Ford is rehiring 350 veteran 'gray beard' engineers after AI and automated quality systems failed to meet expectations, leading to a $1 billion cost reduction and top JD Power quality rating.
"Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence ... that would produce a high-quality product.”
# Ford rehires ‘gray beard’ engineers after AI falls short | TechCrunch
Source: [https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/28/ford-rehires-gray-beard-engineers-after-ai-falls-short/](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/28/ford-rehires-gray-beard-engineers-after-ai-falls-short/)
In Brief
Posted:
12:05 PM PDT · June 28, 2026
**Image Credits:**Bloomberg / Getty ImagesFord 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\.
[Bloomberg reports](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/ford-has-been-rehiring-quality-inspectors-after-ai-fell-short)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\.”
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\.”
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\.
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\.
### Newsletters
Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news
## Related
## Latest in AI
Ford rehired 350 engineers after an AI system designed to preserve expertise and train junior staff failed, highlighting the limitations of AI in tacit knowledge transfer.
Ford admits its over-reliance on automated systems and AI led to quality declines, forcing the company to rehire experienced engineers to correct errors and retrain systems.
Ford rehired hundreds of veteran engineers after its aggressive AI adoption led to costly quality issues. The automaker now uses AI alongside human oversight to improve production quality.
Ford admits it over-relied on AI for quality control, which failed to replace veteran engineers' expertise, and has hired 350 technical specialists to improve vehicle quality.
Companies like Ford, Commonwealth Bank, and IBM that laid off workers citing AI are now rehiring because automated systems failed to handle all tasks, revealing that human oversight remains essential.