Why is Ford taking potshots at its own AI program?

Rehiring 0.17% of its workforce

Why did Ford make noise about rehiring 350 engineers when it has 168,000 employees?

While celebrating a J.D. Power quality award, Ford executives took a pot-shot at their own AI program.

They brought back 350 veteran engineers as quality auditors, with Engineering VP Charles Poon admitting “Mistakenly we thought that just introducing AI…would produce a high-quality product.”

It’s not rare for companies to forget the human side of AI. But it’s rare to go public about it, especially when the numbers are a rounding error.

Ford CEO Jim Farley has played both sides of the AI hype. Last year he said AI would eliminate half of all white-collar jobs. Now he’s celebrating his greybeard engineers.

Give Farley his due, this PR move fits Ford’s hardworking brand image.

Pair this with Amazon’s headlines about hiring 11,000 recent graduates, and we may be heading for a new round of “AI-washing.”

One where instead of wrapping job cuts in AI, companies celebrate hiring because AI couldn’t cut it.