Yes, after Klarna and McDonald’s, Ford’s back

Artificial intelligence (AI) delivers efficiency, speed ed economies of scale. But this isn’t always the case. Often it is not possible to achieve the skills achieved through hard study or experience accumulated over years of work. They most recently arrived at this deduction at Ford, where they evidently found that AI did not achieve the results it had been asked to achieve. And then the about-face began, recalling 350 senior engineers when the top levels of the car manufacturer became convinced that the various systems based onartificial intelligence did not achieve the desired results. And before Ford, there was no shortage of illustrious precedents that led to a profound review of its strategies regarding artificial intelligence, as happened with the cases of Klarna and McDonald’s.

The Ford case “AI is an amazing tool, but it’s only as good as the quality of the information it’s trained with,” explained Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, admitting the limitations of AI-based systems.IA. “They thought that all they had to do was introduce artificial intelligence and feed it existing design requirements to get a high-quality product,” said Poon, who evidently had to change his mind. Therefore confirming a belief that is increasingly gaining ground, namely that AI cannot replace technology in such an obvious and automatic way.human intelligencerather it depends on it, at least in the initial phases, the programming ones, and certainly in very technical sectors such asautomation. Ford’s initiative is now part of a trend that is becoming increasingly consolidated.

And precedents, yes Klarna and McDonald’s

Previously, the case of the Swedish fintech Klarna set a precedent: after replacing hundreds of operators with chatbots based on OpenAI, the company changed its mind and went back to hiring human staff for thecustomer support. And this is because AI did not guarantee quality, empathy and trust. According to the original plans, Klarna’s CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, had frozen hiring to focus entirely onautomationensuring that AI was capable of doing the work of 700 employees. But the conclusion was soon that the results fell short of expectations, both in terms of empathy and the ability to solve the most complex problems, leading the company to reduce job cuts and rehire human staff. Another emblematic case is that of McDonald’s which suspended the testing of the system in mid-2024 artificial intelligence for voice orders in your McDrive developed by IBM. The decision came following countless errors in the system, which confused requests by adding or exchanging ingredients in customers’ bags. There are those who have found bacon on top of their ice creams, a red pencil mistake even for the less refined palates. McDonald’s hasn’t given up on AI in the future, but for now it can wait.