4 ms·

Ford has hired 350 engineers over the last 3 years which happened alongside short comings in using AI inspection tooling. This has nothing to do with LLMs and

Ford has hired 350 engineers over the last 3 years which happened alongside short comings in using AI inspection tooling. This has nothing to do with LLMs and instead is almost certainly about their MAIVIS and AiTriz pilots, which use old school CNNs on custom IBM hardware to do visual inspections.

Schiendelman 4mo ago
Yeah, it looks like this wasn't AI related. I hope yours grows to be the top comment!
mrandish 4mo ago
Yes, it seems like many are missing the crucial aspect of the timing. The mistake was realized 3 years ago and auto design and manufacturing process lead times are long. Plus the occasion for the story was 'Ford returning to the top of the JD Power Quality Survey rankings', so that's another 6-18 months of reporting lag. That puts the original layoff mistakes being made 5 to 8 years ago. I don't know when the "MAIVIS and AiTriz pilots" you mention were implemented but another possibility is the Ford PR team saw that 'AI Backlash' stories are currently trending and opportunistically focused on that to explain a positive news event which likely had many causes. IMHO, we should view these 'AI Backlash' themed stories as no more valid than the 'AI Downsizing' themes they previously seized on to justify layoffs they wanted to do anyway.
- cucumber3732842 4mo ago
  >Yes, it seems like many are missing the crucial aspect of the timing. First day on the internet propaganda-discourse machine? If the article doesn't support your preconceived biases that's no problem, assume the title is true on it's face and comment reinforcing it. If neither of them support you then attack them. Welcome to internet comment sections.
dang 4mo ago
Submitted title was "Ford rehires 350 engineers after AI fails to preserve expertise or train juniors", which is not what the article says. Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (We've reverted to the article's title now) p.s. Article titles are sometimes rotated by the publications, in which case the submitter usually followed the guidelines but it takes time for us to catch up.
calcifer 4mo ago
The article has named sources for its quotes, whereas your comment relies entirely on "almost certainly" which sounds a lot less informed.
- achow 4mo ago
  OP to me sounds more authentic and seems to have inside information. After a quick search I found a publication actually mentioning about these tools: Ford previously told Business Insider that it had developed two bespoke AI-enhanced scanning tools that helped validate that cars were properly assembled before rolling off the lot. The tools, called AiTriz and MAIVs, both debuted in 2024. https://autos.yahoo.com/policy-and-environment/articles/ford-says-ai-alone-couldnt-172018472.html https://autos.yahoo.com/policy-and-environment/articles/ford... And after doing cursory research on these tools, it is clear they are rudimentary (as compared to SOTA LLMs), they were essentially smartphone mounted on stands and doing visual checks using the camera - so OP could be very right. https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-uses-ai-cameras-in-factories-prevent-recalls-costly-rework-2025-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-uses-ai-cameras-in-fact...
  - kamranjon 4mo ago
    A fine-tuned classifier purpose fit for a specific task can easily outperform a SOTA LLM on more modest hardware and often makes a lot more sense.
    - orlp 4mo ago
      If your data is sufficiently noisy or your relationship sufficiently simple a linear regression will outperform a SOTA LLM.
    - scotty79 4mo ago
      Calculator is a great analogy for that kind of specialized models. Way better than humans (and other things) at a specific task. Can't replace humans with it. LLMs are not calculators.
  - aprilthird2021 4mo ago
chrisjj 4mo ago
> This has nothing to do with LLMs and instead is almost certainly about their MAIVIS and AiTriz pilots Where does this article say otherwise?
- aprilthird2021 4mo ago
  The dirt bag media! Making insinuation that I actually projected onto their article!
  - ToValueFunfetti 4mo ago
    You said that you misinterpreted the article in the same way in another comment 1 minute before you left this one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48705638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48705638
    - aprilthird2021 4mo ago
      If you could read you'd know what I wrote there was nothing like what you're claiming

Schiendelman 4mo ago

Yeah, it looks like this wasn't AI related. I hope yours grows to be the top comment!

mrandish 4mo ago

Yes, it seems like many are missing the crucial aspect of the timing. The mistake was realized 3 years ago and auto design and manufacturing process lead times are long. Plus the occasion for the story was 'Ford returning to the top of the JD Power Quality Survey rankings', so that's another 6-18 months of reporting lag. That puts the original layoff mistakes being made 5 to 8 years ago. I don't know when the "MAIVIS and AiTriz pilots" you mention were implemented but another possibility is the Ford PR team saw that 'AI Backlash' stories are currently trending and opportunistically focused on that to explain a positive news event which likely had many causes. IMHO, we should view these 'AI Backlash' themed stories as no more valid than the 'AI Downsizing' themes they previously seized on to justify layoffs they wanted to do anyway.

cucumber3732842 4mo ago
>Yes, it seems like many are missing the crucial aspect of the timing. First day on the internet propaganda-discourse machine? If the article doesn't support your preconceived biases that's no problem, assume the title is true on it's face and comment reinforcing it. If neither of them support you then attack them. Welcome to internet comment sections.

dang 4mo ago

Submitted title was "Ford rehires 350 engineers after AI fails to preserve expertise or train juniors", which is not what the article says. Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (We've reverted to the article's title now) p.s. Article titles are sometimes rotated by the publications, in which case the submitter usually followed the guidelines but it takes time for us to catch up.

calcifer 4mo ago

The article has named sources for its quotes, whereas your comment relies entirely on "almost certainly" which sounds a lot less informed.

achow 4mo ago
OP to me sounds more authentic and seems to have inside information. After a quick search I found a publication actually mentioning about these tools: Ford previously told Business Insider that it had developed two bespoke AI-enhanced scanning tools that helped validate that cars were properly assembled before rolling off the lot. The tools, called AiTriz and MAIVs, both debuted in 2024. https://autos.yahoo.com/policy-and-environment/articles/ford-says-ai-alone-couldnt-172018472.html https://autos.yahoo.com/policy-and-environment/articles/ford... And after doing cursory research on these tools, it is clear they are rudimentary (as compared to SOTA LLMs), they were essentially smartphone mounted on stands and doing visual checks using the camera - so OP could be very right. https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-uses-ai-cameras-in-factories-prevent-recalls-costly-rework-2025-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-uses-ai-cameras-in-fact...
- kamranjon 4mo ago
  A fine-tuned classifier purpose fit for a specific task can easily outperform a SOTA LLM on more modest hardware and often makes a lot more sense.
  - orlp 4mo ago
    If your data is sufficiently noisy or your relationship sufficiently simple a linear regression will outperform a SOTA LLM.
  - scotty79 4mo ago
    Calculator is a great analogy for that kind of specialized models. Way better than humans (and other things) at a specific task. Can't replace humans with it. LLMs are not calculators.
- aprilthird2021 4mo ago

chrisjj 4mo ago

> This has nothing to do with LLMs and instead is almost certainly about their MAIVIS and AiTriz pilots Where does this article say otherwise?

aprilthird2021 4mo ago
The dirt bag media! Making insinuation that I actually projected onto their article!
- ToValueFunfetti 4mo ago
  You said that you misinterpreted the article in the same way in another comment 1 minute before you left this one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48705638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48705638
  - aprilthird2021 4mo ago
    If you could read you'd know what I wrote there was nothing like what you're claiming