Predictably, now office workers and engineers (including here) will say "What I always knew - LLM's can't think, be creative, don't have nuance. My job is safe!

Predictably, now office workers and engineers (including here) will say "What I always knew - LLM's can't think, be creative, don't have nuance. My job is safe!". I predict the article will be quoted again and again at lunch tables and family gatherings. However, one should be especially careful when something confirms ones own biases. Firstly, the "AI" discussed here is not LLM's. They are talking about visual quality inspection systems. There's been many other articles in the press: Ford's new quality automation is computer-vision defect inspection, built on IBM's visual-inspection tech, iPhones photographing parts on the line, running since 2020. By most reporting it works fine, pushing detection rates from ~70% manual to 99%+. This is classical CNN at work doing the job of quality inspectors... completely unrelated to desk-work by an engineer or what LLM's do... yet that's exactly the inference the headline invites (and many here in the comments seem to be making). The timing only underlines it: rehiring is presented as the cleanup. Apparently the rehirings started 3 years ago, so whatever it's undoing is older still and therefore unlikely to be LLM driven. While ChatGPT did come out 3.5 years ago it seems doubtful someone would fire people left and right the moment they saw the first ChatGPT... only to then regret almost it immedaitely and rehire them - all within the span of 6 months. This further supports that the article is about years-old automation bet being quietly unwound, and is completely unrelated to mainstream discussion about AI and jobs today. Also, 350 rehires is just noise. Ford is shedding thousands right now: plant pauses, battery-plant retooling, projected restructuring in the 8–13k range. Finally, as always with corporate announcements... ask why an internal staffing decision is even a press story. To me this feels like PR (a nice feel good story that ties into to a subject people discuss a lot now). It takes the sting out of all their announced layoffs. There's probably also internal company politics to it (someone suggested rehirings and now want to say 'see what a great idea this was' and maxx it out).