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

bloomberg.com

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

#531

Post by cmrdporcupine »

wookmaster wrote: post #508

It’s so odd to me how companies decided what LLMs are capable of without data backing it up. Were all the execs conned or something ?

For years many in management believed our value to the company was "just" in our ability to produce code. You could see it from how they would "resource" projects and write job descriptions and manage. The output of the job, to them, was code written / bugs fixed / features implemented. In organizations like this, software was a cost centre, and it was treated that way.

LLMs can write code. They're actually pretty good at it. So problem solved, right? Cost centre cost reduction. Bam!

In reality the more competent in the job were really good at understanding business problems and holding domain specific knowledge, working with the other people on the team to translate that into a problem a computer could solve, and with understanding and diagnosing what was happening in the broader system, not just in a "program."

Someone needs to write the prompts given to the LLMs and decide if what they came back with even makes any sense. Someone needs to respond to pages in the middle of the night. Someone needs to be able to look at the system and have a bigger picture understanding of how it fits with the business' needs, etc. etc. That's a software engineer.

I honestly think not enough in middle and upper management really understand what software development actually is.

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

#533

Post by saghm »

wookmaster wrote: post #508

It’s so odd to me how companies decided what LLMs are capable of without data backing it up. Were all the execs conned or something ?

I'm not convinced that they needed to be conned. That assumes that they're normally able to correctly make this type of decision without a dedicated effort to trick them. (Not saying there wasn't any dedicated effort, just that they're capable of making decisions with similarly poor judgment on their own)

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

#535

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

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

#537

Post by whateveracct »

wookmaster wrote: post #508

It’s so odd to me how companies decided what LLMs are capable of without data backing it up. Were all the execs conned or something ?

there is no measurement of ROI

my company spends millions a year on tokens and when asked about ROI the CTO just says "LoC is up! LoC isn't a good measure of productivity but it's a measure, right? right?"

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

#538

Post by llm_nerd »

aitchnyu wrote: post #532

Tangential, what is this "JD Power Initial Quality Survey" flaunted in this article?

Problems reported in the first 90 days of ownership. Overwhelming minor niggling complaints like a piece of trim making a noise or even just misunderstandings about systems.

American automakers love crowing about that survey because it's easy to do well on. And then the car falls to shit six months later, but hey, it held together for the first 90 days so all good.

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

#539

Post by hirsin »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #531
wookmaster wrote: post #508

It’s so odd to me how companies decided what LLMs are capable of without data backing it up. Were all the execs conned or something ?

For years many in management believed our value to the company was "just" in our ability to produce code. You could see it from how they would "resource" projects and write job descriptions and manage. The output of the job, to them, was code written / bugs fixed / features implemented. In organizations like this, software was a cost centre, and it was treated that way. LLMs can write code. They're actually pretty go…

This comes across strongly any time you hear management talking about "fungibility of engineers". Everyone is a full stack everything engineer, and AI makes that even easier for them to trick themselves into believing.

If anything, I feel like AI has made domain expertise more important, not less, as the "confidently wrong" error case for agents has no one able to sanity check it. At least before AI a human would dip their toe in the water and usually realize that having no idea what they were doing, and not even being able to understand what the comments mean, was a sign that they need to go find someone more experienced to help.

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

#540

Post by gibbitz »

teiferer wrote: post #340
nekusar wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its all about a longshot gamble to replace workers and wages.

I don't understand how that angle keeps surviving. It is in the interest of the rich and powerful to keep the vast majority of society in jobs and pay them a wage. That's what they use to consume the things that drive the economy which ultimately makes the rich richer. The narrative that the rich want to get rid of workers is as nonsensical today as it was decades ago when I heard it the first time. It doesn't make a…

Those employee wages for a product is a 20th century way of making money. Taking investor cash and paying it back with supplier "investments" is how "capitalism" works in today's economy. The labor market and products is just the money laundering cover story for ponzi schemes. It's way faster and more lucrative taking money from the rich in big chunks than taking it from the poor in teensy amounts. This is why everything sucks now, no one cares about the product.
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