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Their company does data projects. That plus context makes me think they’re talking about internal work process automation type of work, although it also seems l

Their company does data projects. That plus context makes me think they’re talking about internal work process automation type of work, although it also seems like they’re talking about conversational interfaces (chatbots). I completely buy the “emperor’s new clothes” argument for work process automation. I’m surprised they don’t address AI-assisted engineering, which seems to be going positively for a lot of folks (although I have doubts about its sustainability). I disagree about the success of chatbots, if the problem is narrowly-defined and chosen properly. My previous company built a conversational interface to a vector database and saw good results. (Although, arguably, the vector database was the real magic, and a traditional UI would have been faster and more accurate.) In general, I think OP is more right than wrong, though, particularly about the AI mania and unrealistic expectations sweeping the C-suite.

skydhash 3mo ago
> I disagree about the success of chatbots, if the problem is narrowly-defined and chosen properly. If you can narrow the problem down, then you could design a much better interface for it than a text box and free form text (unless that's the better solution). As for as AI assisted engineering goes, the thing is that after some time with a project, you already have much of the workflows and routines nailed down as scripts and other various combinations of tooling. And unless it's spaghetti code, you will have various snippets you can copy from for new code. The one thing I've observed about AI projects is that there's often little technical design coherence about them. It's always a kitchen sink of technologies and practices.
- jdlshore 3mo ago
  > If you can narrow the problem down, then you could design a much better interface for it than a text box and free form text (unless that's the better solution). Yes, I agree, in that the chatbot we built probably would have worked just as well with a traditional UI, and would have been done a lot faster. But it would have been a lot less sexy (actually important for the bottom line!) and there are future directions that could take advantage of the conversational interface that’s potentially better than a traditional UI. On the down side, good chatbots are really frikkin difficult to write. These things (LLMs) are not reliable at scale. The basic functionality came together in weeks. Getting it to behave consistently and obey guardrails took months, and even then we had to accept a low level of failed conversations.
  - skydhash 3mo ago
    > But it would have been a lot less sexy (actually important for the bottom line! That’s what the author have been saying. They do for nice demos which sell the illusion of having Jarvis in text format, but the usefulness is not really proven. And that may be important business wise. But as far as end users is concerned, there’s not a lot of productivity boost.
listic 3mo ago
Do yo have links handy for AI-assisted engineering going positively? The case I have on my mind of it going negatively is this recent Ford case [1] It's not that I believe it couldn't go positively, of course. [1] Ford rehires human engineers after AI fails to match quality checks https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrkd41n2v9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrkd41n2v9o
- prodigycorp 3mo ago
  The Ford case is not about AI coding. It's about computer vision processes that went wrong. This was less about AI and more about Ford being dumb.
- simonw 3mo ago
  That Ford story was really misleading. It wasn't about modern LLMs, and the way it was reported implied that Ford had fired and then hired people but if you read closer that wasn't necessarily the case at all - it sounded more like they were re-hiring people who had retired because they needed expertise that had left the company. You need to get through the Bloomberg paywall: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/ford-has-been-rehiring-quality-inspectors-after-ai-fell-short https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/ford-has-... > Over the last three years, Ford says it has hired 350 veteran engineers, many of them former employees and others from suppliers, to help address seemingly intractable quality woes that have cost the automaker billions. [...] > “We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems” and not getting the desired results, Galhotra said. “We brought back technical specialists” and “they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.” (I made these points on the HN thread about it 3 weeks ago and got voted down and I'm still salty about it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674446#48675045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674446#48675045 )
  - aragilar 3mo ago
    I think it's not clear from the article why they left (e.g. could be anything from retirement to going to work at another firm/contracting to being fired to switching careers), and likely it's going to be a mix, plus not all were previous Ford employees. Similarly the "AI" isn't clearly defined (but like you I would be surprised if it were LLMs). I suspect though why the article exists (and a possible source of your downvotes) is signalling against "AI", which if Ford wants more expert employees (given their issues), is something Ford wants to present.

skydhash 3mo ago

> I disagree about the success of chatbots, if the problem is narrowly-defined and chosen properly. If you can narrow the problem down, then you could design a much better interface for it than a text box and free form text (unless that's the better solution). As for as AI assisted engineering goes, the thing is that after some time with a project, you already have much of the workflows and routines nailed down as scripts and other various combinations of tooling. And unless it's spaghetti code, you will have various snippets you can copy from for new code. The one thing I've observed about AI projects is that there's often little technical design coherence about them. It's always a kitchen sink of technologies and practices.

jdlshore 3mo ago
> If you can narrow the problem down, then you could design a much better interface for it than a text box and free form text (unless that's the better solution). Yes, I agree, in that the chatbot we built probably would have worked just as well with a traditional UI, and would have been done a lot faster. But it would have been a lot less sexy (actually important for the bottom line!) and there are future directions that could take advantage of the conversational interface that’s potentially better than a traditional UI. On the down side, good chatbots are really frikkin difficult to write. These things (LLMs) are not reliable at scale. The basic functionality came together in weeks. Getting it to behave consistently and obey guardrails took months, and even then we had to accept a low level of failed conversations.
- skydhash 3mo ago
  > But it would have been a lot less sexy (actually important for the bottom line! That’s what the author have been saying. They do for nice demos which sell the illusion of having Jarvis in text format, but the usefulness is not really proven. And that may be important business wise. But as far as end users is concerned, there’s not a lot of productivity boost.

listic 3mo ago

Do yo have links handy for AI-assisted engineering going positively? The case I have on my mind of it going negatively is this recent Ford case [1] It's not that I believe it couldn't go positively, of course. [1] Ford rehires human engineers after AI fails to match quality checks https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrkd41n2v9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrkd41n2v9o

prodigycorp 3mo ago
The Ford case is not about AI coding. It's about computer vision processes that went wrong. This was less about AI and more about Ford being dumb.
simonw 3mo ago
That Ford story was really misleading. It wasn't about modern LLMs, and the way it was reported implied that Ford had fired and then hired people but if you read closer that wasn't necessarily the case at all - it sounded more like they were re-hiring people who had retired because they needed expertise that had left the company. You need to get through the Bloomberg paywall: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/ford-has-been-rehiring-quality-inspectors-after-ai-fell-short https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/ford-has-... > Over the last three years, Ford says it has hired 350 veteran engineers, many of them former employees and others from suppliers, to help address seemingly intractable quality woes that have cost the automaker billions. [...] > “We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems” and not getting the desired results, Galhotra said. “We brought back technical specialists” and “they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.” (I made these points on the HN thread about it 3 weeks ago and got voted down and I'm still salty about it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674446#48675045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674446#48675045 )
- aragilar 3mo ago
  I think it's not clear from the article why they left (e.g. could be anything from retirement to going to work at another firm/contracting to being fired to switching careers), and likely it's going to be a mix, plus not all were previous Ford employees. Similarly the "AI" isn't clearly defined (but like you I would be surprised if it were LLMs). I suspect though why the article exists (and a possible source of your downvotes) is signalling against "AI", which if Ford wants more expert employees (given their issues), is something Ford wants to present.