Ford has rehired experienced human engineers to help address the shortcomings of artificial intelligence (AI) tools meant to tackle quality issues in the automaker’s production processes.
The hiring push helped Ford top the JD Power 2026 U.S. Initial Quality Study (IQS) for the first time since 2010 amid improvements in the quality of its new vehicles, and follows some hard-learned lessons about the ability of AI to replace human knowledge in production processes.
“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, said on a press call Wednesday, according to a report by 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,” he said.
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“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high quality product,” Poon said.
He also noted that the AI tools lacked the training and expertise that veteran technicians have, and many of the company’s veteran technicians left Ford before their knowledge could be used to improve the performance of the AI tools.
“We recognized that for us to enhance some of our automation and machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, we needed to ensure that they were trained by the most experienced individuals,” Poon said.
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Ticker Security Last Change Change % F FORD MOTOR CO. 14.13 +0.02 +0.14%
The Detroit giant said that it has hired about 300 veteran engineers to work in its vehicle engineering division in the last few years.
“Free from daily production schedules, these engineers now act as internal auditors, running mandatory weekly design reviews to hunt for and eliminate potential failure points before blueprints ever reach the factory floor,” Ford said in a release.
Ford Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra said that the experienced engineers and technical specialists were “at the heart” of the company’s efforts to improve production quality by addressing process issues before they’re incorporated into workflows.
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Ford CEO Jim Farley told Bloomberg TV that the shift is helping improve the company’s financial performance, with spending on warranty coverage and recalls coming down, which in turn is boosting the automaker through cost reductions.
JD Power’s 2026 IQS not only placed Ford at the top of the list for the first time in 16 years, but it also ranked the Ford F-150, Ford Mustang and Ford Super Duty at the top of their respective segments for the second straight year.
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Additionally, the Ford Escape, Ford Explorer, Ford Expedition and Ford Maverick also ranked among the top three in their segments – which meant that seven of the company’s top 10 models ranked in the top three of their categories.
FOX Business reached out to Ford for comment.

A JetBlue Airways pilot reported hitting a drone as the flight was on approach for landing at JFK Airport on Monday morning, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The plane, which was coming from Las Vegas, landed safely, and the airline and FAA said no damage or evidence of collision was found during the post-flight inspections. The agency will investigate the incident, it noted in its statement.
“Safety is JetBlue’s first priority, and we will assist with any relevant investigations,” the airline said in its statement.
The drone hit the JetBlue plane right above the cockpit and at about 3,000 feet, the pilot told an air traffic controller. The audio was recorded and obtained from ATC.com.
“We collided with a drone back there in the turn as we were coming to ASALT, just wanted to pass to you,” the pilot tells an air traffic controller, referencing the waypoint for flights arriving in the New York City area.
The pilot noted that they did not need any assistance and were good to continue with the landing.
Though the FAA says it receives more than 100 reports of drone sightings near airports each month, unauthorized drone operations near flights and airports are illegal under FAA regulation. The drone operators could be subject to fines, criminal charges and even possible jail time, according to the law.

MagicCon is packing its bags for Amsterdam, which means Festival in a Box is back with a little more orange, a lot more greenery, and at least one bicycle.
Festival in a Box: Amsterdam 2026 brings the MagicCon feeling home, whether your weekend plans involve canals, card previews, tulips, train rides, or opening packs exactly where you are. Inspired by a city of winding waterways, blooming color, museum-worthy details, and bikes in every direction, this Festival in a Box is packed with surprises that feel right at home in Amsterdam: a little scenic, a little unexpected, and full of things worth stopping to admire.
So, What’s Inside?
The centerpiece of Festival in a Box: Amsterdam 2026 is a Mystery Booster 2 display with 24 booster packs. Each pack pulls from nearly 200 set symbols across Magic’s history, turning every opening into its own canal map of old favorites, unexpected detours, and cards you may not have seen coming.
Every 15-card pack includes:
A white-bordered card
A playtest card
A Future Sight-frame card, with a chance to appear as 1 of 15 foils
You’ll also receive Wild in Bloom. Found inside Festival in a Box: Amsterdam 2026, Wild in Bloom is a foil edition Secret Lair drop where powerful land-loving cards get a fresh showcase inspired by gardens, green spaces, and the color of the city. It’s bright, botanical, and built for players who like their mana with a view.
1x Nissa, Resurgent Animist
1x Ramunap Excavator
1x Six
1x Tireless Provisioner
1x Titania, Protector of Argoth
And because no Festival in a Box would be complete without a few special guests, Festival in a Box: Amsterdam 2026 also includes:
1x Foil Llanowar Elves
1x Foil Utopia Sprawl
1x Foil Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice
1x Bicycle Elemental Playtest Card

