comparison to the damage they've done and the lives they've severely disrupted and possibly irreparably damaged by firing people on a whim. (And I consider firing people because you fell for the AI hype / obvious marketing to be a whim)

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

#216

Post by mothballed »

jm4 wrote: post #193
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…

Generally, you don’t want to punish people for making decisions. At least I don’t. I value people who are willing to try things and I generally believe any decision made in good faith is better than no decision. My litmus test is was it a reasonable decision given the information available at the time in service of a greater goal. I can live with the consequences of that. If it turns out to be a not so great decision…

Society is incredibly inconsistent on this point. If a CEO shit-cans 500 people who sacrificed future career prospects for the company and end up destitute, society say's that's capitalism and they need to learn to code in a month or something. If a stay at home wife gets "bored" and divorces her husband of 20 years, he commonly owes her a decade+ of alimony to "make up for the sacrifice and time to get on her feet" or some such.

As usual it's communism for the plebs and something entirely different for the capital wielding class.

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

#217

Post by bijowo1676 »

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…

its because CEOs hire mckinsey/deloitte/BCG types for couple millions that give them a 60 slide powerpoint to justify reductions in force.

the same consultants can be blamed if decision backfires

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

#218

Post by alpha_squared »

jm4 wrote: post #193
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…

Generally, you don’t want to punish people for making decisions. At least I don’t. I value people who are willing to try things and I generally believe any decision made in good faith is better than no decision. My litmus test is was it a reasonable decision given the information available at the time in service of a greater goal. I can live with the consequences of that. If it turns out to be a not so great decision…

While I agree that you don't want to punish people for making bad decisions, I do think there should be a carveout for when those decisions impact people's lives.

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

#219

Post by iamflimflam1 »

daishi55 wrote: post #195
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…

“Consequences for mistakes” is generally not a good way of operating. Kind of the whole idea behind a blameless retro for example.

Execs are paid an extraordinary amount of money because they are the ultimate decision makers and should be responsible for their decisions.

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

#220

Post by G0lg0thvn »

grosswait wrote: post #211
luckydata wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh poor babies they got sad their human sacrifices didn't work, that's surely as much punishment as losing your livelihood because a pack of morons act randomly based on feels.

Life is not fair and there are no guarantees. It’s a hard phase of realization to go through but life’s surprises are easier to get past once you do.

Just give up any moral responsibility because life is unfair; what great advice!
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