The Vice President of Ford, Charles Poon has offcially stated that the vehicle company had misjudged the capabilities of what artificial intelligence could deliver. He said, "Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product," when talking to the reporters.
Let us find out what led Ford to come to this realization that AI is not being to perform to the capacity that human engineers were performing at.
Why did AI Fail Quality Check at Ford?
Ford requires quality control as the grassroot of its chain of workflow. The company realised that AI does not have the capacity to provide unbiased quality checks on the basis of real statistics, it can only provide results based on what it has been told which can be disastrous for the company’s result.
Ford stated that the expertise and knowledge that human engineers bring to the table through years of hard work, no AI can replace or replicate it. AI requires these engineers to provide it with the correct information in order for AI to reach correct quality check results.
Who are Grey Beard Engineers?
Grey Beard Engineer is a tech-industry informal term used to describe engineers who are veterans in their field. The seniors who have years of experience and naturally spot grey beard due to their age. This is not a literal serious term, rather an informal term of showing endearment and respect.
The veteran engineers who are being rehired by Ford are being referred to as Grey Beard Engineers. These engineers are helping in restructuring and building the AI system again by feeding them with data that will undo the damage caused due the lack of human guidance.
What Did Ford’s Vice President Say?
During a press conference call, Ford’s Vice President acknowledged the rehiring of veteran engineers, he said, "Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it. 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.
Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high quality product. 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."
Such acceptance by a massive company like Ford, shows us that AI is still lacking in many aspects which requires human qualities that cannot be replaced anytime soon.