A family who gave up on living in pricey New York City moved to a remote part of Italy after buying a home there for only about $13,000.
Cassandra Tresl, 33, told CNBC that she and her husband decided to rethink their future after welcoming their daughter in 2020, concluding that homeownership in the Big Apple was simply out of reach.
She said at the time, the family was paying $2,000 per month to rent their apartment — a bargain by New York standards. But they fell victim to the affordability crisis in the city, where the average age of homeowners recently reaching a stunning high of 58.8 years old.
“I couldn’t imagine realistically saving up for a down payment to buy a house somewhere in New York,” the young mom lamented.
Instead, the family bought a house in Italy’s Abruzzo region in 2022 for roughly 11,500 euros, or about $13,000 — moving there permanently in 2023, according to Tresl.
“The fact that we were able to buy a house all in cash honestly at that time felt unbelievable,” said Tresl, who called NYC home from 2015 to 2019.
She said the family spent another 15,000 euros, or about $17,000, renovating and decorating the home, with the largest expense being roughly $3,000 to redo plumbing for the entire house.
While many Italians would consider an Abruzzo village the middle of nowhere, the family deliberately avoided the country’s more touristy destinations. They ended up in an unnamed town of about 1,300, Tresl writes on her blog.
“Abruzzo stood out to us,” Tresl said, explaining that her fam shunned “mass tourism” in regions like Tuscany.
She described the area they now call home as an authentic hilltop community. It’s about three hours east of Rome.
The move dramatically reduced many of the family’s recurring expenses.
Tresl said full-time preschool for their daughter costs just $70 a month — a fraction of what friends with kids of similar ages pay in big US cities.
Electricity averages about $170 a month and water is around $80. Wi-Fi costs $15 and each cellphone plan costs around $14, according to Tresl.
The family also owns a second property that Tresl said they purchased for just $20,000 before investing another $17,000 in renovations.
Her husband manages it as a rental property, which she estimated generates about $1,100 per month on average.
Professionally, Tresl said she initially worked remotely for the same tech startup where she was an employee during her time in New York. She later took a marketing job with an Italian travel company.
“I definitely make less now than compared to working for a New York-based company, but my time is much better spent, in my opinion,” she said.
Tresl said the move fundamentally changed her outlook on life.
“I kept thinking what do I want out of my career, and then I kind of realized, maybe I don’t care as much as everyone else might care about their career,” she said.
Living in a small Italian town also forced the family to adapt, including learning the language and embracing a slower pace of life.
“Living in a small town has forced me in the best way possible to slow down and really understand that nothing is that important,” she said.
The family shops mainly at local butcher stores, where Tresl said the quality of meat and cheese is better than what she got in the United States.
They spend about $140 a week on groceries for the household, which includes two cats and two dogs.
While she acknowledged missing family and friends back home, Tresl said she doesn’t envision coming back to the US on a permanent basis.
“At this point in our lives, I could not imagine living back in the US full-time,” she said.
More than anything, she said, owning a home has eliminated the financial anxiety that came with renting in New York — where sky-high housing costs have been blamed in part for ushering in a bevy of far-left, capitalism-hating pols.
“The best feeling that I continuously get from purchasing a house here is a sense of relief,” she said.
“We own the house in cash, it’s paid for in cash, and it’s just done and I don’t have to think about it.”
She added that avoiding monthly rent and mortgage payments has also given her the flexibility to pursue work that she finds more fulfilling, instead of feeling tied to a traditional career.

Katrine Razniak, 27, arrived in San Francisco in 2022 as a recruiter at LinkedIn, earning $70,000 a year. Her annual salary soared to $180,000 when she joined the software company Rippling to lead a team of account managers. Her partner, Adam Woodbury, 39, moved to the city in 2021 and earns $185,000 as a software engineer.
These days, even those six-figure salaries are no longer enough in San Francisco.
When Ms. Razniak and Mr. Woodbury tried to find a one-bedroom apartment for under $5,000 a month this spring, they struck out. They looked at around 30 properties over three months, but all were too expensive and too in demand. At one listing for $5,200 a month, they found 30 people had added their names to a sign-up sheet within an hour of the open house.
They ended the search. But even if they had found a place, a question lingered: whether a city where groceries and dinner with friends had become sources of financial concern was somewhere they could build a future.
“I don’t feel completely hopeless, but I don’t think I can stay in S.F.,” Ms. Razniak said. Mr. Woodbury added, “At some point, there was a slow transition where we both realized it just didn’t make any sense.”
Ms. Razniak and Mr. Woodbury are not struggling by any conventional measure. But as a wave of artificial intelligence wealth is set to deluge San Francisco, even young tech workers who came to the city chasing the Silicon Valley dream have started to say an affordable future feels increasingly out of reach.
That’s because as the A.I. companies OpenAI and Anthropic — both with headquarters in San Francisco and valued at nearly $1 trillion — prepare to go public, an A.I. elite has emerged that can outspend other tech workers. The two companies, along with Elon Musk’s newly public SpaceX, could mint more than 20 new billionaires among current and former employees, according to an analysis by Sacra, a private markets research firm.
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