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

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421–430 of 592 posts

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

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more realistically a Toyota, and their numbers are reflecting this.

They destroyed their heavier truck reputation with this new Tundra unfortunately

Appreciate my 2UZ-FE more every year.

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

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, every 6 months to a year I bring the car in to the dealer to handle the stack of pending recalls, during which I get a rental, courtesy of Ford. It's not much of a deal for me. Few of the issues I've experienced with the car were clearly tied to quality issues: 1) Battery died a few times, but maybe that was user error 2) squirrels/rats nibbled the engine cable harness, a not-uncommon occurrence in our area. Only…

> every 6 months to a year I bring the car in to the dealer to handle the stack of pending recalls The fact that you find this acceptable is amazing to me. Sounds like a complete failure of quality control.

Cars here are inspected yearly anyway or you go change winter tires for summer tires. (Because we lack the place to store them in typical houses.) So you are at the garage anyway every 6 months to 12. Then they can also do the other stuff

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

#423
This doesn't seem like it backfired. Firing these people and rehiring a fraction of them catapulted Ford to the top. In fact, these roles were apparently there for over a decade before modern AI even came to exist and Ford was never top. This actually presents a formula for improved reliability - fire almost everyone, then hire back the cadre with value. A very DOGE-esque approach and I'm surprised it worked.

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

#424

Get ready for this to become a common theme. Boardrooms are still engaged in the fever-dream promise that AI will solve all their problems, particularly those involving pesky humans. The simple lesson of "AI is another tool" will be a hard-learned one. Some industries, such as software, will take more time to mop themselves into a corner before they discover that velocity should never be a first-class concern. Speed…

Nah, that’s the future executives problem, the current executive gets to brag about how their AI integrations cut costs while maintaining an acceptable yet enshittified quality

Oh, it solves two problem at once: overpaying wages and overdelivery of quality.

You just have to get the input coefficient right. The least amount of acceptable quality with the least amount of costs is the sweet spot. /s

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

#425

Get ready for this to become a common theme. Boardrooms are still engaged in the fever-dream promise that AI will solve all their problems, particularly those involving pesky humans. The simple lesson of "AI is another tool" will be a hard-learned one. Some industries, such as software, will take more time to mop themselves into a corner before they discover that velocity should never be a first-class concern. Speed…

Velocity implies direction, AI is just speed sans direction, AI only workflows are just really fast brownian motion centred on training corpus mean for a task. Humans can give it direction, how good that direction is depends on human expertise.

We still need the humans, there are no cases for novel useful work I can think of, or have seen, where humans are no longer required.

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

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, that’s the future executives problem, the current executive gets to brag about how their AI integrations cut costs while maintaining an acceptable yet enshittified quality

Oh, it solves two problem at once: overpaying wages and overdelivery of quality. You just have to get the input coefficient right. The least amount of acceptable quality with the least amount of costs is the sweet spot. /s

You're being sarcastic, but...

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

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article has named sources for its quotes, whereas your comment relies entirely on "almost certainly" which sounds a lot less informed.

Nothing in the article contradicts their (IMHO accurate) claim. Three years ago boardrooms were not drinking the LLM Kool-aid yet, while ML-powered QC has been around for years. Remember Silicon Valley's hot dog vs not hot dog? That's pretty much all you need, only the hot dog is a car part.

Apparently it is not all you need, according to the article.

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

#429
post #423

This doesn't seem like it backfired. Firing these people and rehiring a fraction of them catapulted Ford to the top. In fact, these roles were apparently there for over a decade before modern AI even came to exist and Ford was never top. This actually presents a formula for improved reliability - fire almost everyone, then hire back the cadre with value. A very DOGE-esque approach and I'm surprised it worked.

The best people are the least likely to come back, and going through all of that will surely impact productivity.

Just two days ago at work a call of 15+ people spent a non-trivial amount of time recounting the scars of colleagues being laid off, or they themselves having to sign severance papers, only to be saved in the final hours. These events happened 10-15 years ago and they still cost the company time a decade later, not to mention that trust that erodes with these events.

If companies want people to focus on work, those people need to feel secure in their jobs. Laying them off and hiring them back is not job security. It’s a signal that management has no idea what they’re doing. Why would these people follow the leadership of those who can’t even solve the issue of staffing without making a mess of it?

It’s also bad when seemingly competent employees are laid off while incompetent ones stick around. It sends a signal that it doesn’t matter what you do, so why try.

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