Ford realized AI wasn’t capable of taking human jobs years ago—and hired 350 ‘gray beard’ engineers to steer its program

WIth all the discussion about the AI bubble, AI hype and mass automation displacement, Ford Motor Company has a message for the U.S. economy: human experience matters. Over the last three years, the company has hired 350 veteran engineers—dubbed “gray beards” internally and made up of both former Ford employees and workers from suppliers—to help train junior staff and reprogram ineffective artificial intelligence tools. It’s because the company realized what AI is and isn’t good for. “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 last week. “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.” By mid-2024, recalls were costing Ford $4.8 billion per year. Last July, the company notched the superlative as the automaker with the most recalls ever issued in a single year with 90, including an estimated $570 million charge for nearly 700,000 crossover vehicles. Since then, the company has made a concerted effort to improve quality control efforts and now ranks No. 1 among mainstream brands in the most recent JD Power Initial Quality Survey published on Thursday. Last year, the company ranked 10th for quality. The company attributes increases in quality to a “culture change” emphasizing the role of human workers. “We have AI tools for vision systems,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told Bloomberg TV. “But most of all, it’s just old-fashioned hard work of our team members all working together to pay attention to the very small details that will make a difference between a perfectly built Ford and an OK-built Toyota. It’s just an incredible attention to every single detail.” AI has increasingly shown it can increase productivity of certain activities, but is only making meaningful gains for companies if they a