The gray beards were always least threatened by AI. It’s the junior market that’s getting decimated.
Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
561–570 of 592 posts
Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
#562It’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 ?
FOMO, US tech monoculture, complicit tech media hyping AI, actual religious AI believers, C-suites looking for short time gains, fear of investors‘ backlash, etc
It was a social panic. AI PR convinced tech execs that companies who didn’t adopt AI as a significant part of their workforce would fall behind (and in capitalism that means they lost market share and revenue). Investors likely put pressure on execs to do this in addition to the AI PR campaigns. FOMO is chasing the carrot you see everyone else getting, but this was more like chasing the thing that supposedly deters the stick.
It’s also worth mentioning that it still might be the right business strategy for some companies / industries. We are only 3 years into the revolution of AI for business processes and in previous revolutions there were riots, sabotage efforts, factories still being created in the style of the previous revolution, etc.
Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
#563Back 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.
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Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
FOMO, US tech monoculture, complicit tech media hyping AI, actual religious AI believers, C-suites looking for short time gains, fear of investors‘ backlash, etc
It was a social panic. AI PR convinced tech execs that companies who didn’t adopt AI as a significant part of their workforce would fall behind (and in capitalism that means they lost market share and revenue). Investors likely put pressure on execs to do this in addition to the AI PR campaigns. FOMO is chasing the carrot you see everyone else getting, but this was more like chasing the thing that supposedly deters t…
I think it’s a mix of all of this. I don’t believe one reason explains the whole mania by itself (not sure why you’re getting downvoted, your comment reads reasonable to me)
Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
#565Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
We tried it. DOGE was a complete failure of tech startup idiots asking models questions as if they were oracles and blindly trusting them to make subjective decisions about which Congressionally-created programs we should kill. Some of the tech were smart enough to realize how much damage they did and got out quickly.
There’s a trend of software people in particular thinking that their expertise applies outside of their domain, and then causing a mess. DOGE was probably the world’s most spectacular example of this in action.
USDS and Code For America were reasonable, level-headed, modest efforts at improving government for the people using tech experts. They tried to work within the existing orgs and within the existing authorities to improve services via tech projects.
DOGE only existed because voters were convinced to hate the faceless people who work in government instead of hating the rigid legal requirements and checkbox system that every government employee is forced to follow.
Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
#567It’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 ?
The goal is to deskill the labor of these workers. If there is a threat of a replacement which can bypass the cost of creating a new skilled worker, then the workers lose their bargaining power. It doesn't matter if the threat is a bluff so long as it is believed enough to give leverage.
Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
#568Get 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…
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Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
#569It’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 ?
They were conned because there’s been a massive top down propaganda campaign at the highest levels of corporate America that GAI is right around the corner.
Saying they were conned sounds like naming them victims of some trick and moving the responsibility away from them. Nah. It's not conning; it's stupidity and lack of critical thinking.
Re: Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
#570Tangential, what is this "JD Power Initial Quality Survey" flaunted in this article?
A survey is sent to car buyers with a huge number of questions related to their satisfaction. Automakers, Tier-1 suppliers, and probably others get to buy this data to mine for market research.
At a past role with a Tier-1, we bought part of the dataset. A quick regression showed that satisfaction was strongly correlated with buyer age, and there was very little signal otherwise. (Young people with overtime work and daycare pickups don't respond to surveys unless they have a serious axe to grind while retirees aren't so constrained)