Wednesday, July 1, 2026 -Ford has hired back more than 300 veteran quality inspectors after finding that artificial intelligence tools deployed across its manufacturing plants failed to match the skills and experience of human workers, according to a recent report by Bloomberg.
The US carmaker had introduced AI across parts of its
operations, including 900 AI-powered cameras designed to spot defects and
supply disruptions.
However, Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle
hardware engineering, told reporters that the company had mistakenly assumed
the technology alone would deliver high-quality results.
“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only
as good as the information you use to train it,” Poon said, as per the
report.
“Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we
should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers who have been
with us through many product cycles.”
Poon said the automated systems lacked the judgement that
only experienced technicians develop over decades.
The returning engineers, many of whom had previously left
the company, have been tasked with retraining Ford’s AI tools and mentoring
younger staff.
“We recognised 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,” he added.
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