Ford doesn't always have a better idea

Growing up, my family had Fords. Fairlanes. Galaxies. In the mid-1950s, we had a two-tone, turqouise and white Fairlane. My father wasn't the flashy type, but when it came to his wheels, he sometimes indulged in surprisingly out-there colors. A bit later - early 1960's - we had a two-tone yellow and white number. I loved the colorful cars, but learned to drive with Black Beauty, a black Galaxy 500. (Somewhere along the line, we started giving our cars names. Black Beauty was followed by the Green Hornet.)

I'm sure that my parents were drawn to Ford for its affordability. We were by no means poor, but as the ditty of the day went:

Rich man drives a Cadillac. Poor man drives a Ford.

But my old man goes down the street on four wheels and a board

It may also be that the company my father spent his working life, Thompson Wire, sold wire to Ford. Or to companies that made components for Ford. My father had started out on the shop floor, but became a salesman and I remember him going on trips to Dearborn, Michigan, world HQ for the Ford Company.

In any case, we were a Ford family, and I've always been partial to the Ford brand. (In much the same way, because my father interrupted his Thompson Wire career during WWII to serve, I root for Navy in the Army-Navy game. Not that my father was so gung-ho on the Navy. Most of his war stories were about officer idiocies and Mickey Mouse regulations. (My father did not see combat, and was pretty much only in harm's way (or in the way of German UBoats) only when he was being shipped to and from Trinidad where he spent a couple of years before being stationed at Chicago's Navy Pier. As he always told us, you went where Uncle Sam sent you.))

So Ford. 

Not that I've been a big Ford owner. I've only owned three cars in my life, but one was a Ford (a Mercury Tracer).

So, Ford.

You may recall that a while back, Ford's CEO Jim Farley was making some headlines declaring/speculating/wishfully thinking that AI was going to do away with half of the country's white-collar jobs.

And I guess that Ford thought it'd get a jump on things by letting go of a raft of experienced quality engineers and technicians - only to have to bring them back.  

“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” the automaker’s VP of vehicle hardware engineering Charles Poon told reporters, per The Verge. (Source: Futurism)

What happened should have been predictable. (They might have asked ChatGPT.) Among other things, Ford deployed:

...900 AI-powered cameras in its plants "to detect quality issues at the source and help us mitigate supply disruptions", [COO Kumar] Galhotra told investors. 

But Poon told reporters on Wednesday the firm's AI-driven checks had failed to live up to expectations.

"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.(Source; BBC)

Instead, the company slipped in the quality rankings. Oopsa doopsa.

But you can't blame lil' old AI. 

Instead, it all went wrong because its experienced workers left before Ford could get them to transfer their valuable knowledge to Ford’s AI systems and help refine the tech intended to obviate them. (Back to: Futurism)

Ah, for the good old days, when Ford used to brag that "quality is job one."

Of course, they've only dragooned their engineers back so that they can improve AI enough to replace themselves and all the other workers that Ford's CEO predicts are going down.

My fear and loathing of AI is no secret. I'm no Luddite, and well understand that AI has and will continue to have many positive uses. But I just don't see why it's worth despoiling the environment and destroying the livelihood of millions of people so that some lazy-arsed kid can "write" a book report on a book they haven't read. So that someone's smarty-pants fridge can alert them that they're out of milk. So that a bunch of tech bros can become multi-billionaires while most folks are just trying to keep a meal on the table, a roof over their heads, and a Ford in their garage. 

Something tells me that Ford doesn't always have a better idea.

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Image Source: Sotheby's