Ford rehires ‘gray beard’ engineers after AI falls short

福特在人工智能表现不佳后重新聘用“老法师”工程师

Ford executives said they have hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them were former employees, while others had been working at suppliers — after artificial intelligence and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality level. 福特高管表示，在人工智能和自动化系统未能达到预期的质量水平后，公司已重新聘用了 350 名资深工程师——其中一些是前员工，另一些则来自供应商。

Bloomberg reports the company’s chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra told journalists that Ford had been “relying more and more on automated quality systems” with disappointing results. So the company “brought back technical specialists,” and those specialists “hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.” 据彭博社报道，福特首席运营官库马尔·加尔霍特拉（Kumar Galhotra）告诉记者，福特此前“越来越依赖自动化质量系统”，但结果令人失望。因此，公司“请回了技术专家”，这些专家会在零件进入工厂车间之前就“寻找故障点”。

Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, added, “Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product.” 福特汽车硬件工程副总裁查尔斯·潘（Charles Poon）补充道：“我们错误地认为，只要引入人工智能并输入我们现有的设计要求，就能生产出高质量的产品。”

To be clear, this doesn’t mean Ford is abandoning its AI plans entirely. Instead, it’s using the rehired employees — referred to as “gray beard” engineers — to train younger staff and reprogram AI tools. 需要明确的是，这并不意味着福特完全放弃了其人工智能计划。相反，公司正在利用这些被重新聘用的员工（被称为“老法师”工程师）来培训年轻员工并重新编程人工智能工具。

This rehiring seems to be paying off, with Ford anticipating that it will lead to $1 billion in reduced costs this year. The automaker also claimed the top spot among mainstream brands in the JD Power Initial Quality Survey released this week. 这种重新聘用的策略似乎正在取得成效，福特预计今年将因此节省 10 亿美元的成本。此外，在本周发布的 JD Power 新车质量研究（IQS）中，福特也荣登主流品牌榜首。