Ford Discovers Humans Can’t Be Replaced After All

Ford rehired roughly 350 veteran engineers to reprogram and retrain artificial intelligence tools used for quality control and defect detection.

Ford Motor Company said it brought back these older, experienced “gray beard” engineers over the past three years to rework its AI systems that had been delivering poor quality control results on their own, Bloomberg reported Monday. The automaker now seeks to cut costs by $1 billion in 2026.

“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told Bloomberg. “Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles.”

The brand reached the No. 1 ranking among mainstream brands in the 2026 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study, according to a J.D. Power press release. This is Ford’s best quality ranking in 16 years, the company said in its official announcement. 

“In 2023, we moved our Vehicle Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Quality teams under one organization and leader, Kumar Galhotra. This reorg allowed us to look at the entire lifecycle of a vehicle – from software development to suppliers on our plant floor – as one continuous and collaborative flow,” a Ford spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “At the same time, we have rallied the whole company around a clear vision: Quality Comes First. We’ve built a culture of relentless problem-solving and recognizing our teams when they prevent issues from reaching customers.”