Training

Truly, I have been conflicted over artificial intelligence. As an engineer, I find it interesting and, possibly, useful. As an employee (which I've not been since April 2004), I would find it threatening. As a reasonably intelligent and reasonably sympathetic member of the public, I find it demoralizing.

Nearly every engineer, and I venture to guess most employees, face the task of training others. I spent much time during my engineering career in training others. It was just another part of my job, and I enjoyed watching younger engineers make progress in their own professions. 

BUT...when one is tasked with training the software to take away the job by which one makes a living, it gets really uncomfortable. I think it only human that when I read the article, below, I got a wry look on my face and thought, "What did they expect?" I actually expected better from Ford*. I don't know what to tell them.

Ford Rehires 350 Engineers After AI Fails To Preserve Expertise or Train Juniors

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday June 25, 2026 @01:00PM from the engineers-in-the-loop dept.

After Ford's automated quality-control systems and AI tools fell short, the automaker hired 350 veteran engineers over the past three years to mentor younger staff and reprogram the underperforming technology. "Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it," Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters on a call Wednesday. "Over prior years, we didn't pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles." Bloomberg reports:Those engineers were "at the heart" of Ford's efforts to turn around quality problems, said Kumar Galhotra, chief operating officer. They now run mandatory meetings that rigorously troubleshoot quality problems and they have reprogrammed AI tools to head off glitches before they happen. "We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems" and not getting the desired results, Galhotra said. "We brought back technical specialists" and "they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor."

The return of the veteran engineers at Ford cuts against the prevailing wisdom -- and fear -- that AI will replace all kinds of knowledge workers. But Ford found the machines couldn't replace experience. "Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product," Poon said. But "we recognized that for us to enhance some of our automation and machine learning and artificial intelligence tools we needed to ensure that they were trained by the most experienced individuals."

As a result of the efforts of the old hands, Ford vaulted above quality stalwarts such as Toyota and Honda on JD Power's bellwether survey that measures the quality of a car during the first three months of ownership. Only luxury brands Porsche and Genesis topped Ford this year.

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* At one time I worked for a company that was owned by Ford Aerospace. AFAIK, they did well by "us" although they later sold us to another firm that, in turn, was bought out by another. My retirement check from that nine years' work is from Northrop Grumman.