Ford rehires "greybeard" engineers after its push for AI automation backfires.

[brad@1040ste.net]

@evacide Wankers. That's Ford though - Found On Rubbish Dumps. They've always been shit.

[aceade@mastodon.ie]

@evacide <nelson>HA HA! </nelson>

[bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org]

@evacide

This is a very useful article to have & is helpful in my current LLM-gen-AI work. Thank you very much for sharing it, as I'd surely have missed it otherwise.

Meta: it seems to me “greybeard” is an inappropriately gendered term. I don't see that term used in the article you linked to, and I note you put it in quotes, maybe to acknowledge that, but couldn't another term be used that doesn't refer to something usually identified gender attributes.

Veteran might be a good term here.

[dio9sys@haunted.computer]

@evacide
It's almost like all of us across different companies have been telling the executive class that that doesn't work this whole time!

[evacide@hachyderm.io]

@bkuhn It's right there in the second paragraph:

The US automaker hired over 350 veteran engineers, referred to internally as “gray beards”, over the past three years in order to address mistakes made by automated systems.

[emmohamed123456@mastodon.social]

@evacide You have many followers, please help me share my pinned post. I need to buy the medication.

[lufthans@mastodon.social]

@evacide I read that as Ford spent 3 years moving to AI quality control in effort to return to the craptastic qualify of the 1970s US automotive industry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Qj58o87sY

[happyborg@fosstodon.org]

@evacide and why did Ford believe that?
- wishful thinking + no regard for their employees + lies from those selling #GenAI

#LLM

[agnesbc@social.vivaldi.net]

@evacide Sadly they are rehiring only the senior engineers because they are betting after just a couple more years and just a bit more training, they won't need any engineers. They don't need to invest in the next generation of "grey beards".

[jzb@hachyderm.io]

@evacide I hope they had to pay a premium to lure them back...

[enema_cowboy@dotnet.social]

@jamesmarshall @evacide

Isn't one the reason why executive "merit" the big bucks is that they aren't so easily fooled by snake-oil peddlers?

"Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie, another to listen."
-Homer Simpson

[failedlyndonlarouchite@mas.to]

@lufthans @evacide

you all might ask, what is the lesson here ?

Is it that AI is bad ?
no

The lesson is that very highly compensated senior managers at major companies often make really stupid decisions

[unattributed@gotosocial.social]

@evacide Good story overall, but disheartening to read these parts:

…while some workers will also help improve and train the AI systems.

and

The company said it would not abandon its use of AI, but plans to now use it in conjunction with human oversight and experience.

IOW—we're rehiring you to train yourself out of a job…

[kevingranade@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@evacide I feel like this sudden and thoughtless leap to replacing engineers is reflective more of a consistent desire management across many industries has shown for many years to minimize the importance of engineers to the success of their projects. Engineering roles get generalized and simplified, but at the last step before hiring the nuance is suddenly brought back in. Press releases cite "Company IP" and "standards" as "driving innovation" but eliding *who* is doing the innovation. 1/2

[kevingranade@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@evacide Quite simply they can't own engineers so they want to pretend they're commodities that can be swapped out at will, and they've stamped out anyone telling them otherwise for so long that they've convinced themselves it's true. This state of denial has set them up to be incapable of recognizing how much the success of their companies hinges on people being obsessively beholden to quality, not their bottom line. 2/2

[eh__tweet@mastodon.uno]

@happyborg @evacide

= poor management

[jeffzugale@mastodon.art]

@evacide just note if anyone who passed me over in favor of AI art want to hire me back, my rate goes RATHER FAR UP INDEED.

[fourt4@mastodonapp.uk]

@evacide greybeard engineer here <narrows eyes meaningfully at article>

Thanks for sharing this.

[fullywoolly@mastodon.social]

@kmck @evacide only via a golden parachute. They don't care.

[petealexharris@mastodon.scot]

@unattributed @evacide

My rate for training myself out of a job is my usual rate plus the value of the job I'm training myself out of. So the negotiation starts at 2x my pay, and then we talk about working conditions.