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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

#481

Post by ben_w »

lordkrandel wrote: post #461
Retric wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies ultimately don’t have a choice here. They can do what works, or they can fail. Large enough companies with enough inertia can do really dumb things for a while, but even giants fall.

If it works. Where is this 100x software output? I just see more AI tools to check it does not derail, but where is the actual software revolution, where all developers are fired? I'm still closing AI PR slop here

If it is 100x anything more interesting than line count, it will be micro-projects: Local barber wants a new website. Architecht wants to put their own plan into a numerical physics simulation library someone else wrote that has its own syntax. Schoolkid wants a customised word puzzle app for the foreign language they struggle with. They couldn't possibly code it themselves, but they can check what it is doing.

Trust without verification though, we're waiting for AI's Challenger disaster equivalent.

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

#483

Post by MaKey »

kitd wrote: post #459
rmason wrote: post #342

Back in the nineties Ford ran a lot of ads about how quality was job one. But in the last twenty years their quality declined by a large amount at the same time other brands were getting better. I say that as a lifelong fan of Ford, quality was why I left the brand two years ago.

I think this may be a US thing. Fords built in Europe are pretty decent. Reliable (compared with most other makes), cheap parts and ubiquitous servicing. I've bought Fords (in the UK) for about the last 20 years and have in the main been very satisfied.

Putting timing belts in oil was quite a bad idea from them though.

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

#484

Post by horizion2025 »

Incipient wrote: post #393

I have spent a SOLID 3 full days 8h/day (plus long running tasks overnight) thrashing out a random idea for a Web application using purely Opus (mostly Max, sometimes ultracode version). I'm not a project manager, but I genuinely tried a full 3-tier spec out - design->specs->build details. While it was significantly better than previous attempts, it still misses very basic things - sporadically. Eg. A clear design re…

Hard to say exactly what went wrong from outside, but a frontier model not being able to implement a simple CRUD feature after 3x8 = 24 hours of work isn't "it can't do this". Let me hazard a guess from what you wrote. The 3-tier spec (design → specs → build details) may be the cause rather than the cure. A big upfront spec has two failure modes the model can't help you with: it can quietly contain contradictions, and it can be ambiguous in ways the model resolves by guessing instead of asking. "Adding clients" is a good example of the trap, even assuming your real spec was more detailed than the comment. "Client" is overloaded — a customer in the domain? An API client? A consumer of a service? And "A clear design requirement was essentially adding clients" is very imprecise: does the model add them, or build a UI so the end user can add them? I know this was just your comment and sorry to sound harsh but if the spec had sentences like that I can definitely see it going off the rails.

Your own conclusion, smaller, concrete units, is the right direction. Except by units I don't mean partitioing the program into smaller units (files, modules). In fact, you should stop thinking about implementation at all. I'm thinking more about the way of asking the LLM to build it. One feature at a time etc. so you can tighten the feedback loop. Then you can early on (in the first hour say): "I also need a way that the user can add/manage clients - basic CRUD" and that small sentence might be enough the model makes it all (UI, API, backend etc.) to enable that and put it in a proper place in the app. A big ambiguous spec defers that discovery to the worst possible moment.

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

#485

Post by alfiedotwtf »

delusional wrote: post #411
oblio wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse/better. It's corporate financial malpractice. At some point they will wake up after the AI psychosis dies down. That might take 1-2 more years. After that most companies will realize that AI is a tool, as OP said, and adjust budgets accordingly.

Importantly, "adjusting budgets" here is for most companies, you know the ones you have to fight to even get an IDE license, a euphemism for zeroing the budget.

@ihsw you’re currently greyed out so I can’t reply, but lol holy shit i’d be updating my resume if i were you

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

#486

Post by oblio »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #485
delusional wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Importantly, "adjusting budgets" here is for most companies, you know the ones you have to fight to even get an IDE license, a euphemism for zeroing the budget.

@ihsw you’re currently greyed out so I can’t reply, but lol holy shit i’d be updating my resume if i were you

Or maybe that's the wrong direction and this is where most of the world is headed once the true costs and ROI are fully revealed.

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

#487

Post by alfiedotwtf »

kitd wrote: post #459
rmason wrote: post #342

Back in the nineties Ford ran a lot of ads about how quality was job one. But in the last twenty years their quality declined by a large amount at the same time other brands were getting better. I say that as a lifelong fan of Ford, quality was why I left the brand two years ago.

I think this may be a US thing. Fords built in Europe are pretty decent. Reliable (compared with most other makes), cheap parts and ubiquitous servicing. I've bought Fords (in the UK) for about the last 20 years and have in the main been very satisfied.

Fords have a really bad name in Australia. The cheapest Hyundai will outlast even a high end Ford.

But in terms of reliability, here Toyota is king

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

#488

Post by synecdoche »

delusional wrote: post #395
mpyne wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt, but the issue I think they keep running into is they don't understand how useful those "human tools" are, so they keep trying to replace the functions humans provide with AI, without realizing all the other functions that the humans also provided.

Marx had a way to think about that. He would distinguish between labour as in generalized socially necessafy labour, and specific skilled labour. Value is measure in generalized labour, since that the universal measure of human effort. The genealized amount of time a human being must spend to produce something from its parts. Generalized labour is also what's bought from labourers. You don't pay them to do something…

I find this comment, on it's face, very hard to understand. An apparent abundance of qualifiers without definition. Is this an example of circular reasoning?

It seems to me that the text is saying that generalised labour produces value, but then only specific labour produces actual value. What is the difference between actual value and value in general? Is some value somehow more valuable that other? Are we even speaking the same language? Is this just making shit up as you go along and hope nobody notices because the general idea is appealing?

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

#489

Post by fragmede »

lordkrandel wrote: post #461
Retric wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies ultimately don’t have a choice here. They can do what works, or they can fail. Large enough companies with enough inertia can do really dumb things for a while, but even giants fall.

If it works. Where is this 100x software output? I just see more AI tools to check it does not derail, but where is the actual software revolution, where all developers are fired? I'm still closing AI PR slop here

I'm not going to speak to the output side of your comment, but yes, developers are being fired over AI.

> The latest layoffs across all tech companies. So far in 2026, there have been 421 layoffs at tech companies with 157,807 people impacted (882 people per day). In 2025, there were 783 layoffs at tech companies w/ 245,953 people impacted (674 people per day).

https://www.trueup.io/layoffs

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

#490

Post by peterfirefly »

kitd wrote: post #459
rmason wrote: post #342

Back in the nineties Ford ran a lot of ads about how quality was job one. But in the last twenty years their quality declined by a large amount at the same time other brands were getting better. I say that as a lifelong fan of Ford, quality was why I left the brand two years ago.

I think this may be a US thing. Fords built in Europe are pretty decent. Reliable (compared with most other makes), cheap parts and ubiquitous servicing. I've bought Fords (in the UK) for about the last 20 years and have in the main been very satisfied.

Ford is not as protected from competition in Europe.
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