Ford forced in to hiring 'grey beards' after sacking staff for AI backfires

After sacking off their employees to adopt artificial intelligence, Ford has allegedly rehired

‘gray beard’ engineers after AI failed to provide the quality the company needed.

Ford, the car manufacturer, has revealed that it has gone back to hiring human engineers after AI failed to match their skills and experience, although the company was set on reaping the benefits of the automated systems.

According to Bloomberg, its executives said the company has since rehired more than 300 quality inspectors, some of whom were previous employees prior to the AI takeover.

"Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it," Charles Poon, vice president of vehicle hardware engineering at Ford, told reporters of the disappointing results. "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," he added.

Ford say they've rehired old employees (Getty Stock Images)

Previously, Ford confirmed that artificial intelligence would mean that many people could be left without a job, as Ford boss Jim Farley said in an interview last June.

He said: "AI will leave a lot of white collar people behind.”

But when the earning call in October came, chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra said the firm was set on testing it out.

Galhotra confirmed they would be ‘deploying AI across the entire industrial system’, meaning that 900 new AI-powered cameras would replace its people ‘to detect quality issues at the source and help us mitigate supply disruptions’, per the BBC.

But in an interview since, he admitted that this had been the wrong move.

This comes after AI failed to meet its standards (Getty Stock Images)

"Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product," he said.

As a result, the company have rehired 350 veteran engineers, known as ‘gray beard’ engineers to train younger staff and reprogram AI tools.

Ford’s press release on the matter said it that ‘reaching best-in-class quality required a significant talent refresh’, noting that it had to hire back people ‘who carry the hard-earned wisdom of decades of design’.

Online, people have had a fair few thoughts about the backtracking, with one X user stating: “You would have thought they would have done some test before getting rid of their humans?”

However, another said this is just part of the adoption cycle, writing: “Disruptions are inevitable across organizations,after every major shock, many will change-and many will suffer losses. In the AI revolution,only a small minority will reap the benefits while the majority risk being left behind.”